Court Opinion

ID: 9726638
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:01:17.271183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:29.381770
License: Public Domain

GARDNER, P. J.
I concur.
Long before Gault and even before the new Juvenile Court Law of 1961, I, as a thoroughly disillusioned judge of the juvenile court, made some suggestions which, had they been followed, would have avoided all of the legislative and judicial anguish of the last decade. My solution was simple, too simple to be palatable. I suggested that we divide the juvenile court into two courts. One court would handle dependent children exclusively and would operate on a pure, traditional parens patriae juvenile court concept dedicated to the protection of these unfortunate children who have come before the court through no fault of their own but because of tragic social conditions over which they have no control. With the exception of basic due process principles, this court could divorce itself entirely from the highly complex procedures of the adult criminal court. The other court would handle juvenile law violators and would operate as a criminal court affording the juvenile charged with a crime exactly the same rights as an adult charged with a crime. After the jurisdictional phase of the case, of course, the rehabilitative focus of the juvenile court would still exist. (I have always thought that we should *447jettison the silly fiction that the juvenile court cannot consider punishment as a part of a rehabilitative program.) As to the status offender—the incorrigible—since the courts have been notoriously unsuccessful in this field and assuming that the state has some obligation to step into these purely family matters, I would take this category entirely from the court system and turn it over to another agency, another entity or another discipline. They could not possibly do a worse job than we in the courts have done up to the present time. (See: Gardner, Gault in California (1968) 19 Hastings L.J. 527; Gardner, Juveniles Face the Worst of Both Worlds in Court, Los. Angeles Times Opinion (Nov. 19, 1967) § G, p. 1; Gardner, Kent and the Juvenile Court (1966) 52 A.B.A. J. 923; Gardner, The Juvenile Court, A Challenge to Lawyers (1965) 40 State Bar J. 349; Gardner, Let’s Take Another Look at the Juvenile Court (1964) 15 Juv. Court Judges J. 13; Gardner, The Error of 1899 (1963) 32 FBI Law Enforcement Bull. 3.)
The petitions of both the parties for a hearing by the Supreme Court were denied March 14, 1979.