Jailed Juveniles

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 5:22 a.m.

December 13 - 14, 2003

After almost a year behind bars, Roberto Fernandez says he has had time to reflect on his past and imagine his future.

"When you get older, you don't think the same as when you're a kid," he said, his dark, deep-set eyes lending weight to an interview at High Desert State Prison near Indian Springs.

Fernandez, who has a polite manner and a quick handshake, is 15. He is one of the youngest inmates in Nevada's prisons. When he was 14, he robbed a 7-Eleven for less than $100 with a .38 and is doing two to five years behind bars.

He represents what Nevada Corrections Department Director Jackie Crawford calls "a new world" for the state as the number of teenagers tried, sentenced and convicted as adults has increased in recent years.

At High Desert, the only adult state prison with a program for youthful offenders, the number of 14- to 18-year-olds has gone from 24 in the first half of 2002 to 55 in October.

Similarly, the number of teenagers tried and sentenced as adults in Clark County through a process called certification has more than quadrupled in the last four years, from eight to 35.

"We're creating a monster," said Dan Macallair, researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that aims to reduce the use of prisons.

"These kids will one day be out, sitting on the bus next to you. They have no skills, they're probably angry at the system, they have a felony charge on their record that makes it hard to get a job ... It makes no sense."

Nevada is struggling with the issue as the number of juveniles in the adult justice system rises. The numbers are fed by tougher laws and a greater tendency to treat young criminals as adults.

'Get-tough' attitude

Nevada law looks at young people in criminal trouble from different angles, depending on the crime and their previous record:

Children older than 8 must be charged as adults for murder and attempted murder.

Teens older than 16 who commit certain serious crimes such as sexual assault are automatically considered adults.

For crimes such as those committed with a firearm, a juvenile judge must transfer the teen into the adult system unless a case can be made that mental health problems, drugs or alcohol contributed to the crime.

A juvenile judge can send a teen 14 or older to the adult system for many other crimes at a prosecutor's request.

More juveniles now face the adult system. Clark County Juvenile Court heard 96 certification cases in 2000 -- the earliest year available -- compared with 195 through the first week of November this year.

Once in adult courts, these youngsters -- if convicted -- wind up in prison.

The increasing number of teens being treated as adults reflects "a get-tough attitude about crime with juveniles" in Nevada, said Fritz Reese, assistant director of the Clark County Juvenile Justice Services Division.

A series of laws passed since the 1995 Legislature have made it easier for teens to get tried and sentenced as adults, he said.

The laws were a reaction to the attitude of juvenile judges at the time, some of whom were reluctant to certify teens as adults, said Bob Teuton, chief deputy district attorney for juvenile justice until he stepped down in November.

A string of firearms crimes caught the attention of legislators, who began passing laws naming different crimes that would either send a teen to be tried as an adult automatically or make the teen eligible for certification as an adult.

"(The Legislature) wanted to make sure there wasn't some liberal judge with a soft heart who wouldn't certify a gangbanger with a gun," District Judge Dianne Steel, a juvenile judge since 2001, said.

District Attorney David Roger said the changes in law followed a change in teens.

"Juveniles have changed over the years," Roger said. "We're seeing them commit more crimes of violence ... and I think the courts and Legislature have concluded that the adult system is better equipped to handle juveniles who commit these kinds of crimes."

Roger also said that victims of violent crimes feel the same whether the crimes were committed by teens or adults.

"(The) victims ... don't really care if their attackers were 14 years old or 18 years old at the time they were assaulted," he said. "Their pain is the same."

Trouble ahead?

Another contributing factor is that most teens in trouble put their futures in the hands of overworked and poorly trained public defenders, said Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Nevada chapter.

Peck points to an April report by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association that says public defenders representing juveniles in Clark County face caseloads seven times the national standard. The attorneys "do not have the time or resources to adequately prepare," the report said.

"These kids are not being represented so much as they are being processed," Peck said.

Chief Deputy Public Defender Susan Roske, who handles juvenile cases, doesn't argue the point. The increased caseload, combined with a small staff and a lack of proper training, add up to a bad situation for teens facing a certification hearing.

"It's a real travesty, since a lot of these kids could be helped in the juvenile system, instead of sending them to prison," Roske said.

Unfortunately, there has been no attempt to measure whether Nevada teens who are tried and sentenced as adults are more likely to commit crimes when they are released than those who stay in the juvenile system, Reese said.

"This means we're not ... in a position to validate whether or not moving juveniles into the adult system is working to deter crime," he said.

Steel agreed. "We could have programs that are absolutely not working, and we wouldn't know it."

A Florida study showed that 49 percent of teens who do time in adult prisons break the law again, compared with 37 percent of those who go through juvenile programs, Reese said.

Melissa Sickmund of the National Center for Juvenile Justice, the research arm of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, said that many teens funneled into the adult system become victims of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"We're putting these (felony charges) on their heads at younger ages and in greater numbers and sending them to prison and then turning around and asking, 'Why do they keep doing bad stuff?' " she said.

It puts kids on a dead-end road, Steel said.

"Once you've certified a kid, you've kind of ended his life."

In adult prison

Meanwhile, the increased numbers that Crawford has seen at High Desert pose challenges for running that prison -- including the need to separate teens from adults to ensure their safety.

That separation may have helped Fernandez. He said he isn't afraid for his safety. Fernandez stands 6 feet tall, but weighs only 130 pounds, according to the Corrections Department's website.

"We have no contact with the older guys," he said. "There's only a lot of problems in prison if you look for them."

But Lt. Isidro Baca, a High Desert corrections officer, remembers otherwise.

Shortly after Fernandez arrived in September, he was waiting for his mandatory check-up at the infirmary when a rival gang member recognized him, Baca said. Punches were thrown before guards broke it up.

"If they don't stand up for themselves from the start, they know they're gonna get it later on down the road," Baca said.

Jermaine Wesson, who is also 15 and is serving two to five years for attempted murder, said he's also not concerned about his safety.

"Every race sticks to itself," Wesson, who is black, said, adding that the rehabilitation programs and emphasis on security "make us get along."

Wesson said he was "the second biggest guy" in the youthful offenders program. He's 5-feet-10 and weighs 165 pounds.

Crawford has set up at High Desert recreational and educational programs for the young offenders such as Fernandez and Wesson.

Wesson said the programs have helped him. The boy, who was raised by his grandmother while his father was in prison, said anger-management classes "help you think before you do." And "time goes fast" when he is kept busy with classes, he said.

Fernandez said he doesn't believe much in those programs.

"You can't change nobody's mind," he said. "People learn better by experience."

Fernandez' family have been key to changing him.

Roberto's story

Manuel and Herminia Fernandez moved their family to Las Vegas from Jalisco, Mexico. Manuel Fernandez had previously spent six to eight months of every year working in Southern California factories and returning to his family in Mexico.

Although both parents were legal residents of the United States, they put off moving because they saw America as too violent.

When their oldest son, Luis, turned 12, they decided not moving could break up the family. "(Luis) would soon be 15 and then he would go (to the United States) by himself since that's how things have always been," Manuel Fernandez said.

"But then he would have no one to guide him, and we wanted to stay together."

They moved to Las Vegas, where Herminia Fernandez had a sister. Both parents got casino jobs.

The family shared its first apartment near Valley View Boulevard and Sahara Avenue with the sister -- putting 10 people in three bedrooms. Worse than the overcrowding was the violence in the neighborhood, Manuel Fernandez said.

In 1998, by working nights and weekends -- with days off during the week -- the couple bought a house near Nellis Boulevard and Sahara, a location that seemed safe.

But as Roberto Fernandez went through Keller Middle School, he started to hang out with kids who called themselves MLS, the group's shorthand for "Marijuanos Locos," or crazy dope smokers.

"One of the older ones said, 'You don't want to get in -- this ain't your lifestyle and the oldest ones end up in prison. Trust me,' " Roberto Fernandez recalled.

" 'I don't care,' I told him ... People you grow up with, they're the most important thing -- besides your family."

Soon the 14-year-old had joined the gang and could get almost anything: "clothes, food, whatever."

When another kid cut him with a knife, an older gang member gave Fernandez a gun.

Within weeks he used the gun to rob a 7-Eleven. He said he "wanted more stuff," but his mother said he committed the robbery to pay a debt.

The police caught him within blocks of the store a few hours later.

When it came time to rule on Fernandez' case, Steel had to send him to the adult system since he used a firearm -- one of the changes in juvenile crime laws.

"I asked the judge, 'This was my first time ... can you get me a second chance?' " Fernandez said. "She said, 'People like you deserve to be locked up your whole life.'

"That made me so mad."

Steel does not recall saying that, and transcripts in juvenile cases are sealed. When the outline of Fernandez's case was described to Steel, she said it could have been "the sort of case where he may have benefited more from staying in the juvenile system."

The system

Steel said she would like to see some laws rolled back so that judges could have more discretion on when to certify teens as adults.

Teuton, while he thinks crime has been reduced by the tougher laws, would like to see what is called a blended system. This allows teens to be prosecuted as adults, but gives them the chance to rehabilitate themselves under certain circumstances.

"You provide a period of a year or two to prove that they will not be a threat to society ... and if rehabilitation is successful, they go on their way," Teuton said.

"If during that time period they commit other crimes or demonstrate that they're not serious about rehabilitation, then they're sentenced as adults."

Teuton said he drafted legislation to allow such a system years ago, but it was never introduced "because there is no appetite for it politically."

Roske said the blended system "would certainly be better than what we have now ... but the momentum of our society seems to be to lock up our youth."

Reese said that teens respond better to rehabilitation than punishment.

"They are more receptive to change and more capable of it -- they're still developing their capacities," he said.

Currently the state-run Caliente Youth Center and Nevada Youth Training Center in Elko and the county-run Spring Mountain Youth Camp, 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas, north of Mount Charleston, provide teens 17 and under programs such as high school diploma coursework, substance-abuse counseling and family training, Reese said. Summit View, a higher-security facility in North Las Vegas will reopen next year.

Unlike the adult system, teens receive indeterminate sentences in the juvenile system. Once judges send offenders to the facilities, the directors decide the lengths of sentences based on the teens' progress.

In the adult system teens go before the parole board.

Rehabilitation?

Manuel Fernandez is worried about his son's rehabilitation.

He tried to send a self-improvement book "Grow Rich With Peace of Mind" to his son, but it was returned with a note saying it was "unauthorized."

High Desert Warden Jim Schomig said the book's return "could have been a mistake."

Fernandez started sending the book page by page in letters to his son.

"If there's no system for improving the mind (in prison) ... then you're practically abandoning the person," he said. "At least he can fill up his mind with good ideas."

Herminia Fernandez said her son "blames himself for all the problems we have in our family." She said the judge's remarks reinforced that idea.

Roberto Fernandez called himself "the black sheep" of the family.

He says he misses his 10-year-old brother, whom he used to take care of after school. The convict's eyes started to fill with tears when he talked about how he used to play video games with his younger brother.

He said he now thinks the older gang member who told him not to get involved with the gang was right. He also said he doesn't know what he's going to do or how he's going to earn money when he gets out of prison, especially since the felony charge will be on his record.

"I'm gonna do good, regardless," he said.

Roberto's parents are preparing to work on his rehabilitation when he gets out of prison, which could be as soon as December 2004. They want to change their work shifts so they can be with him more.

Manuel Fernandez said he plans to put the teen to work with him in a sideline business he has built up by renting inflatable houses for children's parties.

"I think he still has a long future ahead," Manuel said. "It depends on how he's molded."