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Keeping children safe
One reality seems to cut across most urban legal
systems in the country:
Courts set up to protect children's interests usually are treated as the
lowest rung of the ladder.
The clientele often gets the rawest lawyers or no
representation at all. Judges may be on the bench biding time until they
get a more plum assignment. Budgets cuts are routine, for the family and
juvenile courts and for the social services that intersect with them.
And then there are the buildings, the lousy buildings. They frequently
are too broken, too small, too antiquated, too insufficient. That
certainly is true in the nation's birthplace. What's needed are more
attention to and resources for the institutions that are so important in
a young child's life.
In Philadelphia, the to-do list begins with a new home
that would reunite the domestic relations and juvenile divisions in a
single, spacious building. The two divisions now are blocks and blocks
apart, with the juvenile division at 1801 Vine St., domestic relations
at 34 S. 11th St — and families involved in proceedings in both venues
running around in between. That's not a good setup to help children
entangled in situations that often are not of their own making.
The juvenile division is not only for youth crimes
that fall under the heading of delinquency. It also handles cases
including abuse, neglect and abandonment. These children are not in
court because of what they did. They're there because adults failed
them. They are innocents, in the truest sense of the word. Courts should
not add to their woes through lack of attention.
Philadelphia does pretty well at providing legal
counsel to children in the juvenile division. Children in other parts of
the state aren't as fortunate. Pennsylvania has “no uniform process to
appoint public defenders and no eligibility criteria for indigency” that
might require court-appointed assistance, according to a new report by
the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention.
Legal representation is the rarity in Philadelphia
Family Court's Domestic Relations Division.
You are not misreading the following statistic, as reported last year in
a study of by the Women's Law Project: About 85 percent to 90 percent of
the parties to protection-from-abuse, custody, and child support cases
have no legal counsel. That's right, two adults who probably are
spitting mad at each other and know little about court procedures are
battling out their children's fate with no guidance.
That's nuts. It can't improve children's
well-being.
Time is also in short supply in these proceedings. The
Women's Law Project reported that 75 percent of protection-from-abuse
cases and about half of custody cases are dealt with in hearings that
last less than 10 minutes.
And space is tight.
Currently, the two domestic relations and juvenile
buildings have 385,000 square feet combined. Officials hope a new
building will have at least 525,000 square feet. There are no cost
estimates yet, but the Criminal Justice Center, which is about 500,000
square feet, cost $120 million to build 10 years ago.
Everyone seems to agree new family court quarters are
a must, considering the shape of each building and the overlap between
the two courts. But consensus is not enough. Officials from the city and
the state Supreme Court need to pick up the pace and get this important
project underway. Officials could motivate themselves by visiting the
domestic relations division between 11th and 12th, and Market and
Chestnut Streets. Walk into the main door and immediately, you're in a
crowded, scruffy working space, where the busiest hours see lines of
people (of all incomes and backgrounds) waiting for intake, the cashier
or information, winding out onto the street. And, as division
administrator Mary Lou Baker puts it, “They're not happy people.” As if
to prove her point, a woman begins arguing with one guard and then
another before disappearing into an elevator.
The Women's Law Project notes other deficiencies in
the domestic relations building. Used to be, the parties in domestic
violence or protection-from-abuse cases would be made to sit in the same
waiting areas — a prescription for conflict and intimidation. Since the
law project's study came out in April 2003, the division has made a
greater effort to separate the parties. But in one waiting area, all
that separates alleged victim from alleged victims is a Dilbert-like
office partition.
What's really needed is a building that has only
separate waiting rooms with separate doors. At 1801 Vine St. in the
juvenile division, the small, noisy waiting rooms also mix the accused,
witnesses and victims.
“1801 is beautiful, but it should be something else,”
said Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman, from
Montgomery County, who has made a new family court building a priority.
The family court is part of the state system, which the Supreme Court
oversees. One building for both divisions would recognize the overlap of
cases and allow children, attorneys, social workers and advocates to
handle everything affecting one family more efficiently. Some
administrative functions might be able to be joined as well. Children's
interests undoubtedly would be better served if a combined court had a
high-tech information system so a judge in any division, in any court,
could track the multiple involvements of a family or a child. Right now,
there is no cross-division computerized record-sharing. There's barely
computerization within each division. Domestic Relations Judge Edward R.
Summers said he usually finds out about proceedings in other courts from
the opposing litigant, who's only too willing to tell.
Philadelphia has to do better than word-of-mouth
information sharing.
Newman is on board with this whole project. So is
Chief Justice Ralph J. Cappy, who is said to be keen on helping family
courts statewide. So is Philadelphia Family Court Administrative Judge
Myrna P. Field. Newly elected Justice Max Baer, who earned praise as
administrative judge in Pittsburgh's family court, also is trumpeting
these types of issues. Mayor Street's administration has shown some
enthusiasm, but the city has not yet formally endorsed a family court
project. The obstacles, not surprisingly, are a site and money. One
appealing central location, behind the city's Criminal Justice Center at
1301 Filbert St., is too small.
Finding the money will be hard. A city bond sale is
the most likely source — and that idea wasn't even discussed in the
recent city budget fight. The Philadelphia congressional contingent,
along with U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, both Republicans,
should check whether any any federal dollars could be used for this
project. The state theoretically is under orders from the state Supreme
Court to pay for operation of all county courts, to ensure equitable
resources, but the legislature blithely ignores the mandate while the
court shrugs.
City Managing Director Philip R. Goldsmith agrees a
new court building is a good idea. So are a lot of things, he adds:
“Show us the money.”
It took 20 years for the city to move on a new site
for the juvenile detention center, now on Callowhill Street with its
ugly back turned to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. near the Parkway.
Just recently, the city settled on a 5-acre site at 46th and Market
Streets. Goldsmith said the city hopes to break ground this year, and
have the new center done within four years. But it's not enough for the
city to tell the family court to take a number and get in line.
Children's futures are being hurt. The city must be more assertive in
advocating for this project, including looking for new sources of
funding. Finding reasons why a facility cannot be built or an existing
office building retrofitted may be the habitual Philly response — but
it's a habit that needs to be broken.
For children's lives to improve in this city and
region, the agencies and services they are forced to use must not remain
on the bottom rung of the ladder. It is that rung, after all, that gets
stepped on the most.
13 July 2004
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/9134064.htm
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