Only 17 were sent to juvenile detention. The rest of the cases were either pending, combined with other cases or otherwise disposed of, county statistics show. Juvenile probation is a lot more restrictive. You're not walking around scot-free. There's counseling, community service, court costs.
Minors arrested in Mexico often serve a year in juvenile detention.
Most return to their homes and rarely get into trouble again, said Cristina Ramos, a supervisor at a Jurez teen jail. Her father had died at 61, after which her mother and eight brothers and sisters no longer had a source of income. All she had to do was take a 46-pound bag of marijuana from Sinaloa, on the Pacific coast, to Jurez. Mexican police caught her at a highway checkpoint. But landing in jail turned out to cost more than I was going to make.