- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] - I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Memphis and Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge, Dan Michael.

Thanks for being here again.

- You're welcome.

I enjoy it.

- Absolutely.

I'll note that Bill Dries is unable to be here today.

MLGW is previewing some of the alternative bids and response proposals for, to replace TVA.

So we'll obviously have a lot of that going on in Daily Memphian and we will certainly be doing other shows on that.

So, but otherwise, Bill would be here.

I should also note this election season and you are up for election.

The election day is August 4th.

- Yes.

- Early voting starts July 15th and in an interest of fairness, we have reached out to City Judge Tarik Sugarmon to be on the show very soon, I believe it's next week.

So we'll talk to you today.

- Sure.

- We'll get other views on the position next week.

It's an eight-year term.

- It is an eight-year term.

- It's an eight-year term.

So you've been in for eight years.

- I have.

- You're running for another eight years.

We'll focus, I mean, maybe somewhat sadly, but we'll focus tonight mostly on the crime part of the job that it is on everyone's mind, not just in Memphis, but I think nationally with crime and especially, juvenile crime nationwide, really, really, as some would say exploding over the last couple years.

Is, some philosophical questions and we'll get into some more details.

But for you, is your job primarily one of punishment or one of rehabilitation or is it something else entirely?

- It's a combination.

And we're talking about my docket specifically.

- Yeah.

- In Tennessee, the Juvenile Court Judge is the last stop before a child goes to the adult system.

So the Juvenile Court Judge has the last say whether we keep that child in the juvenile justice system or whether we send them to the adult system.

Juvenile courts it's, themselves are rehabilitative only.

There is no punishment.

Now you ask a child who's been placed in a intensive probation program or in a program at the state where he's locked in a facility, he's gonna tell you, you feel like he's being punished, but we're gonna give him an education.

We're gonna give him psychological training and treatment, and we're gonna try to modify their behavior, so when they come out, they're not a problem.

My docket is specifically set under Tennessee Supreme Court rules.

For me to hear a case on whether or not a child is tried as an adult or tried as a juvenile.

That's my docket.

The DA files a notice of transfer.

I have to give them a hearing.

Now I don't have to send a child downtown, but I have to give them a hearing.

So your question.

- Yeah.

- It's a combination.

- Yeah.

- If I send them downtown, they're gonna be punished by the adult system.

But if I keep 'em in Juvenile Court, they're gonna be rehabilitated.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- You're running for again, like I said, it's an eight-year term.

- Right.

- You've been in about seven years.

You're running for another eight-year term.

- Right.

- How would you grade yourself in your last seven plus years?

- I'd give myself a B-plus, I would.

We've made an incredible changes at the courthouse itself.

We've also developed programs where we have diverted the majority of the children from the system.

I can give you an example.

Well, I can give you statistics- - And define diversion and what you mean when you say diversion.

- Yeah, diversion is a child gets in trouble.

They never appear before a judge.

We put 'em in some type of programming that keeps them in the community and hopefully never brings 'em back.

That's diversion, or on the ground, we never get the child to the court.

And I'll give you examples of that.

Youth Court's a good example.

- Yeah.

- We have the largest Youth Court program in the state where we recruit school students as the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, the bailiffs, and the jurors, and certain acts that are committed in school, they come in, in the evening after the courts have closed and they occupy the courtrooms and that child stands before the Youth Court.

- And presumably these are minor offenses.

- Yes, they are.

- I mean, I'm not saying they're not, I would, maybe.

- They're not felonies.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- They're very, very minor offenses.

And a lot of times, a lot of those children wind up on the Youth Court later on.

- Yeah.

- We have a program we call the Summons Review Team.

When a child is taken into custody by law enforcement officer, they can issue that child a summons.

And if it's a minor offense, maybe the second minor offense, that child and the parents comes into a meeting, at juvenile court with other children and parents, they review what happens at juvenile court.

They give them an explanation of what's gonna happen to them if they continue to act out.

- Yeah.

- And what could wind up happening to them.

And then they have to do a life plan for the SRT team members and turn it in on time.

- Right.

- There is, they're not in the system.

We don't record their names or summons in the system.

That's front-end diversion.

- I think I saw that you were at a juvenile.

You were at a, you spoke at a, I forget the, forgot to write down the name.

- That's right.

- But you spoke recently at an event we wrote about in Daily Memphian.

And you talked about, you've been with juvenile court before you were a judge - Yes.

- You were within there.

- Yes.

- And you were talking about some, it sounded like some decades ago that the school referrals made were maybe 8 to 900 school referrals.

- Yes, yes.

- Every month.

- Every month.

- From what was then Memphis, Shelby County Schools and so on to the juvenile court.

- That's correct.

- For everything from delinquency to minor offenses to serious offenses.

I think you said last year, there were only 112 total for the year.

- For the year.

- So that again is another way of.

- Diversion.

- Diversion.

- Yes.

- Keep kids away from the system.

- That's exactly right.

- Because there's a whole theory that, and I think there's a lot of proof and we've had lots of criminal justice people on and various points of view.

- Right.

- Youth and adults, the more you touch the criminal justice system, even for minor offenses, - That's exactly right.

- Broken taillights, it has a snowball effect.

- It does.

- Okay.

- It does indeed.

We're data driven.

We've had an IT department for years and we collect lots and lots and lots of data.

And we analyze that data so that we know what we're doing is the right thing to do.

It's, if you have a program that feels really good, but it doesn't work I don't want that program.

I want programs that help turn these kids around.

- Yeah.

- And SHAPE is one of those programs, in fact, I was on a panel.

- SHAPE is an acronym for?

- For a School House Adjustment Program Enterprise.

- Okay.

- And it's SHAPE that allowed us to cut the school to prison pipeline.

And I was talking with Colonel Sanders, he's a retired MPD officer and we were talking the other day.

He's now the Deputy Director of Security at Shelby County Schools.

They're gonna put SHAPE in all the schools.

- They piloted it in a handful, I think.

- We started with a handful.

We're in 21 schools now, but we're gonna put it in all the schools.

- And so we'll segue into the more serious and more violent.

But I mean the diversion programs have grown clearly.

- Yes.

- You're getting less kids from school.

- Yeah.

- How many kids, how many young people are use and juvenile is defined as 18 and under.

- Yes.

- Okay.

How many are you seeing with serious violent offenses every year, give or take.

- The numbers run between about 250 to 325 - Yeah.

- Kids a year.

- What percentage of those are referred to the adult system, give or take.

- Less than 40%.

- Less than 40.

Is that, has that been steady over your?

- It's been steady since I've been there.

- Since you've been there.

- When Curtis Person who was the judge, before I ran and won the election, he appointed me to the special judge's docket for the transfer docket.

The year before that, the judge before me, I think had transferred 250 children to the adult system.

My first year, it was about 90.

- Yeah.

- It's dropped every year.

Last year, I think there were 40 children - Yeah.

- Transferred after about 250 requests by the DA.

- The, you know, what frustrates people, it seems to me the most.

Well, there's so many things that are frustrating so I shouldn't say the most, a thing that frustrates people immensely about crime and juvenile crime is recidivism and repeat offenses.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- And young people, we're talking about young people today.

- Yes.

- This happens with adults.

- Yes.

- But young people who get, you know, not so serious offense.

- Right.

- Then a serious offense, then an assault.

- Right.

- Then an armed robbery.

- Right.

- And then they're constantly, they're going in and out of the system.

- Right.

- And then there's a shooting and then there's maybe even a murder.

- Right, right.

- I mean, what is, it feels like to some people, I've had 'em on the show, that that happens all the time, quote unquote, all the time.

Does that happen all the time?

And how have you tried to address those repeat serious offenders?

- Well, perspective is important.

Property crimes are less violent than violent, personal crimes.

So, if you steal my cell phone and I'm not in my office, that's property crime.

If you come in my office, put a gun in my face and take my cell phone, that's a personal crime.

We try to give children a chance through what we call graduated sanctions.

So if you start by maybe stealing stuff from the store, and then you wind up down the road carjacking someone, we've probably started here with this type of intervention and we ratchet it up as you come along.

Right, and then by the time you come into my courtroom and you've committed, serious violent crimes, you're in trouble.

Now, the community thinks, well, he's just turning these kids back out into the community.

Well, you're right.

We can't house children in detention forever.

- Yeah.

- One of the things that we know through science is if we take that misdemeanor child and we put them in a detention center with that tough child, guess who's gonna get worse faster?

- Right.

- The child who's a misdemeanor, right.

Same with adults in reentry.

If you put two adults in reentry and one's a hardcore criminal, and one's maybe in on simple drug charges, he's gonna get worse, faster.

The trauma and the exposure to those individuals.

What we try to do is we try to make sure those children have access to probation counselors, and other programs while they're in the community so they don't recommit.

- People have talked about, critics of the system, that right now that juveniles know and particularly maybe if they've gotten in with a gang.

- Right.

- Or they've gotten into more serious offenses.

- Right.

- They know that their record's gonna be essentially cleared when they become an adult.

And so their period of time from teenager to 18 is a hall pass, a free pass to commit a lot of crimes.

And there's a perception, I've heard it anecdotally, I'm not saying it's science.

- Yeah.

- Anecdotally, that this happens, quote, again, all the time that, and that older, particularly gangs, know, hey, we can take these kids.

They can do all kinds of stuff.

- They do.

- And they get a hall pass.

- They do.

- Because it's all wiped away.

- Right, well.

- Unless they're child, unless they're sent to the adult court.

- If they're sent to the adult court.

- And tried as an adult.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And their juvenile record will follow them.

- Is that a dynamic you get though?

I mean do you get kids - It is.

- Who say, Hey.

- It is.

- You can't do anything to me.

- That's right.

- 'Cause in two years, I'm, - That's right.

- I get a restart.

- That's right and, but it's not that true.

A child who comes out of Juvenile Court can expunge their record after the last charge is adjudicated.

You have to stay out of trouble for at least a year and you have to be 18 to get started.

- Right.

- If you get in any trouble after your 18th birthday, we can't expunge your record.

And there are certain sexual offenses that cannot be expunged.

I do a lot of expungements for children who have succeeded in life.

They're trying to go in law enforcement or the military services and their records can be seen by those folks.

So we do a lot of expungements for young adults.

- Which would include what sort of offenses that would be expunged?

- Oh gosh.

- Generally, I mean, is this?

- Generally it's usually drugs, possession of marijuana, low-level offenses, stealing property, cars, maybe a burglary or that sort of thing.

I get a lot of kids who have charges with taking weapons to school, not necessarily guns, but maybe a knife or a screwdriver, which is considered a weapon because they were threatened at school and they think they're protecting themselves.

- When you do that expungement, you judge, okay, you were, you did this in the past.

Now, what have you done in this interim period?

- Exactly.

- And sort of have you shown yourself to be on a better path.

- Right, right.

- And not, and obviously not a repeat offender.

- Right, right.

- Okay.

You mentioned guns, I mean, there's obviously huge amount of conversation about guns right now.

- Yes.

- Given just the horrific shootings in Buffalo.

- Yes.

- And in Texas.

- Uvalde, Texas, yeah.

- Elsewhere.

And we have done many shows on crime over the 12, near 12 years we've done this, but particularly in the last year with the big spike, whatever, the point of view of the left, right, center, whatever people are, universally, they come on the show and say, "There are too many guns.

"There are too many guns in Memphis and Shelby County.

There are too many guns available in Tennessee."

- Yeah.

- What, how has that changed or has it changed, I guess I should say the possession of guns, the fire power of those guns, the easy, or is it a lot of people say it's just so much easier to get a gun now?

Is that what you see with kids?

- Yes.

All the time.

- What should be done?

- Oh gosh.

- I mean, can you, and as a judge, can you say, can you advocate for these policies?

- I do.

- Yeah.

- Prior to the law passing in July, which brought us what they call Constitutional Carry, we had a little bit better handle on the issue, but now it's out of control.

Several years ago, they passed the law where you could carry a loaded weapon in your car without a license.

- Yeah, I think it was 2014.

- And that's when it started going - That's when every single law enforcement person has mentioned.

- Yeah, we fought it tooth and nail and we didn't win.

I can give you an example.

Right now I have 54 children in detention.

Every single one of them is in there on a gun charge.

- Really?

- Every single one of 'em.

- Does that mean possession, use, murder?

- It doesn't mean misdemeanor possession.

It means they used it to commit a crime.

- Fifty-four.

- A delinquent act, 54 children.

- Ranging in age from 18 to?

- I think the youngest we have is probably 14 up to 17 and three quarters.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- All of whom have used guns.

- Now, a child, we started a program several years ago called Ceasefire.

What was happening, children were packing a weapon to protect themselves at school or at the store or whatever.

Never used it.

Misdemeanor possession.

They would by law, they have to be brought to detention and they would be detained until trial.

Well, the proof would show that they never used the gun, that they were scared.

We'd divert those kids from the system.

They could wipe the record clean, but they were spending 35 or 40 days in detention.

So, we started only the second Ceasefire program for juveniles in the country.

And the way it works now is if you get picked up by the police, taken into custody because you're carrying a weapon, you're gonna come into detention.

The next day, you're gonna get a detention hearing.

If the parent or guardian is there with the child and they all agree to go to Ceasefire, they're released the next day.

They come back to Ceasefire with other children and parents.

They hear from the US Attorney General, the Tennessee Department of Corrections, Police Department, Sheriff's Department and people from the 901 BLOC Squad who have spent many years in prison who are now back in the community to help these children stay out of trouble.

They then have to do a life plan and submit that to the counselors.

And when they come before the court, if they've completed all the process that we asked them to do, we dismiss the charges and they go on diversion.

And that diversion then can be expunged pretty simply.

The recidivism rate for kids coming outta Ceasefire is less than 5%.

That's huge.

- Yeah.

- That's huge.

- We talk about all these programs, diversion, things people have criticized you for in the past that you didn't have enough of that.

- Right.

- That these things weren't happening.

We talked about the numbers going from, you know, the number of kids referred from the school that has come way, way down.

- Right.

- And yet violent crime is up.

- Yeah.

- Not just in Memphis and Shelby County.

- Across the nation.

- National, across the nation.

So are these diversion programs not working or is it, I mean, is that part of why?

And there's been a national move towards these diversion programs, right?

- Yes.

- Is that contributing to an increase in general crime?

- No, I don't think so because our recidivism numbers are low through all our programs.

And if your recidivism numbers are low.

One thing, if it is contributing, they're not getting caught is what it amounts to, but they are being caught.

They're being brought into my courtroom at the rate of about 250 a year.

Year after year after year, we have a number of kids since we've started doing transfer hearings in a single docket, about 250 to 300 children a year come before me.

Now, most of these children have been through graduated sanctions or if they haven't been, I can give you an example.

I had a case recently where the child had been before the court, he had stolen a couple of cars.

He went into intensive probation.

He came back on a aggravated robbery where he had robbed a 73-year-old woman, at the point of a gun, of her purse.

He came in, he was released on an ankle bracelet.

And then he and his friends did about 15 carjackings and aggravated robberies, all with guns.

It happened so fast.

He went from 0 to 60 overnight.

- Yeah.

- Now his record at home was horrendous.

- Yeah.

- Abuse and neglect.

Born with cocaine in his bloodstream, bounced around family members, in foster care, trouble at school, expulsions, 13 expulsions, three or four grades below where he should have been, just all kinds of trauma and trouble.

I rarely see children who show up in front of me who are 16 or 17, decide to pick up a gun and do it.

- Yeah.

- These kids come in with enormous amount of trauma and it's that trauma, it's not an excuse for their behavior, but it's the reason they're there.

- And so, I mean, when that happens.

- Yeah.

- You know, this person who's come through, released, ankle bracelet, 15 carjackings.

- Right, right.

- People could have been killed.

People could have been shot.

- Absolutely, right.

Absolutely.

- Do you look at that as a failure of your choice or of the system to release that child?

- That's a good question.

It preys on a judge when you release a child or you don't transfer a child and they show back in front of you a year later, having committed a violent crime.

I would say it's a failure in my choice of what to do with that child, but I don't have a magic ball.

What the law says is that I have to consider the age of the child, the nature of the act, his history at juvenile court, and whether or not there's a community interest on whether the child stays in juvenile court or goes to the adult system.

And if we're on the delinquency docket that doesn't do transfers, the same criteria has to be considered on whether you put him in a diversion program or a community program, and try to turn him around.

What I will tell you, it preys on the minds of judges when you see that child again, that you had so much hope for, that you thought you could rehabilitate and he's standing in front of you and he's committed a violent crime.

- Yeah.

- I take that personally, Eric.

- Yeah.

- Because it's my failure to see the future, which nobody can predict.

- Yeah.

What then is the answer?

You know, I mean, is it more, I mean, a lot of people come on the show, more police.

You know, Memphis needs more police.

We were stuck around 1,950 that the mayor has wanted to get up to 23, 24, 2,500.

Others have certainly wanted to do that.

They haven't been able to and hiring the police, to be fair, around the country has been incredibly difficult.

All kinds of factors.

Do you wanna see more police on the street?

- I do, I do.

- What does that do with, how does that help some of these really troubled, traumatized kids.

I don't, again, specific to kids.

- I don't, I think they're two different questions.

- Okay.

- More police suppresses crime.

We know that from proof, from science.

We've seen where crime was when we had 2,500 police.

We know where crime is now at 1,900 police.

So the science tells us if we have more police patrolling the streets, we have less crime.

Now, is it gonna help these kids that are traumatized, no.

Tony Armstrong, when he became Chief of Police, he came into my office two or three days after I got elected and we had a conversation and he's absolutely right.

He said, "The problem with the children I see "starts at home.

All of it starts at home."

A child who's been in 15 elementary schools before he gets outta elementary school, doesn't know his father, has a single mom who's struggling to make ends meet, trying to do her best and the kids drawn to the street.

The trauma that he suffers day in and day out shows in the courtroom.

So we have to start early.

And I understand you wanna talk about the delinquency side of the system, but if we catch that child as an infant or a young child who is abused and neglected early and stop that abuse and give the parents the tools they need to do a better job, the trauma ends.

- Right.

- And I never see 'em.

- But does does more police, I mean, we talked before about the whole contact with the criminal justice system.

- Yes, yes.

- Begets more contact.

- Yes, yes.

- In aggregate, for many, many people.

- Yes, yes.

- For some people it scares the heck out of them.

- Yeah.

- And they never, they stay clear, but a lot of people it's.

- Yes.

- Does that worry you, that a kid who's kind of on the edge with more police is a higher percentage chance of contact.

- What worries me is-- - And they're gonna-- - Yeah, what worries me is not more police, but how that policing's done.

- Okay, okay.

- Right.

- Yes.

- So if you're focusing on the indigent neighborhoods and the rundown neighborhoods, as opposed to all the neighborhoods, yes I have a problem because right now in our detention center, every children in there, every child in there is black.

They don't look like you or me.

And I ask the question, why is that?

Why is that?

Well, I don't go out and recruit children to our detention center.

They're brought to me by law enforcement, which tells me the Memphis City Police Department can only patrol in those areas where those children are.

And those children get caught up in gangs and dangerous crimes and they wind up in my system.

We know that kids in Germantown and Collierville smoke just as much dope as kids in the inner city.

- Right.

- I don't see those kids.

- Yeah, with just two minutes left.

Mostly young men.

- Yes.

- In your-- - Almost always young men, very few young ladies.

- Yeah.

- Very few.

- The you, the transfer, so again, you got criticism.

- I did.

- You know, of the number, the high percentage of people, of young people that you were transferring to adult court, it was 98% plus were black.

That's the dynamic you were just talking about.

The end of federal oversight, you know, still, I think the majority of the Shelby County Commission is critical of that.

- They are.

- They'd like to see more oversight.

- Sure.

- What has it meant to you again, with just a minute left here, that federal oversight was being released?

How have things changed?

- Well, I think for the better.

One of the things that came out of our agreement with the Department of Justice was how our operations changed.

We're now a trauma responsive court, meaning that we analyze those families coming into us.

So we do a better job of services, right.

But more importantly, the policies and procedures that we did with the assistance of DOJ, put us on a better course on how we handle our courtrooms, how we handle our probation services, how we handle graduated sanctions.

So it was a good relationship.

And I think we have continued to progress since they've left.

- The, Shelby County has opened this Youth Assessment Center up in Raleigh.

- Yes, yes.

- It's, we did a show on it.

Cedric Gray was on.

- Yes.

- You people can go to WKNO.org and get that, past shows.

Dorcas Young was on from Shelby County Community Services.

It was very instrumental in making that happen.

It's opened, it's beginning to receive children.

And the notion is, again, go there, don't go to Juvenile Court.

- Right, right.

- Get some assessment, again, more minor offenses.

- Right, right.

- Get some counseling, get some, I mean, get some food.

- Exactly.

- Get back into school or whatever.

- Exactly.

- They're talking about expanding that.

Are you supportive of them expanding?

- A thousand percent.

- They need more of those around.

- They need more those around the city.

I would prefer a child go to an assessment center for what we call the delay in handoff.

- Right.

- So if you're at juvenile court, we're gonna refer you to counseling.

It might take six weeks.

- Right.

- The assessment center.

They're right there.

- Got it.

Thank you for coming.

I appreciate it.

- Thank you for having me.

- Absolutely.

Again, as I noted at the top of the show, Tarik Sugarmon, City Court Judge who's also running for the Juvenile Court position will be on very soon.

If you missed any of the show, you can get at wkno.org, or you can also get the podcast where you get the podcast.

Thanks and we'll see you next week.

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