The Review-Journal has confirmed the teen's identity as J— J—, 16.

Here's another case where the Rebuke Urinal™ has taken it upon itself to publish the name of a defendant in Juvenile Court, overturning years of accepted practice. (See earlier case.) It justifies this by the fact that it obtained the name through its own sources and not directly from Family Court.

That fact that the R-U™ can find the name on its own proves that it is capable of "investigative journalism" (Stop laughing!), but this doesn't mean that it should be published. This illustrates a core delusion of tabloid journalists everywhere: Every fact that a reporter learns must be published, regardless of the effects of its release. Journalists claim that this serves the cause of "truth," which they believe will save the world.

Unfortunately, truth can also be destructive. You don't tell a fat lady she's fat simply because you observe it. You don't broadcast your army's battle plans. You don't reveal the name of a juvenile defendant just because you can.

True, this is an older defendant, 16. If he were 18, the matter would be handled in criminal court, and there would be no issue about publishing his name. The editors are probably thinking, What difference do two years make?

The fact is, the matter is being handled in Juvenile Court, which tries to protect the identities of defendents to give them a chance to recover. The cutoff at 18 years old is arbitrary, but at least the rules are clear, and the press traditionally has respected them. Even our local TV stations, usually the more lurid of our media, have continued to respect this tradition, as has the Las Vegas Sun. Only the R-U™ thinks it knows better.

Evidently, the R-U™ is going to follow its own rules. Okay, then what are they? Are they going to publish the names and photos of 8-year-olds? If no, then what age is the cutoff? Is the decision entirely arbitrary, or is there some standard applied? If so, what is the standard?

If you decide to ignore established law and make up your own, then you ought to be consistent. Just tell us what the rules are so we know.

If you are going to publish the name and yearbook photo of kid changed with a juvenile sex offense (in the earlier case), does this mean you are going to publish all the names of all the JSO defendents? Is the R-U™ prepared to handle these cases themselves because they know better than the court about how these cases should be handled?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Brandenburg said a recent survey showed the state is "serving less than half of the folks mentally ill in Clark County."

Hero or not, we expect you to pay your child support.

Later, Juvenile Court Judge William Voy said Compan erred in barring journalists from the custody hearing.

Although we are normally advocates of open courtrooms, we tend to support Compan in this case. We believe the Review-Journal should have been excluded, although not the other media. The reason is not statutory but concerns the use of the juvenile's name in print. (See our comments below.) Although all hearings are open by default, the judge has the option to close the hearing if it is in the best interest of the child or if the media isn't playing by the rules.

However, the media was rabid in this case, and it would have created still more hysteria if Voy had kept the hearings closed. "Chumming for sharks," exactly!

Separately, the barring of the press from the initial hearing is a tempest in a teapot that makes a good headline but doesn't reflect the eventual outcome. What the headline and lead paragraph don't indicate is that the press was admitted to a second virtually identical hearing, which is mentioned only at the end of the article....

"These proceedings are not closed," the judge said. "Just because it is a (juvenile sex offense) case doesn't mean it's closed. ... There's a legitimate public interest in the case based on where the incident occurred and how the incident occurred."

Hey, that's our doing! Juvenile Sex Offenses (JSOs) were previously closed, but we looked it up in our NRS and found that a 2003 amendment to the law removed the option for a blanket closure. (However, individual cases can still be closed with good grounds.) About a month ago, we discussed it with Voy, who concurred and let us in. The issue apparently never came up before Compan, since he handles only initial arraignments on these charges, and hearings always were closed prior to 2003.

Although he allowed the hearing to be open, Voy would not have granted permission to the press to publish the boy's name or photo. This is good grounds, in some cases, for excluding the offending media outlet from a hearing.

We are thinking of forming our own public service organization: WE CANT.

Working to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Terminology. Maybe we should stop obsessing over specific criminal acts and focus more on overall child welfare. Outside the court system, you can't address the problems of abuse and neglect in isolation without tackling all of the problems of dysfunctional families.... And they're huge!

It would be fine to start a nonprofit organization to support distressed families. There's always a need for that and never enough funding. But when you create a private organization specifically to prevent abuse and neglect, you get into murky territory.

If you are "not part of the government," does this mean you are not going to report abuse when you become aware of it? If you do report it, then who will you have left to serve? People who might become abusive? Then how are you going to identify these people? What families are you going to serve, and, more importantly, who are you not going to serve? Where are your boundaries? It seems like the folks in Public Relations haven't thought these things through.

Based on the new group's name and what we read in the article, it may be doomed before it starts. Both the new organization and the defunct one apparently expect parents to recognize when they are about to abuse their children and call on these groups before it happens. The groups then airlift in some critical support, and the crisis is supposedly averted.

Um, right.

Is any parent who abuses or neglects their child capable of recognizing that fact? Most of them are on drugs, remember? No abusive mother is going to volunteer to be educated about controlling her own impulses. If they had this kind of insight, then they wouldn't need the education.

What mothers want is concrete assistance. If the organization wants to "become the first place mothers turn to when they need help with their children," then by Golly they're going to get their wish! The people who are going to be attracted to these programs are the 10,000 distressed moms who desperately need help with raising their kids and aren't afraid to ask for it.

If they believe that they're not going to be reported to CPS, they'll quickly figure out how to work the system. They'll say, "Sure, my kid is neglected, and I just might abuse him. Please help me!"

No one wants "education" unless it is ordered by a court, but if you offer any kind of personal assistance, like babysitting or even just a sympathetic ear, you'll have mothers lined up around the block, all claiming that they're just on the verge of breakdown. "If you don't help me, I might go postal." In no time at all, you'll have created draining dependencies with frazzled moms who just can't live without your help.

In the end, WE CAN just couldn't. The article doesn't say why it folded, but we can guess. It's called "donor fatigue." If you set yourself up as a charity in any domain, the real risk is not that no one takes you up on your offer, but that everyone does. Without a clear mission and enforceable boundaries, you're soon ladling out soup to the whole neighborhood while nothing really changes.

In this case, we have a high-powered public relations executive who turned her child over to a nanny, and the nanny abused him. What's the solution to problems like this? More public relations, of course! Public relations can save the world! Look, the executive has collected $100,000 already. No one can refuse the noble cause of preventing child abuse.

Alas, it's not so simple. $100,000 will be sucked up in an instant once needy moms discover you. It turns out, not all moms have high paying jobs in public relations and can afford to hire nannies.

Oh, there will be education, for sure! The Southern Nevada Child Abuse and Neglect Center is about to learn what the world outside a gated community is really like.

Here's our penetrating analysis...

This is the sort of nightmare case that goes on forever and that youths are branded by for life. There is no escape, even for those who weren't involved. If you were in the gymnasium at the time of the alleged incident, you are going to be tortured by justice itself—probably far worse, emotionally, than any penetration of the rectum.

The school system wants to punish everyone involved in the dogpile, but it can't do anything as long as the criminal case is pending, because students can't talk. This means that instead of swift justice within the school system, they are going to get slow, excruciating justice. All the parents are hiring lawyers, which further confounds the proceedings.

If the video is inconclusive and none of the other players were aware of the alleged violations, the charges will be difficult to prove. Fingers leave no semen traces, and how do you prove the fondling of testicles when no third party saw it? Was it "groping," or accidental contact, or no contact at all? In a dogpile, who knows whose fingers are up whose ass? Short of a confession, it's an evidentiary mess.

We humbly suggest that adequate punishment has already been inflicted, whether or not the penetration or fondling actually occurred. The name of the accused has already appeared in the newspaper, and a scarlet letter now appears upon his chest. He is going to wish for Spring Mountain just so he never has to go back to Sierra Vista.

The best outcome for everyone, guilty or not, is for the whole thing to go away, but it won't. There may be S-E-X involved. (Shhhh, don't say it!) The wheels of justice have already started turning, and they are not going to stop until everyone's life is screwed up.

The center's goal is to prepare the young people to care for themselves by teaching them how to find a job, cook for themselves, get along with roommates and pay bills. Residents, who come from unstable or abusive home environments, also take advantage of counseling services.

Our organization entry

[Those numbers strike us as too high, even for 2005. Could it be the number of cases through February (including January)?]

But there's no reason for the 76 percent increase - there hasn't been a corresponding rise in anything that would provide a clear answer.

"There is no set pattern - it's across the board," said District Judge William Voy, who handles juvenile cases. "You get kids in gangs, and then you get kids with no gang affiliations whatsoever. It almost seems to be some fascination with guns."

In 2005, Shannon successfully helped lobby for the ability to arrest and prosecute pimps based solely on the word of prostitutes. Prior to passage of Assembly bill 470, the testimony of a prostitute against a pimp required corroboration.

Assembly bill 470, mentioned above, modified NRS 175.301, a bizarre law passed in 1967 that now applies only to abortion:
Upon a trial for procuring or attempting to procure an abortion, or aiding or assisting therein, or for inveigling, enticing or taking away any person for the purpose of prostitution, or aiding or assisting therein, the defendant must not be convicted upon the testimony of the person upon or with whom the offense has allegedly been committed, unless...

I wonder who is going to be prosecuted for abortion these days? Why wasn't the whole section removed? (I would guess that it has something to do with the word "abortion.")

Twice he pulled the trigger, but those chambers were empty. He then fired three times at Rueda, missing him twice but striking him once in the arm and torso, police said.

Clark County Undersheriff Doug Gillespie said his agency received more than 3,000 calls about graffiti last year and made about 200 graffiti-related arrests.

ANALYSIS: Graffiti is an impulsive crime that gains the perpetrator nothing but some emotional satisfaction. (See graffiti in Glossary.) It is not a "rational" act, so the thought of punishment doesn't factor into it much. Frankly, you could impose the DEATH PENALTY for graffiti and it probably wouldn't reduce it. Like murder, graffiti is not the sort of crime that is likely to be controlled by an increase in punishment.

Those who do it are not planning on getting caught, and Metro's own statistics shows they probably won't be. (200 arrests in a city of 1.6 million.) Those who get caught are the inept ones, like 12-year-olds who try it only once. To solve our graffiti problem, we're going to throw the book at the few oafs who get caught. Brilliant!

It is good to provide prosecutors and courts with more tools and discretion in responding to graffiti charges, so that when truly egregious cases come along, they can respond appropriately. It is bad to mandate stiffer sentences without judicial discretion, because in that case it is usually the little guy—the trivial offender—who gets smashed.

Even with the death penalty (or thumb amputation as Mayor Goodman advocates), graffiti won't go away. You deal with it by putting concertina wire around road signs, making walls washable, and restricting youth access to paint. It is sad when a public mural is defaced, but if you put one up in an urban area is modern days, you have to expect it.

Increasing the punishment for graffiti is just political posturing. It may get passed, making everyone feel that they have "done something" about the problem, but graffiti itself probably won't be reduced.

James Newman, 14, was charged as an adult with attempted murder and was jailed on $150,000 bail, Donnelly said. He also was charged with use of a deadly weapon and use of a firearm by a minor.

It is kind of interesting to charge a 14-year-old with attempted murder as an adult while at the same time charging him with "use of firearm by a minor." Which one is it?

People without lawyers "do an inadequate job of representing themselves; justice is compromised; and litigants are deprived of their full rights," a subcommittee said in support of the recommendation to fully fund legal services for poor people.

Mahatma Gandhi said it this way: "Noncooperation with evil is a sacred duty." Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned and eventually hanged by the Nazis, put it this way: "Evil is what happens when good people do nothing."

Police in India are investigating more than a thousand allegations from young women who claim that they have been lured into arranged marriages with the promise of a new life in Britain. Once dowries of up to 9,000 have been paid, the men abandon them, it is claimed.

It never happened. Instead, Americans are experiencing the sharpest decline in teen crime in modern history. Schools today are as safe as they were in the 1960s, according to Justice Department figures. Juvenile homicide arrests are down from 3,800 annually to fewer than 1,000, and only a handful of those homicides occur in schools. Arrest rates for robbery, rape and aggravated assault are off a third since 1980 for kids ages 10-18.

"Animals treat their children better than this," Justice of the Peace Robey Willis said as he concluded a preliminary hearing into what investigators and doctors have described as one of the worst child abuse cases they've seen.

That comprehensive structure has helped approximately 1,000 children since St. Jude's first opened in 1967. Although the facility receives some funding from government sources, it relies heavily on private donations from individuals and foundations.

The idea on one possible way to reinstate the juvenile justice work program came from Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's suggestion last December that the thumbs of convicted graffitists should be cut off.

Meth is definitely bad news, but maybe not as bad as the statistics suggest. Crime statistics like this can be deceptive. They don't necessarily reflect the number of crimes, but the number of crimes prosecuted, and the underlying cause may not be what you think.

The criminal child abuse cases are just a small fraction of the abuse/neglect cases that come into the child protective system (children taken from their parents). Most cases of drug-related neglect are not prosecuted criminally. These Family Court cases have also been rising, but haven't "tripled" in two years.

Given that the population of Clark County is about 1.6 million (1,600,000), neither of the above numbers seem particularly high.

That's a somewhat more meaningful statistic: roughly 1,200 civil abuse/neglect cases. How does that number compare to 2003?

The 25% figure could also have multiple meanings. Is this a higher percentage than for previous drug epidemics (crack, heroin)? A higher percentage of drug-exposed infants might suggest that meth use is much more widespread than previous epidemics and, paradoxically, that it is somewhat less pernicious, because cases for older children aren't coming in at the same pace. (More parents may be doing the drug, but their behavior might not be bad enough to bring them to the attention of authorities.)

The good news (sort of) is that meth babies tend to be less damaged than those exposed to other drugs, even heavy alcohol use.

There always has to be a drug "epidemic". Once it was "demon rum"; yesterday, it was crack; today it's meth; and tomorrow it will be something else. Each epidemic has a life cycle and it's own particular profile. Already the meth epidemic has morphed from what it was, say, five years ago. It used to be every jerk and his brother cooking speed from Sudafed. No cartel required. Now Sudafed is less available, so production has shifted to Mexico, and meth has become more of a conventional drug controlled by cartels.

Is meth "worse" than other drugs. In terms of numbers, it apparently is. In terms of effects on behavior, maybe it isn't. Once a parent or infant tests positive for the drug they are treated just like they are hooked on crack cocaine. The system has basically the same approach for every kind of drug, which may not be appropriate.

What gave meth its initial boost was its easy availability—made to order from off-the-shelf ingredients. Maybe you could even call it an "internet" drug, since the internet spread the recipe for it widely. (Speed has been available for decades—Repo Man did it!—but the current "epidemic" started about the same time as the web.) Now that it is not so experimental or easily made, maybe the number of new users will drop, while we still deal with the problems of older users.

Not a useful statistic. Four child murder cases last month doesn't necessarily mean there will be 4 x 12 = 48 cases this year, although there will probably be more than five. It is just a random cluster in a very small sample size.

District Attorney David Roger said his office is feeling the pressure of an ever-increasing workload which equates to nearly triple the caseload that prosecutors face in Nevada's neighboring state of California. He said at the Clark County District Attorney's office, prosecutors are individually averaging between 650 to 700 cases per year, while in California, prosecutors average 200 to 250.

Judges are shielded from lawsuits over their judicial actions. Nevada and other states have some sort of panel to handle complaints against judges. But Zerman said that without an independent way to police the judiciary, the power of the people is neutered.

I firmly believe in both spaying and neutering. We have to keep those meddling voters from reproducing!

Silly business. Won't go anywhere. There are already systems in place to hold judges accountable for their ethics. It would be a polical nightmare for a panel of lay citizens to review the actions of judges. Can you say "Inquisition"? In essance, you would be creating a separate legal system to judge the judges.... but then who will judge the judges of the judges?

This is the sort of dim-witted militia-like idea you'd expect to come out of Montana, not some hoity-toity place like South Dakota.

Larimer pleaded guilty to four counts each of felony driving under the influence and reckless driving. If tried as an adult, Larimer could have faced up to 20 years in prison.

Now, Bunn said, the problem is importation from Mexico. "It's home-grown and exported in huge quantities."

It's a controversial issue - attempts to change the process have failed twice in Nevada. In 1972 and 1988 voters rejected the so-called Missouri Plan - judges are appointed and then face retention elections at the end of their terms.

Court Executive Officer Chuck Short... hopes to move all applications for temporary protection orders to Family Court. He said because of the recent integration of District Court and Justice Court, his proposed change can be handled by the Nevada Supreme Court issuing a new court rule. He is optimistic a change could take place in three to four months.

Parents and politicians always win when it comes to disagreements with the schools. It's the schools and the students who lose.

Also see our entry on The Columbine Effect

Piddling little thing: the rule of law. It's not important is it?

The tougher kids are sent to Child Haven because Clark County has nowhere else to send them, Hardcastle and county officials say. The children have typically served time in a juvenile detention facility. Once released, they can't go home because either their home environment is unsafe or they have been abandoned.

"It's really critical that we have information from them," said David Sanders, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services. "They spend 24 hours a day with the children, while our social workers spend maybe two or three hours a month.

"Ordinarily the rule is that parents are not held responsible for the intentional acts of their children," McGinley said. "It would have to be proven the parents acted negligently in their supervision or that they had failed in their duty to warn or protect the third party who is injured by their children."