the next case on the called the docket is a general number two case number one one four nine nine four and ray shelby are a minor counsel for  juvenile court act turning first to the issue of mootness this court has previously emphasized that the existence of a real controversy is the prerequisite to the exercise of a court's jurisdiction not a mere technicality illinois courts here concrete disputes between parties they don't just decide legal issues in a vacuum or issue advisory opinions and so this court has stated that an appeal is moot when intervening events have been heard it impossible for the reviewing court movements that exception appropriately as an exception to a jurisdictional requirement is narrow and requires a clear showing of each of three elements those elements are an issue presented in the case that is of a public and in previous cases looking at whether there is a need for authoritative determination to guide public officers in future cases this court has clearly stated that it looks at whether there are conflicting decisions that evidence a genuine need on the part of illinois judges for guidance on an issue in cases like this decision and in the alfred h h from two thousand and nine and hernandez from two thousand and ten and a variety of other cases this court has either relied on the existence of conflicting decisions as a reason for applying the public interest exception to this or emphasized the lack of such decisions as a reason for declining to apply the exception and when this case responded has not identified conflicting decisions there were no conflicting decisions before the appellate court and there are none here instead responding argues that there is a need for guidance in this case because in her view the trial court and the prosecutor and need a precedent from this court to guide their future afeard it's now of course that's an argument that an appellant can and would make i think in any appeal always an appellate believes that the court below got it wrong and need some instruction or accepting the assertion that the public interest exception to the just talking doesn't apply to list the law is in disarray but there are conflicting decisions how would it be moot issue a first impression of the  to review certain here on it while there are first of all other exceptions to moot as that a court could invoke in order to hear one of those issues should they have thought they capable of repetition yet evading review exception the collateral consequences exception so there are controversy so it wouldn't be an absolute bar to having these cases but some cases will not be able to be heard that is how this works and i do i should stress that existence of conflicting decisions is not necessarily the only way to show that there is a genuine need for guidance on the part of public officials and there have been other cases from this court that have looked at other things such as the fact that you have an election official someone who not expert in the law asking for guidance on an issue or you have a legislator who doesn't necessarily isn't isn't a lawyer perhaps doesn't necessarily know how something should be determined and that is the public official in need of guidance but  have a way of telling telling telling other courts when they need guidance and that is by saying that they need guidance in opinions or by issuing by showing the court by issuing conflicting decisions that show yes there's a genuine need for guidance here so there are a variety of ways in which one could establish that there is a need for guidance that's absolutely correct however one of the ways that the court has has looked at this in the past is through looking at conflicting press and that is a nice concrete objective way to prevent this test from becoming simply a subjective ad hoc way of deciding which moot cases to hear section one for  deal with general requirements with regard to juveniles such as the sight and sound requirement that minors are not to be confined with adult offenders or within their sight and sound i think those are those are the things that we're talking about and those would apply your honor and that goes to the first problem whether there is an interest that it whether there is an issue that is of public importance and the people are not disputing that the first prog has been met here this is an issue that is a public importance however it's not an issue on which there is a  this and there are other ways to demonstrate that there is a genuine need for guidance other than just the conflicting decisions but what responder has pointed to in this case person jack to have belief that the trial court needs guidance is not sufficient and to follow up briefly on the merits issue there the statutory scheme under the juvenile court act does provide for the confinement of minors and there are several provisions that interact g there have been some slight changes but this is this is the way it was at the time it broadly authorized commitment of juveniles upon a finding of one of two things either one that the juveniles parents were either unfit or on able to care for them for reasons other than financial circumstances or to alternatively that commitment was necessary to protect the public in this case the first finding that was made and importantly that section five seven fifty did not contain any restrictions on the use of commitment with juveniles other than the finding of one of those two one of those two findings now respondent correctly points out that another provision of the juvenile court act section five dash seven ten ex four which in essence creates an exception to that exception for minors accused of violation of a court order and just to back up and there's a little bit of legislative history on this provision and it part of illinois state legislators to cook form what they were doing with the only juvenile court act to the federal regulations that govern when juvenile justice grants can be made to states and those are found at thirty t hamstrung because some offenders were coming before them yes initially on status offenses the sort of offenses like underage drinking or truancy that we generally think of as somewhat less serious but were repeating those offenses because they knew in essence the court but one point four one seems to contemplate the opposite that there can be punishment for violating a court order and i don't think necessarily that that can be reconciled i do think that but there is there is repeal by implication and in this case it is one point or one that is the latter provision that was passed by the legislature it was passed as part of the one thousand nine hundred two amendments and the section in seven twenty that your honor is referring to predated that going back until legislator might not necessarily have thought of all the other places in the act that might need a little pruning to go along with this statute but they didn't act this and it is the later an act and it should the state leaves control in this case and this is really the sort of paradigm tic case that shows the true value of the value valid court order exception because in this case respond it did initially come before the court sets offense under age drinking recognizing the substance abuse issues in the case the court immediately sensed respondent to residential treatment but she left that treatment without completing it against the advice of the staff despite this failure when the sentencing came up the court sentenced her probation and gave her the opportunity to deal with her issues in the community stressing the importance of her receiving treatment and complying with the court's order to refrain from drugs and alcohol but less than two months later two months into an eighteen month probation sentence respond it was back with her the court having tested positive for marijuana and cocaine but again rather than immediately putting responded in confinement the court decided to again emphasize the importance of treatment respondent instead fails two more drug tests and when she came back before the court having not completed treatment having failed to more drug tests and having recently become pregnant the court determined that the only sentence that would help respondent to deal with her issues and to vindicate the court's order as well let's protect respond and her unborn child was a sense of commitment it was not denominated as contempt however respondent received a variety of important procedural protections here such as the right to counsel she was provided with notice of the charges against terror she was informed of her right to a trial her right to confrontation right to present evidence and she was told that the state where the burden of proof and she was warned of the full range of potential sentences including commitments in this case so if it work amendment this is consistent with with contempt but i on is contained in article five part four which deals with previous you to kotori proceedings the articulation that i've referred the court to what section one point four point one or one dash for why it's contained in article one the general provision expect general they are intended to apply throughout the entire act and they include things like definitions like the policy section for the act and like the exemptions from the scope of the act things like that don't make sense unless eighteen of collected a few other illinois statutes that use the word accused in a context that suggests it also includes one who is not merely been accused but has been followed all the way through and has been judicially determined to have engaged in the i represent the minor responded in this case on behalf of the office of the state appellate defender the legislature knows how to create a valid court order exception when it wants to the legislator created the legislature  express bans on the incarceration of status offense or offenders the first is contained in article one which governs every other article of the juvenile court act that provision contains an exception within article five which is governs a more narrow class of juvenile proceedings delinquency proceedings the legislature included a valid court order exception for temporary detentions of minors during pretrial and pre hearing proceedings the last a ban on the incarceration of status offenders is that is contained in the sentencing provisions of the juvenile court act that absolute ban contains no exception for valid court orders there is a reason why the legislature drew a distinction because there are fundamental differences between detaining a minor pretrial versus post trial the first is the length of the detention when a minor is taken into custody pretrial or pre hearing that minor has to appear before a judge within forty days the judge has a very narrow very narrow constraints in terms of if he can order that minor to be  continued detention it has to be either to protect the safety of the public or safety of the minor or to prevent the minor from running to make sure that the minor appears furthermore after that for any minor who is detained trial for that minor is supposed to be held within thirty days of detention the normal hundred twenty days speedy trial clock shortens up to thirty days if the minor is detained and in the case of probation revocation that period is limited to two to in the case of sentencing courts are considering very different are weighing very different factors at the sentencing phase a court is not only looking at whether the minor and the public needs to be protected the court also house to weigh the rehabilitative potential of the minor this is where the court is responsible for crafting crafting an appropriate response and when it comes to sentencing rather than the very short detention periods that are absolutely necessary to keep individual safe at the front end of the proceedings the potential incarceration consequences for a minor at the back and are up to a year in the department of juvenile justice offense i can i don't know the answer to that question about how that was how that fifty five day period was broken and she spent like we can in four infer that it was probably about twenty five days because she was in custody for a complete month originally following the original incident she was in custody for thirty days and then the court released her for inpatient treatment before the case proceeded to the end original judy cations of the court gave her fifty five days and it's reasonable to infer that she was probably in custody for about twenty five that because the ban an exception in article one is a ban an exception that governs all juvenile court proceedings and for example in under article three where minors are in need of eight minors typically fall under this or this place if you look at this article one exception is says you can hold essentially truant minors in custody based on a violation of a valid court order article three doesn't contain the equivalent of an article five procedure for incarcerating a minor in a minor because ordinarily there is no incarceration in truancy proceedings so what this valid court order exception in article one really speaks to is creating a with by which under article three a trial judge could incarcerate a truant minor for behavior and again there has to be a vehicle there is no vehicle within article two to incarcerate minors and so that necessarily i think means contempt powers have article one if the article want to exception is read as a recognition of a trial court's inherent power under its contempt powers to order a minor in violation of a valid court order in custody and then you move to article five and article five specifically addresses how we deal with delinquent minors it's not nothing and in that case what the what the what the delinquency provisions allow out allows for this limited exception at the front end but an absolute band when it comes to d j excuse me d j commitments so i think the article want that that the valid court order in article one can stand as a recognition of contempt powers and it can be applied in articles other than article five and article five in article five the legislature has created these much more specific ways for handling status offenders which makes sense because in article five that's really where the risk is going to arise for a status offender facing facing and incarceration and it makes a lot of sense for the legislature to constrain the incarceration of status offenders under article five his requests for legislative intent the argued that the legislative history to deal the discussion was headed that the purpose of the statute was to conform with the federal statute in order to to apply this tension think scheme that is set forth in jay jay d p a what j j d p a says states if we are going to hand you a check for juvenile justice interests we're going to create a floor that's what's created in  d p a is a floor it is the minimum amount of protection that a state house to provide to status offenders before the federal government will hand over funding there is nothing in j j d p a that prevents individual states from providing their status offenders with greater protections than those protections that are set forth in jay jay d p a and the argument in this case is that's exactly what the legislature has done when it's drawn this line between p post adjudication commitments of minors the commitment the conditions that a minor is placed and when it comes to a commitment to do jay jay again it's not a temporary commitment it is the deep end of the illinois juvenile justice system it is a prison is our facilities that are surrounded by razor wire these are children who sleep in cells alongside some of the most violent juvenile offenders within this state including juvenile offenders who have committed offenses so serious that what they were tried and convicted in juvenile court but aren't old enough yet to be sent to an adult prison and to take a child who's done nothing but engaged in behavior that would not be illegal but for her age and to place those children in these facilities with these deep end children it is eminently reasonable on the part of the legislature not not to put a valid court order exception when it comes to d j broad array of options that are available to trial or under the sentencing options under the juvenile court act it begins with probation she'll be clearly wasn't successful on probation she was a danger to herself but that doesn't mean that you jump immediately to a d j commitment there is this there's an intermediate option for trial courts and to the juvenile court act and that is staff secure placements under section fifty seven forty it's a residential placements is where it  so in this case this is the type of child that was probably tailor made for residential placement she says she had been in as she had done residential treatment for alcohol and drug abuse  she did and i think that yes but in terms of sort of matters of common knowledge people who are dealing with addiction issues are rarely successful on the first go around in this particular case the date that she left in april corresponded with the anniversary of her violent sexual assault she was a victim and if you look at the documents that are attached in the common law record there is an analysis and some treatment notes from her original placement at that original proceeding and she even told staff i'm going to have trouble in april it's going to be really difficult for me so the notion that a child self medicate and the notion that a child would rather self medicate because it makes her feel better now as opposed to going through the difficulty of treatment it i don't think that the trial court was necessarily correct in basically throwing this girl away to begin with is that with the tr yes right and i said that's not fair and that is my characterization of what happened to this child at this point because there was this option available to the trial court for residential placement at a staff secure placement and to give her another and to give her another try and in any event regardless of what her behavior was the legislature has said in its statutory scheme you can't put children d j you're going to have to find if you need to confine them and they're not going to be able to and you're not going to be able to place them at a staff secure placement then you're going to have to figure out something else to do it's children come into the juvenile justice system when they when you look at their social investigation reports it's no accident that they wound up where they did these are children who have complex and often in a related problems in terms of mental health issues trauma drug and alcohol abuse dysfunctional family situations these are not easy problems to deal with and they often will require a trial court to revisit a probation sentence once or twice or three times it may require the court to take that extra step and try another residential placement but the court did have did have other options a disposal if the records show in this particular case that the the fact that she had been placed at gateway in carbondale was available to the trial court and probation actually probation in this particular case when they when the probation officer who completed the social supplemental step social investigation report that accompanied her recent insane falling  probation revocation noted that there were community services available that she was able to access in the probation officer who completed the report recommended that she could put replaced sentenced to probation rather than being sent to the department of juvenile justice i would also note that the state's broad reading of the article one exception essential east follows the rule any time there's a probation revocation if if if if if this court accepts the notion that the article one exception is a political in all circumstances even in article five where there is an explicit ban and no exception it is that that this reading of the statute essentially swallows the rule any shelby had engaged in illegal activity but under the state's broad reading that the state is requesting you could have a child who was adjudicated delinquent for underage drinking violated a non criminal condition of  his or her probation and the trial court would be free to sentence that trial to d j and the state's reading of this statute and again for any child missing probation who's been placed on probation for this offense if it effectually swallows this general ban that the legislature has repeated again and again and again a third time in the juvenile court act when it comes to incarcerating status offenders you know i will touch briefly on the mrs shu i think that the state and i agree that that there's not there doesn't necessarily have to be a conflict and we agree on the rule we don't necessarily dispute but we both agree that this is a question of public importance i would only like to touch very briefly on  very important this public question is at stake this is a stay this is an issue of taking children again who have committed no crime but for their age and placing them in the deep end this time in facilities that look like prisons for periods for months at a time and the ability and once a child is placed into each ha the discretion for that release order is vested in the prisoner review board at that  where a single county is engaging in behavior that is clearly prohibited by statute if this court agrees with with with with the minors interpretation of the statute there is this clear prohibition on that on the commission on committing children to the department of juvenile justice and if this if the appellate court hadn't reached the issue and if this court doesn't reach the issue here is nothing to stop champagne hanny from continuing this practice of trying to incarcerate under age  five part we're talking about here because it has its own mechanisms for dealing with status offender issues either it applies throughout the act or it does not article one is the general provisions it is intended to apply throughout the act it that turns are traditional notice of john notions of justice on their head it is trial the tension that is suspect after a violation has been conclusively determined then detention is the norm defendants have greater liberty before they are conclusively determine to have committed an illegal act not after and so respond it would turn that on its head by saying well respondent can be confined up until the court determines that she violated about a court order but once the term nation is ma correctly pointed out that it does refer to minors who are accused of or have been convicted of an act and yes respondent is correct that it does not preempt state law it is not intended to be a substantive requirement that applies to all states but fact engage in illegal behavior both her probation violations for marijuana and cocaine those are still illegal substances and so this is a sadly the sort of circumstance that he was designed to address where we have not just repeated  orders and repeated misconduct on the part of a youth but escalating treat mr misconduct that in fact begins to go into the attic and and also based on the fact that respondents only served fifty five days in this case that's a good illustration of why this kate is moot case is moot and was moot before the appellate court and there are other ways that the can reach moot issues there are other exceptions to this capable of repetition yet evading review it's important that this exception the public interest exception be narrowly construed in the way it was designed and the way it's typically been applied and so we would ask for both