Disciplinary Measures

(The content below was transcribed from an interview done with Acacia Law. We think you'll find it much easier
and more enjoyable to read this way.)

Interviewer: What kind of things are they made to do to modify the actual home environment itself or the way you do things? Can you give a few examples?

Acacia Law: One of the most frequent ones is compliance with certain disciplinary measures and what I mean by that is, for example, insuring that the child is doing their homework, ensuring that he child is going to school, ensuring that the child is not late in going to school, ensuring that the child is not missed to many days in school, ensuring that the child is passing his or her Classes, ensuring that the child does get any disciplinary or suspensions or detentions or any type of acts that are going to be held against them by the school they attend.

It can include having things that are considered hazardous in the house, this could be anything from furniture to certain tools to weapons removed from the home, they can limit visitations, they can limit who can come to the home, who can’t go to the home, when people can leave the home, they have all kinds of different parameters and rules and the least conditions they can have set in place.

These will come not only as a recommendation from the probation in the juvenile court but will end up being court orders of release conditions. The alternative is that if these things are complied with the child, if the child commits more overt acts, can end up in the juvenile which is basically a jail for children or a jail for kids that they have all over the state.

Interviewer: Do the parents need to have their own lawyer or they just would have a lawyer for the juvenile who is in Juvenile Court?

Acacia Law: No, they wouldn’t. Basically, I am essentially representing the entire family. The child is my client, but obviously my job is to ensure that everyone in the household is stabilized, safe, protected, and that there’s no... I consider again, it’s not by job per se, but it is for me personally something that is of extreme importance is to maintain domestic stability for the sake of the children. In other words what I try to do is work with probation officer or the court so that if there are conditions set they’re something that will not disrupt the lives of the people who are under these types of circumstances.

Again, a lot of it has to do with domestic peace because these things can create problems between parents. They may blame each other for the child’s actions or they may blame each other because the probation officer is requiring certain conditions that have to be complied with. My job is to keep the family intact and safe from the government, basically.

Interviewer: So, just to be clear, the juvenile hasn’t even been convicted, they’ve just been accused and all this stuff, all this invasion can come into play.

Acacia Law: That is exactly right. They have only been accused of being delinquent. They are not convicted and they’re found, more accurately there is not a finding made of delinquency in their case. They’re just charged with something, basically. There’s an allegation or complaint made against them for being delinquent and with that alone automatically a judicial probation officer from the juvenile court will be assigned to the juvenile, to the family, to their home and all these considerations come into play. It’s a stressful thing.