Editorial Series: 1 Of 3

JUVENILE INJUSTICE: CRISIS AT THE MARION COUNTY JUVENILE DETENTION CENTER

Danger Zone

A System Intended To Rehabilitate Kids Has Its Own Problems:
Overcrowding, Lack Of Due Process, Sex Abuse Charges

A childish prank -- tossing snow through the window of a teacher's
car -- landed 13-year-old Donna in the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center.

Administrators at Forest Manor Middle School could have settled for
suspending the girl or letting her off with a warning. Donna's mother
offered to pay restitution, and even the teacher who owned the car
admitted there was no serious damage. Instead, IPS police were
summoned, Donna was arrested, and another child entered Marion
County's troubled, often dangerous juvenile justice system.

Donna was eventually found guilty of criminal mischief and sentenced
to probation. (The Star generally does not identify juvenile
offenders.) A three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals later
unanimously overturned the conviction.

For Trina Saunders Ray, the public defender who represented Donna at
trial, the case is not an isolated incident. Says Ray: "There are so
many cases that are filed that shouldn't be."

From 1995 to 2004, juvenile cases increased by 17.5 percent in
Marion County and 40 percent statewide. In 2004 alone, 70,000
children appeared in Marion County courts, according to Superior
Court Judge Marilyn Moores, who now runs the juvenile system.
Children as young as 6 have been locked up in the detention center.

The flood of children into the system is only one example of the many
problems plaguing Marion County's juvenile justice system.

In April, nine former county employees were charged with molesting
teen girls at the detention center. Superintendent Damon Ellison was
accused of keeping a tape-recording of a 13-year-old inmate's
accusations of sexual abuse in his desk for six years. Ellison, now
suspended from his job, has been charged with obstruction of justice
and neglect of a dependent.

In May, the National Partnership for Juvenile Services declared the
detention center unsafe for inmates and staff. The report was sharply
critical of management.

Superior Court administrators, in response, have begun to overhaul
operations. But Presiding Judge Cale Bradford admits, "There's a lot
to clean up, there's no question about it . . . and it's a tragedy
that has not been addressed until now."

A Star Editorial Board inquiry reveals that a juvenile justice system
intended to rehabilitate kids is doing anything but: Juveniles in the
state and county often do not receive due process.

Forty percent of Indiana juveniles do not have either a private
lawyer or a public defender to represent them, according to an
analysis by the National Juvenile Defender Center and the Indiana
Juvenile Justice Task Force.

Parents frequently waive juveniles' rights, but in some cases it's
the parents themselves who are leveling accusations against their children.

State Court of Appeals rulings reveal a troubling pattern of judges
ignoring laws that govern court proceedings and rules of evidence. In
Donna's case, the Court of Appeals found that Magistrate Geoffrey
Gaither didn't have sufficient grounds to find her guilty. Schools
are a major source of the heavy influx of children into the system.

Indiana's schools have some of the highest suspension and expulsion
rates in the nation; many of those students end up in court. In 2005,
Marion County schools referred 10,500 cases to the juvenile court,
ranging from such legitimate law enforcement concerns as drugs and
weapons possession to schoolyard scuffles and food fights.

Marion County's Chief Probation Officer Robert Bingham, who took
control of the detention center in May, notes that one school
recently tried to send over a 6-year-old for kicking a teacher.
Although the center has accepted children that young, current policy
is to imprison children age 12 and older. Bingham eventually
persuaded the school not to have the child detained.

The detention center is "dirty" and "chaotic," a place filled with
"suicide risks," according to the National Partnership report.

Overcrowding remains a problem, despite a cap on the number of
inmates imposed by Bradford last year. At that time, children were
found sleeping in hallways. The overcrowding and a lack of
supervision expose inmates to the kind of sexual predatory behavior
that is at the heart of the prosecutor's probe.

State oversight has been horribly lax. Indiana's Department of
Correction certified the detention center as "fully compliant'' as
late as 2004, despite a documented history of violations. State
regulation of Indiana's 23 other county-run detention centers appears
to be just as inadequate.

"The whole system needs an overhaul," says Susan Boatright, a former
magistrate who now runs the juvenile division of Marion County's
Public Defender Agency.

The inefficient, dysfunctional system is costly to taxpayers. Judges
in Marion County have been quick to send juveniles to state prisons
-- 9,600 between 1990 and 2005 -- where costs run as high as $300 a
day per inmate. Marion County taxpayers now owe the state $60 million
in back payments for housing juvenile offenders.

The human costs are even higher. Troubled families are forced to use
the juvenile court as their only avenue for receiving counseling and
other mental health treatment. To get help, deputy prosecutor Gary
Chavers says, parents end up filing charges against their own children.

But the criminal justice system is far from an ideal setting for
deciding who should receive treatment and how it should be administered.

Much of Marion County's problems can be traced to juvenile court
policies, many set by former Judge James Payne, who dominated the
system for 20 years.

One example: For years Marion County juveniles who had once served
time in a state prison were automatically sent back for another
infraction, regardless of the circumstances.

That policy fell hard on 17-year-old Ebonie, who was sent to the
Girls School in 1999 for truancy, battery and disorderly conduct.
Ebonie had managed to turn her life around -- one of the chief goals
of juvenile incarceration. She returned to school and was on track to
graduate from Pike High in 2002.

None of that mattered when she got into a fight with her estranged
mother. A disorderly conduct charge landed her back in state prison,
despite pleas for leniency from teachers, her grandmother and a social worker.

Payne's replacement, Judge Moores, has since dropped such policies.

She also has told school administrators that the court will no longer
accept cases involving low-level offenses.

Further reforms may come through the court's work with the Annie E.
Casey Foundation, which is helping pursue alternatives to juvenile proceedings.

But the problems in Marion County's juvenile justice system run deep.
The investigation of sexual abuse at the detention center is
continuing. The court remains overwhelmed by the volume of cases it
handles. Thousands of children and families in Marion County are
still poorly served.

[Sidebar]

Why You Should Care

Children as young as age 6 have been detained at Marion County's
juvenile detention center on low-level charges such as truancy and
disorderly conduct. Some have been held for as long as two months.
It's time to ensure incarceration is limited to the most serious offenses.

About The Series

Today: Children are flooding into a Marion County juvenile justice
system where rules of due process are often ignored and the detention
center has been declared unsafe.

Monday: Appellate court rulings reveal a troubling pattern of
magistrates in Marion County's juvenile court not following the
intent of the law.

Tuesday: Despite serious problems, including alleged sexual abuse, at
the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center, state inspectors
continued to grade it as fully compliant with standards.