Power

Federal Report: St. Louis County Family Court Routinely Discriminates Against Black Youth

The Department of Justice released a report Friday concluding Missouri's St. Louis County Family Court system discriminates against Black juveniles, routinely violating their constitutional rights as they navigate the court system.

The Department of Justice released a report Friday concluding Missouri's St. Louis County Family Court system discriminates against Black juveniles, routinely violating their constitutional rights as they navigate the court system. Shutterstock

The Department of Justice released a biting 60-page report concluding Missouri’s St. Louis County Family Court system discriminates against Black juveniles, routinely violating their constitutional rights as they navigate the court system.

The justice department released the report following a nearly two-year investigation by its Civil Rights Division that began in 2013.

Black juveniles are two-and-a-half times more likely than whites to be detained before trial and three times more likely than whites to be sent to the Missouri Division of Youth Services for parole violations, according to the report.

The justice department also found the St. Louis Family Court system routinely failed to have adequate legal representation for Black youth, failed to make sure there was probable cause that the offenses the children were accused of actually happened, and failed to ensure that Black children entered guilty pleas voluntarily.

Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the Civil Rights Division, called the findings “serious” and “compelling” following the release of the justice department report.

“Missouri was at the forefront of juvenile corrections reform when it closed its large juvenile institutions and moved to a smaller, treatment-focused system and we are hopeful that Missouri will rise to this challenge to, once again, be a leader in juvenile justice reform,” Gupta said.

The justice department analyzed data relating to nearly 33,000 juvenile cases, including all delinquency and status offenses resolved in St. Louis County Family Court between 2010 and 2013. Department attorneys also visited the family court and interviewed a number of court personnel, including all of the judges and commissioners as well as the heads of many of family court programs and services.

Investigators collected information from both the state and local public defender’s offices, private attorneys with experience in the family court, and the parents of youth who had been involved in delinquency proceedings with the family court.

Investigators concluded the St. Louis Family Court is “[a]n organizational structure that is rife with conflicts of interest, is contrary to separation of powers principles and deprives children of adequate due process,” according to the report.

“This investigation is another step toward our goal of ensuring that children in the juvenile justice system receive their constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process and equal protection under the law,” Gupta said.

Typically, the next step following the release of a report like this is for the justice department to negotiate with the local authority it was investigating on how to resolve the pattern of discriminatory conducted within its ranks. This usually results in a consent decree, which is a settlement agreement between the justice department and the local authority that lays out specific tasks to remedy the discriminatory conduct.

The Department of Justice report on the St. Louis County Family Court system follows an equally scathing report concluding the Ferguson Police Department routinely discriminated against Blacks in its policing. The investigation into Ferguson law enforcement was prompted by the death of an unarmed Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, who was killed on August 9 by a white police officer.