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GARY EICHTEN: During this hour, we're going to talk about crime, specifically juvenile crime. Minnesota State Supreme Court has set up a task force to look at some possible changes in the juvenile justice system, among the many changes, whether the various types of treatment for juvenile offenders or treatment programs are working and whether more juveniles should be tried as adults. Task force is currently holding a series of public hearings around the state and will issue its report by the end of the year.

Joining us here in the studio is the chair of the task force, State Supreme Court Justice Sandra Gardebring. Justice Gardebring has been on the Supreme Court since January of 1991. Prior to that, she served on the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Thanks for coming in, Justice Gardebring.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Good afternoon.

GARY EICHTEN: What was the primary reason for setting up the task force and reviewing the juvenile justice system? Is that the notion that kids aren't getting the kind of help they need? Is it that they're getting away with too much, and that they're committing more and more serious crimes? What's the motivation?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Gary, the exact motivation is not completely clear to me. But this task force was mandated by the 1992 omnibus crime bill. My sense from talking to legislators is that there is a perception that the kids in the juvenile justice system have changed, that the nature of crime, at least for some of them, is more violent, that they're getting into deeper trouble at a younger age, and that maybe some of the underlying premises that led us to design the kind of system that we have really have to be reexamined. So I think they're looking for a fairly fundamental review of how we're doing juvenile justice in Minnesota.

GARY EICHTEN: Is it fair to say the basic concept, the philosophy underlying the current system is that these children have made a mistake, but we should rehabilitate them, they can be changed, and everything will be OK? Is that--

SANDRA GARDEBRING: You're exactly right. There are really a couple of notions that underlie the system. First is the one that you mentioned that the focus ought to be on rehabilitation, on trying to get them back on track.

This is really in contrast to the adult system, where what we look at for adults in the criminal justice system is protection of public safety and punishment. Completely different focus for kids. It is on rehabilitation. It's a confidential system. Not lots of information is made public. And the notion is that we ought to respond to the individual. It's highly individualized consequences or sentencing.

GARY EICHTEN: What are the range of ages that we're talking about in terms of the kids who end up getting involved in the juvenile justice system?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, it's really any age, essentially. The bulk of kids in the system tend to be 16, 17, 18 years old. But of course, we get kids committing serious crime down to the age of 12. So we're really looking at kids from junior high through high school.

And there needs to be some differentiation between the older kids and the younger kids, which we're starting to do. I think we're equipped to do that. But that's changing as well as we see younger kids getting into more trouble.

GARY EICHTEN: Yeah. Are there any problems with even younger children, the 8, 9-year-olds? Or is that handled in an entirely different way?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: You're right. It is handled in a different way. Kids that young don't go into the delinquency side of juvenile court. Generally, they're handled over in what we call the CHIPS side, Children in Need of Protective Services. The notion there is, for them, a criminal justice component isn't really what we ought to be looking to. But as you get into the teenage years, then we do start treat treating kids more like adults, but not completely like adults in the criminal justice system.

GARY EICHTEN: One more factual issue, and then I'm going to get to some calls. Is the juvenile crime rate going up? Or what is the current situation with the juvenile crime?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: That's an interesting question. The overall crime rate in Minnesota is not going up very much. In spite of strong public perception that we're much less safe than we used to be, the numbers really haven't changed very much with regard to violent crime.

The mix of offenders has changed, and we are seeing both more arrests of juveniles and more filings in juvenile court. The latest statewide statistics we have at the Supreme Court show that about 40% of arrests for violent crime are of juveniles. And that number has gone up consistently over the last decade. So while the overall what we call crime rate for serious crime in Minnesota isn't increasing much, the mix of people in the system appears to be changing. And there are more kids than there used to be committing serious crime.

GARY EICHTEN: And at 40%, that's kind of an amazing figure, because I would think that the proportion of juveniles to the entire population is--

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Much lower than that.

GARY EICHTEN: --nowhere close to that.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Nowhere close to that. But we know that the crime rate generally fluctuates, at least historically, relative to the number of males in the age range 15 to 28, about. So as the demographics of the country change and we get more young people, especially boys and young males in that age range, the crime rate tends to change.

What is a little disturbing is that that population group is not increasing very much right now, but the crime rate and the percentage of kids in the system is. So we're starting to see some changes in who's committing crimes in this country.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is Minnesota state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Gardebring, who chairs a state Supreme Court task force, an advisory task force which is looking into some possible changes in the juvenile justice system in the state of Minnesota. Let's go to our first caller. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

AUDIENCE: Hello?

GARY EICHTEN: Yes, go ahead.

AUDIENCE: Oh, hi. I'm sorry. I would like to recommend a review of a essay in today's Wall Street Journal entitled "Children Who Murder," in which there are some statistics in which, nationally, the arrest rate for homicides by 17-year-olds rose by 121% between 1985 and 1991. And I think, of course, my personal belief is that I live in an area in Minneapolis where it's a deteriorating neighborhood. And I feel very strongly that what is going on with the juveniles needs to be attended to.

GARY EICHTEN: Uh-huh.

AUDIENCE: OK.

GARY EICHTEN: All right.

AUDIENCE: Anything else?

GARY EICHTEN: No, that'll do it. Thanks--

AUDIENCE: OK, great.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks for your call. Appreciate it. Are there any definable factors involved which an outsider could say, well, there is a kid who is not necessarily going to become a criminal, but boy, things are not looking good?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, sure there are. And in a general sense, they're the kinds of things that one could identify by means of common sense. The Minnesota Citizens Council on Crime and Justice, which is a citizens' organization which has been doing research on these issues for many years, has identified what they believe are predictors of violence, childhood factors which can suggest that people may get in trouble.

And they're, as I said, the kinds of things that you would think. First of all, low education level is a very strong indicator. If you look at the percentage of people in our Minnesota prison system who didn't finish high school, who are functionally illiterate, who simply haven't completed the educational tasks that we need to get along, it's a major factor.

Family poverty is a major factor, indications of abuse or neglect in childhood, low self-esteem, and a general factor which they call family chaos, which I think really suggests that kids who don't have a stable home don't get that kind of grounding that would let them move into adulthood in a very comfortable way. So there are some indicators. Certainly not to suggest that every kid who has those factors in his or her life is going to get in trouble, but they're the kind of things we should be watching out for.

And what's especially worrisome is that all these factors are increasing in Minnesota. More kids are growing up poor. The numbers of reported abuse cases are increasing, more families that don't seem to have the resources to raise their kids. So in terms of the future, I think we need to be paying careful attention to some of these underlying issues.

GARY EICHTEN: Have people in the system been so big hearted about this, so concerned about the problems that these kids face, that they have been unwilling to face the very real fact that some of these kids are doing some very real violent things.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, that kind of reflects, I think, our ambivalence about this problem. All of us, I think, want to believe that kids are different than adults, that they should get another chance. Most of us misbehaved in one way or another while we were kids, and we reflect back on our own teenage experiences.

At the same time, I think people are very frightened, as-- I haven't seen this essay in the Wall Street Journal. But we know statistics in Minneapolis suggest that something like 25% of the individuals charged with murder in the city of Minneapolis last year were teenagers. Now, that's a number that we wouldn't have predicted, I think, 10 years ago.

So there's an ambivalence between worrying about the increase of violence and, at the same time, continuing to believe that kids ought to have another chance. And that's the kind of pivot point that we're at now in our system, I think.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

AUDIENCE: This is Mike [INAUDIBLE]. I'm from Little Falls, Minnesota. And I work in a detention facility for juveniles. And my question is, what sort of consequences are there for when a juvenile runs from a placement, such as a detention center?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, the consequences really depend to some extent on the terms of the sentence that the judge has previously imposed. Sometimes there can be additional extension of time when the kid is caught and put back into a facility. Sometimes if they haven't been on a long-term out-of-home placement, maybe they're moved into that kind of thing, it really turns on the nature of the sentence that was originally given and what happens when they come back into court.

We do not have much by way of locked long-term facilities in Minnesota. But at the same time, we know even at Red Wing, which is not a locked facility, runaways are not frequent, but they are something that people worry about. So it varies a lot depending on the nature of the crime that was originally committed and what the judge has imposed to begin with.

GARY EICHTEN: Where are juvenile offenders sent?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, that's part of the puzzle that we're trying to figure out. Judges in juvenile court have a very wide flexibility and a wide discretion. And so they can send kids-- if they want to make an out-of-home placement, they can send them to within the state system, to Sauk Centre or to Red Wing or to the Thistledew Camp.

If they're looking at a community corrections, a county-based system, there are a number of detention centers around Minnesota. They generally have fairly limited programs, often up to 90 days, some longer-term programs in Hennepin and Ramsey County. Some kids are sent to group homes, foster care, shelters, mental health treatment. And some Minnesota kids are sent to long-term facilities outside of the state, some in South Dakota, Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania.

So there is a very, extremely wide variation in what happens to kids. And it varies a lot from one part of the state to the other. The consequence for a similar crime in Hennepin County may be quite different than it is in Beltrami County or in Brown County. And that's one of the things our task force is looking at.

GARY EICHTEN: There's seem to be any reason why that explained the differences?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, there's two reasons, in my view. One is that judges tend to make use of the facilities that they know about, and that may be close to the home of the child. One of the issues in this system is if we're going to provide treatment, do we treat only the child? Or do we need to do something with parents too?

Sometimes kids do real well in an out-of-home placement. They seem to get back on track. Their sentence is over. They move back to the same old, very dysfunctional family setting. And so the question is, should we really send them far away? Or should we try to make use of local resources so that parents can get involved as well?

And the other reason is that the urban systems simply tend to be very overloaded. And the kind of individualized design of sentencing that we really believe is important in the juvenile system just may not happen in Hennepin County, Ramsey County, up in Saint Louis County where there are lots of kids in the system. So there are a couple of different reasons for the variation, I think.

GARY EICHTEN: Does race play a role at all? Do minority kids tend to get stiffer sentences, tougher treatment from the system?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, there's no question about that. That's one of the conclusions that has already been identified by our Race Bias Task Force at the Supreme Court. Their report will come out in about six weeks. And I don't want to give too much advance information about that.

But the kind of anecdotal information that we've been getting for some time, suggesting that kids of color get tougher treatment in the system, appears to be borne out by the statistical work of the Race Bias Task Force. And that is one of the things that we're looking at. It's not just an urban problem.

I was in Moorhead last week talking to people about the juvenile justice system there. They have an issue in their community with Hispanic kids. I was in Redwood Falls, where there's a nearby Indian reservation. There's a concern there among Native American officials that their kids get a tougher time in the system. So we're going to have to look at that as well.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Gardebring. Our conversation today is about the juvenile justice system. Lots of callers on the line with questions and comments. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

CALLER: Hi. My question has to do with, well, there's been a loss of parental guidance in the home because both parents work, and the kids turn towards TV and movies and find their role models there. But the movies and the TV have become so violent. Don't you think we should start controlling some of the violence that we let our kids watch? That's my question. Don't you think that's part of the problem?

GARY EICHTEN: You mean parents or some broader, organized, statewide--

CALLER: I'm saying the TVs and the movies that we now see, they are so violent, and the kids are picking up on this.

GARY EICHTEN: But then, I mean, who would--

CALLER: [INAUDIBLE] into the streets as also with music.

GARY EICHTEN: Right. But who are you suggesting control this, the parents or that the state pass some kind of laws or something?

CALLER: I think the public has to get involved and start sending notices to movie studios and TV stations that we don't approve of such and such a program because it contains too much violence. I think we have to start pulling some of this stuff off the air. I mean, how many times do we have to see someone get killed in an hour? There was some sort of report done on that.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, Justice Gardebring, you've had some hearings already, public hearings. Do you hear this kind of thing a lot that--

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, we certainly do, Gary. The issue that this caller has identified, the impact of media violence, I mean, media in the sense of entertainment is something that we've heard, I think, at practically every hearing. And I think it really reflects a larger question in one sense, and that is the extent to which kids generally do not get adequate parental supervision.

The numbers in Minnesota for two parent working families are very high, something like 75% of kids between 5 and 12 who live with two adults, live in a home where both adults work. And I think that is a function of an economic necessity. This is not about blaming parents. I have two stepchildren. All three of their parents work, as a matter of fact.

So I think we're all put in a position by the economic realities of the '90s. But there is a real sense that kids don't get the kind of supervision, the kind of attention that they used to, and that that goes to a question of what they see on television and in movies as well.

Entertainment, of course, is a market-driven commodity. And to the extent that people start to say, we don't want to buy that product anymore, I think there'll be a change. But it really is something that, I think, requires individual attention and consumer attention. It's probably not the kind of thing that government's going to get involved in any very direct way, but it's certainly an issue that people are talking to us about all across the state.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

CALLER: Hello?

GARY EICHTEN: Yes, go ahead.

CALLER: Yeah, my name is Claire. I'm calling from Saint Louis Park. I think that both the parents and children should be trained and/or educated. And then I think that the ones that are capable of it should-- the juveniles, I mean, instead of being put in a detention camp, should do an apprenticeship or something like that.

And [INAUDIBLE] Clinton's jobs bill passed, every call counts. Let them call them up or write them. I know I have.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, thanks for your call. Occasionally, we put too much emphasis on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, again, this is the balance that we're looking for. The people that I think are the wisest about this continue to remind our task force that we need to have both. We need to have punishment and consequences, but we need to attach to that an opportunity for kids to do better the second time.

And I think the caller is exactly right, that I believe that the programs have to go not only to the kid, but to the parents, because I think parents do the best they can. But we learn to parent in our own families of origin. And where we don't get good training ourselves, we need to relearn how to do it. There are a lot of success stories where family interventions with both the parents and the kids can make a huge difference.

The other thing that we know-- and I heard this last week at Totem Town, which is the Ramsey County facility for boys, long-term treatment for boys-- all eight of the boys I spoke to there said that when they had jobs and when they were working, they didn't get in trouble. But when they lost their jobs, when they weren't going to school, when they didn't have that discipline in their life, that that's when they got in serious trouble.

So the caller is right. To the extent that we can put kids into technical training or apprenticeships or programs that suit their interests so that they have a sense that they're going to have a long-term opportunity for work and to make life better, I think that's part of the whole puzzle. And we need to do more of that. We have a very academic, college-oriented education system in Minnesota. And I think, for some kids, we're going to have to turn to a more vocationally based system.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

CALLER: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I was just reading about the Eden Prairie case, where, Chelsea, I believe her name was, is accusing-- her and her mother accusing a number of 10 to 12-year-old children of sexual harassment. Now, I just have a problem of defining children's behavior through the adult perspective.

And I don't think that you can really apply that sort of terminology and try to impose that sort of legal framework on a child of that age. And I just think it's sort of an easy escape, an easy way to sidestep the root causes that have been talked about on this show, the media and the parents and the role models that exist that promote misogyny and objectification of women.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, any thoughts on that, Justice?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, I share that view to some extent. We know that legal mechanisms are really poor excuses in some ways for training people and getting them to behave appropriately through another mechanism. By the time the judge gets involved or the probation officer or the social worker, something has already gone awry. And to the extent that we can train young boys and young girls in our own families to be more respectful of other people, that's really the answer.

In the meantime, though, I think we do need some legal mechanisms. They're kind of the fallback. And as I said, they're not the best mechanism, but we need them when the other mechanisms fail.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's go to another caller. Hello. Your question, please?

CALLER: Hello?

GARY EICHTEN: Yes, go ahead.

CALLER: OK, I was wondering what your thoughts are on capital punishment for serial homicidal juveniles.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, our task force hasn't been asked to look at the question of capital punishment. We don't, of course, have capital punishment in Minnesota. We haven't had for many years. And I'm not aware that we've had an instance of a serial killer in Minnesota for many, many years, nor am I aware that we've had an instance of a juvenile accused of that kind of crime. So it's not something that we're likely to take a look at.

GARY EICHTEN: What is a youngest age at which a juvenile could be certified to stand trial as an adult?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: 14 is the youngest. There are some crimes where there is what's called a prima facie assumption, that a juvenile who has committed a certain type of crime, the burden shifts, essentially. There's an assumption that that kind of crime will be tried in adult court.

It's generally various levels of homicide, serious aggravated assault, serious criminal sexual conduct. There's still a judicial decision on that. But there's more of an assumption that that kind of thing will go into adult court.

But that's one of the things our task force is looking at. Some people believe that the assumption should be changed to a requirement so that a juvenile charged with homicide or rape or some serious beating would automatically go into adult court. That may be right, but that doesn't really get to what, I think, is the rest of the question. And that is, what do you do with the 15-year-old who has been tried and convicted of a very serious crime?

What we do now is send them to Saint Cloud. They are segregated from the rest of the prison population to some extent. But there isn't really very much by way of programming or treatment there, not as much as some people would like to see.

And those people are going to get out. And they're going to get out at an age when they're still reasonably young and are going to be active in the community in some respects. So we can certainly try more kids in adult court, but then we've got to decide what to do with them once they're convicted.

GARY EICHTEN: Is there any evidence that some of the tougher kids know precisely how much they can get away with before they have to do some serious time?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, there's strong evidence of that. And that's another one of the themes that we're hearing from across the state at our hearings and our public meetings. And that is that some kids who've been in and out of the system really see juvenile court as a joke. And for kids who are repeat offenders in particular, it appears that we're not doing very well for them.

One of the messages of our hearings is that, for many kids, the system works just as it's supposed to. But there is this group of people, the veterans of the system, they've been in and out of court 20 or 30 times-- I talked to a young man at Totem Town last week. It was his fifth sentence to Totem Town.

They're veterans. They know exactly how it works. And for them, we really do need to design a different kind of a response, in my view.

GARY EICHTEN: Any ideas what that different response might be?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, we're looking at a number of different things. One of the questions is, should we have what is commonly referred to as a secure facility in Minnesota, a prison that is designed just for juveniles? This has been an ongoing debate in our legislature for probably 10 years.

A number of states have them. But where they have them and where they work, they tend to be very small. And of course, the concern is it's kind of like the baseball field. If you build it, they will come. And we really don't want to have a system which is designed to create a facility for 500 juveniles and lock them up in a real prison setting. So I think we're going to look at that kind of a longer-term secure facility, but perhaps just for a very limited number of kids.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is State Supreme Court Justice Sandra Gardebring. And we're talking about proposed changes in the juvenile justice system in Minnesota. Justice Gardebring is chairing a task force which is reviewing several proposed changes in the system. And the task force has been holding a series of hearings around the state. Next one comes up in Marshall next Wednesday night. Let's take another caller. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. Yes, there's been a lot of discussion in the popular press about punishment and rehabilitation but very, very little about prevention. And I'd like to go back to your guest's earlier comments about the Citizens' Council report, a group of, I think, mainly coming out of the business community, where they point to indicators of violence in terms of family poverty, lack of educational, educational deficit, abuse, and so on.

It seems to me that the programs which are designed to address these problems, and which have been cut back over the past 10 or 12 years when the rates of arrests have grown, that these programs really must be seen, it seems to me, as crime prevention programs. And isn't that what we need to focus on more, especially in terms of dollars and cents? It certainly costs a lot less to prevent a problem than this lock them up and throw away the key approach, which we tried for 10 years. And clearly, it's not working if the rates are going up.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, I think the caller is exactly right. Our task force hasn't been charged to look at the question of indicators and underlying factors. But you don't have to spend too long studying this system before you really are compelled to start examining some of those kinds of factors.

We do know that some kinds of programs work. Head Start is a program that works very well. Lots of kinds of early intervention programs can make a huge difference. And as the caller indicates, they are a lot more cost effective.

You can look at this in one sense as a moral issue if you want to that kids deserve decent housing, good nutrition, a family that nurtures them. But if you're not inclined to look at it that way, you can look at it simply as crime prevention, as good economics, as a good system for insuring the economic future of the country, because we need productive, well-educated people who are going to be able to take on these tasks.

So while we haven't been asked to look directly at those things, I think all of us who are looking at the juvenile justice system really feel like we ought to say something about prevention and on some of those programs that really work. They are cost effective. They're pretty cheap, and they can really make a difference in terms of a long-term predictor of a kid's life.

GARY EICHTEN: Is there any way to keep guns out of the hands of juveniles? So at least if they're going to commit a crime, the severity of the crime is not quite so bad.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, this is one of the real changes, I think, that we're seeing in the system and in the nature of crimes that kids are committing, as you point out, Gary. The legislature is certainly very interested in looking at that. The thing that I have been struck by, as we've talked to kids, is the fact that many of them are scared. They don't feel safe.

And I'm not sure if that drives the decision to get a weapon and carry it to school. But I do know that the sense of insecurity, physical insecurity that kids experience going to school now is quite different than anything I've ever heard about before. So if we're going to do something to try to limit weapons, which I think we could, I think we should also respond to the underlying sense that there's a real chance they're going to get beat up. They're going to get punished by other kids in some very serious way.

So we can make the possession of guns in a school a more serious crime. But I think we have to look past that to see, why on earth would a kid want to carry a gun with him to school? And there are reasons of stature and being macho and all of that. But I think there's also an underlying sense that they're just not very safe anymore.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

CALLER: Hello. Thank you for-- let me make a recommendation.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

CALLER: My recommendation is that any kid above 12 who got involved with gun should be charged as an adult. And my second question is, how can we get involved with her task force?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, let me answer the second question first. Our two public hearings in the metropolitan area have been completed, but we have hearings next week in Marshall. I don't know where the caller is from. We have a hearing on April 14 in Marshall, on April 28 in Rochester, Minnesota, on May 12 in Fergus Falls, on May 26 in Duluth, and on June 8 in Bemidji.

If you want to write to us, and we're getting quite a lot of written testimony, you can write to me at the Minnesota Supreme Court, which is at 25 Constitution Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota. And we'd love to have your testimony. We'll certainly take it into account in whatever way we can. And I would encourage people to do that. Not everyone can take time to get to a hearing, but we sure would like to have your comments.

Now, in terms of the question about kids above 12 who possess guns and moving them into adult court, certainly, that's the kind of thing the legislature is looking at. But I would return to my earlier comment. Simply trying a kid in adult court, running them through a jury trial, all of the various procedural requirements that attach in adult court, I don't think really answers the question of what are we going to do with 13 or 14-year-old who's committed a felony with a gun.

I don't believe sending them to the Saint Cloud Reformatory is a very helpful answer because a 14-year-old kid who commits a felony may, at worst, have a 10-year sentence. That might be a pretty tough sentence for a first time offender. But even assuming that you're going to release someone back onto the street in their mid-20s, and I'm not sure that's really getting at the fundamental question.

So I think we will see a decision, perhaps, to try more kids in adult court. But again, what are we going to do with them once they're convicted? But please do write to us. We'd love to have your comments.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. I'm from Duluth, zenith city. And I was concerned about-- like they say, there's a saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If they taught the people the law, what was right and what is wrong to do when they're young, when they're older, they'll be trained up in the proper way to live, because lots of things happen to children that their parents are at fault.

And the way things are nowadays, the cost of living is so high you can barely afford to work full time and be able to support self, in this state at least. And there isn't any death penalty, either. Maybe some people think, well, they do it on TV, or they do it to me. It must be right to do it to others then too.

And sometimes maybe they think, well, if you do a crime, then I'll be taken care of. And I don't have to go through all this abusive situation that they may be in.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, your last comment is an interesting one, I think. We heard at a hearing last week a young girl who came and reported that she chose to commit a crime because she thought if she could get to the attention of a judge in the juvenile court, that she would have an opportunity to deal with some of the abuse in her family. And she was right. She was removed from her home and put in foster care.

The real telling thing from that testimony, for me, was to try to ask, why does that need to happen? We also heard testimony from kids who were in group homes who said, as they got to the end of their 90-day commitment to a group home, they broke some of the rules because they just as soon stay in the group home rather than go home. It was the most stable environment they'd had in their life. And that really raises an indication about what we're doing with kids and what we're doing to help parents.

Some people have suggested to us that we should allow earlier and easier what is called emancipation, allow kids to be legally emancipated, released from the control of their parents, and give them some help to live on their own, because some of them, I think, with some good training and treatment, are far better equipped to manage on their own, perhaps even at age 16 or 17, than there might be to go back to a home where they don't get any support at all.

But that's kind of the discouraging thing about what we're hearing. Some kids are trying very hard and getting very little help at home.

GARY EICHTEN: I know it's hard to make generalizations. But speaking generally, children who get involved in the law, who break the law, and so on, do they generally know right from wrong, good, clear concept of right and wrong, and they just choose to ignore it? Or are they fairly confused about what their role, what their responsibilities are?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, I don't if I can answer that exactly. I think kids generally know right from wrong. I think two factors probably come into play. I think there's a lot of, I guess, what the therapist would call acting out a lot of attention-getting kind of activity.

I also think that, for many kids, there's a sense of hopelessness. They don't care. They don't see that they have much future. Their time horizon is a month or two months. They don't connect up what they do now with what their life is going to be in the future. They just don't have the same sense that they can make a difference by making good choices as teenagers. They see a long life of crime and difficulty.

I talked to a boy last week at Totem Town. I asked him about how he thought the treatment was and was the system fair. And he said, he thought it was fair, but he thought that some people were just born to be criminals. And he didn't say, I think I'm one of them, but I sure had the sense that that's how he felt about himself.

Boy, if a kid feels that way, it's pretty hard to make a change in their life. So it's the sense of hopelessness that's kind of discouraging when you talk to some of these young kids.

GARY EICHTEN: Another caller on the line. Hello.

CALLER: Hello there. I'd like to say two things, one of which is on the subject of violence on TV and violence in the movies. And that is, turn your TV off and don't go to violent movies. That would be the quickest way for Hollywood or whoever you blame it for to realize that it's no longer a money-making market, and they should therefore stop doing it.

Now, there will always be a market for it. But if you don't want your children to see it, turn it off. I'd like you to comment on one thing, though, and that is the amount of parental responsibility. If a child does go wrong, how accountable is a parent for that child's responsibility?

And should the parent perhaps be punished or forced to pay or do some form of retribution to make amends for his child's actions? And I'll hang up and listen. Thank you.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, you make a very good point in terms of the responsibility of parents. And again, it's something that we're hearing in almost all of the public hearings. There is a real sense that part of the attention, whether you call it treatment or punishment, needs to be directed to parents.

For example, in the instance of restitution, which is very often part of the sentence ordered by the juvenile court judge, often it ends up being the parent who pays the restitution because a 14 or 15-year-old kid who's been responsible for $800 or $900 worth of damage often is not in a position to pay. My own sense is if you hit parents in the pocketbook, you do get their attention, and that seems to work pretty well. So that's how we do it on the punishment side.

On the treatment side, juvenile court judges have no direct authority to order parents into chemical dependency treatment, into family counseling. Many of them do it, and no one questions them. And they do it on the side in one sense.

But one of the things that we're going to look at explicitly is whether the juvenile court judge should have more explicit legal authority over parents, because I think there is a real consensus on what you've just said to us as a caller. And that is that parents need to bear more of the responsibility.

40% of kids in Hennepin County go into juvenile court without a parent present, which suggests, I think, to me, that parents are throwing away their kids and simply aren't doing what needs to be done, certainly not doing what my father would have done had I gotten in serious trouble as a teenager. So--

GARY EICHTEN: But had you gotten into trouble as a teenager, it wouldn't have been the fault of your parents.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, I don't think it's so much a question of fault, Gary. One of the callers earlier said parents get overwhelmed. The economic responsibilities are so tough. Sometimes it's just getting their attention as much as anything else.

And I'm sympathetic to parents. We've had parents who've come to our hearings who expressed as much frustration as anyone else that the system didn't work for their kids, who desperately wanted their kids to get help, who were paying attention, who wanted to be involved. But they're not necessarily the parents of every kid who gets in trouble.

And sometimes we just need to get parents' attention. And I talked to a truant officer this week who said that the way she does it is that she tells them that if their child is truant again, that she will come to the home and take the parent and the child to school every morning. And that somehow gets their attention.

If they believe they're going to have a direct link to the school, they get the kid up and get them off to school. So it is really a fine line between blaming parents and finding fault and simply acknowledging that the court system is a poor substitute for a mom or a dad or an aunt or a grandmother or somebody paying attention to the way a kid is behaving on a day-to-day basis. Probation officers just can't do that very well.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi. You're on Minnesota Public Radio.

CALLER: Thank you. Two questions. The first one is, if low education attainment and poverty are the cause of juvenile crime, why didn't we have widespread juvenile crime during the Depression? But the more general question is, what is the Supreme Court justice doing, coming on the air, basically analyzing public policy, and even more importantly, heading up a task force that is going to recommend public policy?

How can you possibly be impartial if you are asked to judge legislation which you have essentially written? And finally, from your comments just a moment ago, if the Alan Willey case reaches the Supreme Court, have you just told us that you think he should be made to pay the $85,000?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, I haven't made any comment on the Alan Willey case, and I don't intend to. In terms of the question of the role of our court, the legislature directed that our court examine how well the juvenile justice system is working. It really is part of the job of a judge, at least on our court, to look at the overall system. And it's one that all of us do in one way or another.

Some of us serve on the Sentencing Guidelines Commission. Some of us serve on the Task Force on Race Bias in the court system. Our job at the Supreme Court level is not just to make decisions on particular cases, but also to look at the overall system in terms of how well it's working.

Seems to me it's quite appropriate for me to do this job. In addition to my being on the task force, there are three other judges, all of them district court judges who deal day-to-day with the system. And that's really part of what the legislature has asked us to do.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, what about the first comment that he made that if, in fact, low education levels, poverty rates, and so on are good indicators of crime, why weren't we overrun with juvenile crime during the Depression?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, that's a good question. And that's an issue that's been raised at a couple of meetings that we had. I don't know the reason to that completely. Let me suggest that it's really the combination of things. It's the combination of family chaos, some of the lack of supervision. In addition to these other factors, it may not be one single factor alone.

My own mother and my own father grew up, graduated from high school during the Depression. They were very poor. They weren't able to go on to school. But in each of their instances, they had a very strong sense of family and people hanging together and helping each other out. So I don't know that it's one of these factors by itself. It may be the combination of changes in family structure in addition to these other things.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Gardebring, who chairs a task force that's looking at possible changes in the juvenile justice system in the state of Minnesota. Lots of callers on the line with questions. Hi. Go ahead.

CALLER: Hello.

GARY EICHTEN: Go ahead.

CALLER: This is Bob from south Minneapolis. I'm very interested in your program. And my focus is on rehabilitation of the young person. I think that one thing that could be considered if it hasn't been is the prison farm. It seems to me that young people who have an opportunity to do this kind of work can then go on and perhaps, in their postconfinement time, have something constructive and positive in their lives to carry them and keep them from further trouble.

GARY EICHTEN: Do we have anything like that in Minnesota?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, nothing quite like that. But to the extent that Bob is talking about trying to do vocational activities while kids are in some kind of a out-of-home placement, I really couldn't agree more. I think, as I mentioned earlier, the kids that we talked to the older teenagers really indicate that a job provides a real anchor in their life.

Now, to the extent that we can get training programs, vocational training programs built into our system, I think that's an excellent idea. Many of the alternative learning centers that operate for kids who don't do very well in the general public school system try to build in a vocational element. And I think we've got to do more of that.

GARY EICHTEN: What about boot camps that you hear about from time to time where they send the kids off? And basically, it's like being in the military basic training.

SANDRA GARDEBRING: We do have some programs that look a little bit like that. Some of them call them the wood chopping programs. There are a couple of them around the state. They're pretty tough. They're pretty disciplined.

I think they work pretty well as long as they're combined with some of the other components that we've talked about here. A lot of the kids that are in trouble have chemical dependency issues. We need to put in some treatment into those out-of-home placements for chemical dependency.

A lot of them have real issues in terms of managing anger and learning other ways of dealing with conflict. So if we can attach to that boot camp-type of activity some other components, I think it's worth a try.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Time is slipping by. But we have time for at least one more caller. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. I have a couple of comments I'd like to make based on some of the things-- I haven't heard the whole program. One of them has to do with parents because I'm a parent, a single parent of three sons who happen to be three Black males. And particularly, as a single parent, I've grown just incredibly frustrated with being blamed for everything that happens, as if somehow there's something magic that you're supposed to do.

One of the examples that I'd like to give you is that my youngest son, who is now 15, had a tremendously difficult time with the public school system. And that kind of slopped over into some other things that happened in the neighborhood. And I think that one of the things we have to have is expectations, not just as a parent, because my son knew that I had expectations of him.

But for instance, when he went into school, it was real clear that the teachers had-- not just teachers, administrators more than teachers, administrators, counselors, support people felt like, here's a Black kid, Black male, single family. We've got a problem. And it proceeded to be a problem because that was their expectation.

In time, the public school system became so terrible for my son that I finally pulled him out of school completely. I pulled him out of public schools completely. When he left public school last year, his grades were Fs and F minuses and Ds. He is now going to a private school where he has-- there are expectations, not only on my part, but there are expectations on the part of the administrators and the teachers.

And he has gone from Fs and Ds to Cs and Bs. And in his Spanish class, he's getting As, and he's recommended for Honors Spanish next year.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, now we're just about out of time. Do you have a specific question? Or--

CALLER: Comment. As I think that we've got to look at expectations, and we really have to spread out. People seem like they're so anxious to lay blame and to be vindictive and to punish, as opposed to understanding and taking a look and seeing, what do kids really honestly need?

And if we could believe in kids and all kids, I think that we'd see some difference. But as adults, we have to show that we believe in them. We really have to have some expectations that we believe that they can do. We need to praise them when they do good things, instead of only making comments about the things they do wrong. And in my case, I'm thinking particularly about Black males. But I think it's true with all kids who find themselves in trouble.

GARY EICHTEN: Justice Gardebring?

SANDRA GARDEBRING: Well, your caller makes a very good point and one that, I guess, is a good one to end on in one sense. All of the studies that I've looked at with regard to rehabilitation of kids suggest that the one thing that can make a huge difference in their lives, whether they're in trouble in school or in the criminal justice system or wherever they are, is if there is one adult who pays attention and takes them seriously and believes in them.

And the point about expectations I think we need to underline over and over again, we need to identify what's good in kids and try to fan that flame as much as we can. And it can be a teacher or a parent or a member of the extended family. It can even be their probation officer or social worker.

And I think that we really need to really emphasize what your caller has said. And that is the need to create a sense for the kids themselves that they're worth something, that there's a hopefulness in their lives. And that can be done by one or two people. It can make a huge difference.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, we have to end there, unfortunately. Thanks so much for coming in. I sure appreciate it. Our guest today, state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Gardebring, who is chairing a task force, a state Supreme Court advisory task force, which is holding hearings around the state looking at some possible changes in the juvenile justice system. A report is due out by the end of the year. Hearings continue. The next one is next Wednesday night in Marshall.