Williams questions Clark on missing information and Raise the Age

Thank you.

And thank you, Madam DA.

I've heard you speak about wanting to prevent kids to come in in the first place as well, so I appreciate the work they're doing.

Just a couple questions.

I was surprised to hear you're not getting info.

So is the info that you've asked for before from the, I guess, from ACS or who's?

It sounded like you said you weren't getting info that you needed.

Well, you mean, I mean, well, as far as the numbers of who's detained, yes, we haven't been able to get that.

But there are other things because the law restricts us from knowing certain information that would be helpful to me in order to determine what should we do with a particular child.

It's not a one-size-fits-all.

I need to know what this kid's school life was like, if there is even one.

Is this from recently passed laws?

No, this is raise the age.

Well, raise the age, and even before that, I mean, the laws for youth are very specific, and rightfully so, because we have to have confidentiality about our kids.

But once we talk about developing a raise the age, and you really need me to look at how to, you know, handle them, and whether or not they go to family.

Court or they stay in the Supreme Court.

This information I need to know in order to determine what's the best thing for this child.

So there's information before, there's information you think you needed before raised age.

And raise the age added on to that?

Or was this always the case?

It's information you thought you needed that you weren't getting.

Well, I think it's more so now because more things go to family court.

There's a presumption to family court now.

So before those kids were before me, 16 years old, they were adults, and I had to deal with them.

So I had to deal with it.

But now...

What information is it you're saying you're not getting?

Their school, you know, the school, you know, what school they go to, the family makeup, their mental health, all kinds of things that we can get from defense attorneys, from outside agencies.

We're not allowed to know that, and that's fine.

But if you want me to help a kid, you need to give me the information.

I'm not going to use it.

I think the fear is that prosecutors are going to use this information to punish the kids.

And that's exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to do.

But just so I'm clear, the raise the Asian change information you're getting, you're saying just more people are not coming to you, so you can't get that information now.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon.

What I would say is a little bit different.

First, you know, we have provisions in the Family Court Act that prevent the family court, the law department, from sharing certain information with us.

That's not raise the age.

That's pre-raise the age.

Same thing with social services law, for instance, right?

So ACS, certain records they can't turn over because of social services law.

I think the issue is if you want a society where we protect children and we look at what is driving the behavior and how do we address it and how do we set them up for even if they do have to be in detention, how do we set them up for the future?

You need to know what the needs are so you can match the needs to the proper services.

And if you don't know what the needs are and we operate in silos, we're not going to make any progress in getting to this generation to stop shooting each other and killing each other, right?

I understand.

As to raise the age, I'm sorry, I do want to answer your question, so I apologize.

But as to raise the age itself, what happens is a lot of stuff with the case law that comes out.

So when we have to respond to certain motions, we do need a sense of, is this youth amenable to services?

Has the youth received services before?

What was the outcome?

There's a lot of information that could be gleaned that would help us make the determination whether we should send the case to family court for rehabilitative services or whether the case is best stayed with us but still potentially getting rehabilitative services.

The way it came across was like it was a new problem.

So I was trying to figure out what the new problem was.

It's an age-old problem, but it's also, it's becoming a newer problem as we deal with raise the age and how it's shaped up through the case law over the last nine years since its inception.