MPD Shares Juvenile Sentencing Info from the DC Attorney General’s Office

Photo by PoPville flickr user philliefan99

Via MPD, From an Andrew Fois, Office of the Attorney General, District of Columbia Government:

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the law regarding the penalty structure for juvenile offenders. There is no one sentence for each crime and certainly not a two –week maximum for robbery. The possible disposition (sentence in juvenile) for any offense is the same – whether the offense is robbery, shoplifting, UUV (aka Stolen Vehicle), burglary, murder, etc. The court may place a delinquent juvenile on probation for a period of up to one year (which can be extended), or the court may commit the delinquent juvenile to DYRS for a period up to the juvenile’s 21st birthday. When the court commits a juvenile to DYRS, DYRS may place him in any number of placement types – it could be secure, a group home, the juvenile’s own home, etc. How long all this can last, of course, depends on the age of the juvenile adjudicated delinquent.