Supes consider boosting Youth Court funding
The Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors heard from Oktibbeha County Youth Court Regent Lydia Quarles at its meeting Monday.
Quarles discussed the current state of the youth court, and asked the board to consider increasing its funding of the court in its next budget. She said a sizable number of crimes committed in Oktibbeha County were committed by juveniles, and that the court could better handle the cases and help the youth stay out of further trouble with more money. In Mississippi, youth courts handle truancy cases, child abuse and neglect cases and child delinquency cases.
“In 2019, the Oktibbeha County Child Protective Services brought over 300 families to youth court,” Quarles said. “These are families that Child Protective Services could
not handle in-house. They could not work with the parents or relatives to find a safe place for these children.”
She said it was up to the youth court judge to determine whether a child could be separated from their parents.
“It is only done when there's no other alternative for safety for the children,” Quarles said.
She said the court had also seen 75 truants through 2019. “A lot of people think that only delinquent behavior is handled in youth court, but we have a lot of other things too,” Quarles said. “In the year 2019, we handled over 200 delinquent children.” She said the only two crimes excluded from youth court were traffic violations and wildlife and fishery violations.
She then said delinquent behavior was increasing in Oktibbeha County.
“You're going to see that a third of officers' time is spent on juveniles, and the vast majority of these juveniles have guns, and that's required youth court to utilize juvenile detention centers more often than we have in the past,” Quarles said.
She said the Mississippi Supreme Court had contacted her about being a pilot county for parent representation in the youth court system.
“This would allow a parent who has a child in child protective custody, who does not does not have assets to hire an attorney, to be able to be represented,” Quarles said.
She said parents who had representation were 66% more likely to get their children back.
“The Annie E. Casey Foundation has given a grant to the Mississippi Supreme Court for the administrative office, and that would give Oktibbeha County for calendar year 2020, $6,000 and a $6,000 match to provide parent representatives,” Quarles said.
Quarles went on to say it would likely become mandated in 2021.
She asked the Board of Supervisors to add $10,000 to the youth court's budget, of which $6,000 would be given back at the end of the year.
“Conceivably, we might not use $10,000,” Quarles said. “We might not even use $6,000. We can only get up to $6,000 given back to us. We've never tried this before, so I have no idea what the cost is going to be.”
She also asked for $8,000 for Mississippi State University psychology graduate students to perform psychological evaluations on youth in the court system.
The board unanimously took the measures under advisement.