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The contract: A reasonable alternative to adjudicating low-level offenses?

Before I leave the subject of Wednesday's House Corrections Committee meeting, one more idea from Harris County DA Pat Lykos that might be more widely applicable. She said her office has instituted community supervision by "contract" with some 2,200 juveniles in lieu of formal adjudication, saying it's not really true that juvenile records are closed. When the contract expires, there is no formal criminal record. The catch: In some cases prosecutors have been forced to file charges in order to access services for youth, said the DA. That's pretty pathetic, when you think about it. Basically, kids can only get help when they screw up.The "contract" idea reminds me of a program described on Grits a few years back "In South Australia [where] many low-level juvie cases are handled not through the courts but through agreements extracted through a police officer with youth and their parents that keeps them out of the system entirely...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on July 02, 2010 (boomark / email).