By Jessica Priest
Victoria Advocate
VICTORIA, Texas — Seventeen-year-olds deserve to be a part of a system that has a better chance of turning them into productive citizens.
Their success breeds success and safety for society, after all, advocates of juvenile justice say.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a median 34 percent increase in felony rearrests for youths who were transferred to the adult system.
Texas’ House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence found that was likely because youth internalize feelings of injustice and identities as criminals, according to its January report.
Pama Hencerling, Victoria County chief juvenile probation officer, explained juveniles receive more one-on-one attention. They are assigned a juvenile probation officer upon receiving a referral from law enforcement agencies. In the adult system, that doesn’t happen until after the person is convicted.
Juvenile probation officers not only meet with juveniles more frequently at home or at school, they also act as a sort of broker of social services. If a family has its electricity cut off, they try to get them reconnected. If a child has a substance abuse problem, there’s age-appropriate programming out there for them, too, she said.
“We take on the whole family dynamic; we don’t just work with the offender,” she said.
After 29 years on the job, Hencerling knows the relief and sometimes skepticism that comes with finding out you changed a juvenile’s life for the better. But it does happen.
Five years after she started, the front office buzzed her to say a juvenile the court ended up committing to a state institution had stopped by.
Hencerling wasn’t immediately sure this would be a happy visit. They hadn’t parted on the best terms.
“But he reached out to shake my hand and said, ‘I just want to tell you thank you for what you did for me,’” she said.
It’s a moment like that one that convince her 17-year-olds need a second chance.
State Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, the author of one of the bills on this subject, agreed 17-year-olds shouldn’t have a misdemeanor criminal record that hurts their chances of employment or housing later in life, especially because their brains are not as developed as adults.
“Just think back to all the stupid things we did when we were 17 years old and how many of those things could’ve gotten us in trouble,” Wu said of how they not only lack impulse control but also the ability to realize how their actions could have long-term effects.
Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor can testify to that and supports raising the age, too.
“I’ve seen the difference. I’ve raised children, and for whatever it’s worth, a 17-year-old versus an 18-year-old seems to be some sort of modern-day miracle,” he said.
But there’s also a financial aspect to consider, he said. The Victoria County Jail, like others in the state, may soon have to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which requires 17-year-olds be kept separate from older inmates.
Dallas County was forced to open a previously closed jail building and have staff there to comply with the federal government’s mandate, for example. They had 65 inmates under the age of 18, but it cost $80,000 a week to accommodate them, according to the committee’s report.
With 17-year-olds making up less than 2 percent of the Victoria County Jail’s bookings for the past two years, O’Connor said, it is not practical to retrofit the jail for them. It was built in 1986. And if the sheriff’s office opened another jail for 17-year-olds, there must be one jailer for every 48 inmates - even if there’s only five inmates.
Currently, inmates are not grouped together by age or even size. Although there is some consideration given for handicapped or mentally ill inmates’ placement; generally, someone’s criminal history or offense will determine their cell block, Capt. Philip Dennis said.
“You don’t go and advocate because of an economic aspect; you advocate based on what is practical. This is what we feel is good common sense,” O’Connor said.
Defense attorney George Filley also thought the measure made sense. When he served as the Victoria County Criminal District Attorney, he successfully asked the court to certify John Emiliano as an adult in the ‘90s.
He said the proposed legislation still provides prosecutors with that tool.
At 16, Emiliano shot 20-year-old Michelle M. Doran, a clerk at the Circle K store at 2202 N. Laurent St., and stole beer, cigarettes and a small amount of cash with other juveniles. He was sentenced to life in prison, according to Advocate archives.
“There was a degree of planning involved. There was testimony at trial that afterward they sat up in a two-story apartment across the street and watched us all investigate the crime. It was pretty scary,” Filley said.
But Emiliano’s case is not the norm, he said.
Patricia Cummings, the legislative liaison for the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said raising the age from 17 to 18 puts the Lone Star State in line with the rest of the nation.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled states cannot execute someone for committing a crime when they are younger than 18, she said.
Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Rhode Island have raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18, too, according to the committee’s report.
“I can’t tell you it’s magical. I can’t tell you that 17 years, 11 months and 29 days is going to be empirically different than an 18-year-old who turned 18 a day ago, but what we know as a society in terms of moral culpability and in terms of science is that 17 is different generally speaking,” Cummings said. “We as a society function on establishing norms. They’re never going to be perfect.”
Hencerling, meanwhile, supports Senate Bill 104, written by Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen. If passed, it would go into effect in 2016, giving counties time to reconfigure juvenile probation departments’ budgets. Hencerling thinks they’ll experience about a 30 percent increase in caseloads.
They’ve had 10 juvenile probation officers carrying an average of 25 cases from Victoria, but the detention center’s population could rise, too. Victoria County has contracts with 51 other counties to accommodate juveniles. The center has 72 beds. Last year, 158 Victoria County juveniles ages 10-16 stayed there.
Wu said enacting it a year later doesn’t concern him as much as simply getting it passed. He’ll have to convince people his bill and others like it are not soft on crime.
“It’s not going to be a life-changing event. The state will still operate, and cats won’t marry dogs and whatever else,” he said.