Tennessee GOP leader drafts bill to ensure accused truants get attorneys

A leading Tennessee lawmaker —concerned that kids have been shackled and improperly jailed—is drafting legislation to ensure that accused truants receive prompt appointment of legal counsel when facing prosecution in the state’s court.

Sen. Mark Norris, the State Senate Republican majority leader, has been active in national campaigns to promote alternatives to school suspensions and juvenile detention through the Council of State Governments, a legislators’ policy group he chairs.

Norris was motivated to act in part by a Center for Public Integrity investigation into how truants in Tennessee’s Knox County were shackled and taken to juvenile hall to be confined in cells—without first having the benefit of defense attorneys who could have raised questions about kids’ unaddressed special learning needs or mental-health problems.

The measure to ensure counsel, Norris said, “is in process. It’s not soup yet.” But he’s drafting it for the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.

The move reflects a mounting national debate over inconsistent protections —which vary state by state, sometimes even county by county— for ensuring that children have the immediate benefit of a lawyer in court, even when facing minor infractions.

The costs of Norris’ proposal will have to be assessed by the legislature’s fiscal review committee. A similar initiative proposal in 2012, sponsored by former Tennessee legislator Andy Berke, now the Democratic mayor of Chattanooga, stalled after a study found it might cost the state indigent defense fund an additional half million dollars yearly.

Since that bill faltered, however, the influential Council of State Governments and other think tanks have stepped up national efforts to promote research on how detention actually increases risks that kids who have committed minor indiscretions will subsequently get into more serious trouble and end up in costly adult confinement.

There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.

This story is part of Juvenile Justice. Scrutinizing controversial policies affecting young people at risk. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.