 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. A sister that was involved and one day she came home and I said what she had had and she told me, you know, and I wanted some. She told me she would never give it to me, you know. So I knew eventually that I would get some because she needed money and when she did, you know, that was the beginning of everything. I lost my son, I lost my job and I just started getting high all the time. I lost my apartment and everything and I just started going downhill, you know, drugs was everything. Nobody really wanted me around and so forth. And I went to the streets and when I went to the streets I started prostitution, stealing, whatever it took to get the drug. And me and my daughter was on the street. Her aunts finally took her and I was out on the street again stealing like this, you know, smoke and crested fishes cycle. Jail looked good to me. It looked really good to me, you know, and that's what happened. And I was glad. I was really glad because I was tired. Even though I was cleaning there, we just spent a matter of time for me to get back in that cycle. Greetings to all and the viewing audience. I am pleased that the Federal Judicial Center has asked me to introduce this particular portion of the Center's Special Needs Offenders series. Today's program centers on women offenders and their children. I applaud the Center for producing the program. During the 1970s when I was a law teacher and an advocate before the courts, my time was devoted primarily to advancing women's civil rights, their opportunities, their entitlement to equal citizenship stature. A significant part of that effort involved opening doors once closed to women, working toward women's full equality with men while taking account of the reality that the two sexes are not the same. Only by appreciating women's distinctive lives can we be sure that our laws and institutions neither unjustly discriminate against women, nor give them unwarranted special treatment. Turning specifically to this video program on women offenders and their children, Department of Justice statistics show a 500% increase during the past 20 years in the number of women in prison. That dramatic increase makes it all the more urgent for our courts, pretrial services, and probation system to ensure that women apprehended, tried, convicted, and sentenced for criminal conduct are dealt with fairly and sensibly. I have several times cautioned against overboard generalizations about the way women are, because such generalizations or stereotypes are often unhelpful when making decisions about particular individuals. At the same time, one should appreciate that women like persons of different racial and ethnic origins contribute to what a fine judge once described as a distinctive medley of views influenced by differences in biology, cultural impact, and life experience. In that sense, women defendants and offenders in the federal system as a group, merit attention as women. It will not do to simply treat them as soft men. To take the prime example, women much more often than men are the sole caretakers of young children, and women are less likely than men to have prior records. Further examples are set out in the special needs offenders bulletin that accompanies this broadcast. Because women should be treated as equal in stature to men but not identical to men, female defendants and offenders present special supervision and sentencing challenges to the court, pretrial services, and probation. Let me pose a few illustrative questions. How should we handle a first-time defendant or offender of limited financial means who is unmarried, pregnant, and a drug user? What do we do when, as is all too often the case, the woman is a mother who alone has custody of minor children? How do we help women gain the treatment, education, and training necessary to improve their lot in life upon release? We should remain ever mindful that decisions we make at every stage of the criminal justice process inevitably affect others. Decisions about women touch and concern their children, relatives who become substitute caretakers, and the larger community. From the pretrial services report to the pre-sentence report from the sentence itself to the supervision plan, these real differences require appropriate consideration. Today's program is designed to provide you with a better understanding of the special sentencing and supervision challenges that women often present and to offer insights about meeting those challenges. It is wise to listen attentively to the counsel of professionals who collectively possess a vast amount of knowledge bearing on women defendants and offenders. Many of you have had experience working with women offenders. I urge you to engage that experience. Do not simply sit back and listen to the discussion, but participate in it today and continue it in the course of your daily work. Welcome to special needs offenders, women offenders, and their children. Our first case deals with the pretrial and post-conviction supervision issues of Cara Jones. Here are the facts. Defendant Cara Jones is a 35-year-old mother and primary caretaker of three children ages 11, 13, and 15. Jones and her husband Richard were indicted on three counts of credit card fraud. Cara and Richard Jones have recently separated. Cara Jones pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized use of an access device and aiding in a bedding. She is eligible for a short period of incarceration, less than a year, or a term of probation. She was released on personal recognizance bond and is under pretrial services supervision. In addition, Jones has a history of chronic low-level depression, and before her involvement in this case, she obtains psychiatric treatment for her depression under her husband's health insurance plan. Defendant Jones is anxious about her children. She won't show any weakness in front of them, and she's particularly concerned about her five-year-old who exhibits behavior problems. Jones has a history of physical and emotional abuse by Richard and in prior relationships with men. Her employment has been sporadic, so she supports herself and her kids on public assistance and food stamps. Jones has no substance abuse history and no prior record. Finally, Jones' disabled mother lives alone near her apartment, and Jones must often assist her. Cindy Sadi, pretrial services officer from the District of Maryland, let's start with you, and let's step back a little bit in the facts at the pretrial stage of the case. What issues are going to be of the greatest concern to you in light of the facts as you will know them at that point? As of every case, we're going to address the issues of non-appearance and danger first and make appropriate recommendations that are hopefully least restrictive also. In her case, I think some of the prominent issues initially, at least is her mental health status, and the case scenario doesn't provide a lot of details, but hopefully the pretrial investigation would have brought about a lot more information, specifically like how recent was she in treatment? Was she taking any medication? Is there a history of suicide attempt? Is that information that she's going to give you during the course of your own investigation, or how are you going to get that? She may. She may give it to us very willingly, but generally we would ask her to sign a consent form so that we could contact a treatment provider. Her family members may provide a lot more information than she will have. Generally, those are the primary sources of information, and most likely we would recommend a mental health treatment condition. Additionally, there may be a need in her case for a no-contact condition, since there is an abusive relationship going on with co-defendant who is her husband. We don't know from this information is he detained, is he released, but that may also be a necessary condition. Good. Let me stop you there and go to our other pretrial services officer on this panel, David Jones, Western District of Pennsylvania. David, anything to add or elaborate upon? I agree with Cindy. Making the appropriate mental health referral would be the key issue in this particular case. Judge Gavi, let's go to you. You're the presiding magistrate judge in this case. What's your reaction to what both Cindy and David have said thus far, particularly in terms of the recommended special conditions? This is a case where we turn to the future court proceedings, and in terms of danger to the community that this woman, she's been convicted of not a crime, not guilty to a crime, not a violence. There really isn't any serious question, I think, in anyone's mind that she will return in the future, her contacts with the community, and that she's not a danger. However, this is sort of a perfect case to talk about. She's already pled guilty. We have to begin thinking about her future from this point forward. So perhaps we should be thinking about employment or education, at least getting her thinking about what she's going to do in the future. She may not serve any time, so we have to begin having her think about how she's going to handle a sentence, if she is sentenced, or how she's going to support herself and her children in the future. Is that something that you'd like to see as a condition, or talk about that a little bit? It may not be absolutely essential to be a condition, but I'm a believer, and we talked previously, that the Chinese character, I think, for crisis and opportunity are the same, and this is an opportunity for her and for the pretrial services, for the justice system to intervene. So I might not make it a condition, but I certainly would have hoped that the pretrial service officer was talking about it, and using this time, this crisis opportunity to really get her thinking in the right direction. Before we go to council, I want to go back to Cindy and to David to get your reaction, particularly on this idea of the employment as a condition, or as a risk factor to be watched. How would you handle it being on the front lines? Based on the facts in this scenario, it appears that she's able to support herself and her children with public assistance. Given that case, making employment a condition may actually complicate things for her at this time. Pre-trial stage is short and it's stressful enough without adding the requirement that she be working, but I certainly think it would be a critical area to keep track of. During her period of supervision to keep monitoring and see how is she doing really, we certainly have the ability to direct her to resources or assist her without having to require her to work. David, reaction on that? Yes, I think that if she does well in her treatment, her mental health treatment, and as she progresses, then the job issue could become more of a likelihood. Okay, and I think that raises that this is a process we're talking about. As we spend more time with the defendant, we'll be able to assess how she's doing and being in contact with her treatment provider. That can give us great insight. Good point. Judge, how would you feel about that approach? I think that's an excellent approach because sometimes these individuals do stay pre-sentencing for a long time for a variety of reasons that the lawyers could probably talk about. And I do think that the court is happy to be involved as the progress and the process continues. And I'll be interested to hear about what the defense lawyers, how they feel they can best use this time in working with the individual in maximizing this time for her as well. Well, this is one of those rare cases where everybody is in agreement that this is a case that doesn't warrant attention. There's just an issue of whether and what condition should be imposed for release. And I agree that the mental health issue is one to focus on given her history and the kind of stability that a focus on that could bring in terms of her success on release. I agree with what's been said about the employment situation because based on the facts that we have here, she's apparently dependent on her husband who's a co-defendant, and that aid that she's relying on from him will no longer be available. And she's going to need to be able to sustain herself at some point in the future and her children. So, but I do think initially the focus on employment as a condition of release would be premature because she needs to be stabilized first. But because it is a nonviolent offense and she's on pretrial release, presumably this would be a more extended period of pretrial supervision than is ordinarily the case because hopefully she would be a candidate for post-conviction release supervision if in fact it results in a guilty plea or some other type of disposition. So she would continue under the supervision of pretrial services. And this would be a wonderful opportunity to establish a collaborative process between defense counsel and pretrial services and with the prosecutor to try to put in place the systems that she needs and to try to encourage her to be forthcoming with information with respect to her mental health history that would aid in that process. Very interesting. Bob Spagnoletti, the government's position. Well, I agree with Sigmund. I don't think that this is a case where the government would be seeking obviously any kind of a detention status for the defendant here. But one of the things that we are concerned about, I agree with the judge that she doesn't pose a risk generally that this is a nonviolent crime, but the indicators are here that there is a huge risk to the children in that the research has shown that children that live in homes with domestic violence are often times the subject of abuse themselves. This is not only by the abuse of spouse in this case, Richard, but by the defendant as well. As women get stressed out because of situations such as this, because they are the victims of domestic violence, they also sometimes can direct that anger, that frustration at the children and they act inappropriately. I think that's a really important point because intuitively one would not think that the victim of the abuse would then visit that abuse on their kids, that they would be going out of their way not to do that. But I guess in the course of distress, that's what happens. The research does show that women who are the victims of domestic violence there is a huge risk factor that they will act out violently on their own children. And again, with all these stressors in her life that certainly is a risk and she has a mental health issue that needs to be addressed as well. So I think that that would be something I would definitely bring to the attention of the court and pre-trial services to make sure that she knows about the resources that are available to her. There may be a domestic violence outreach program that can help her. In the District of Columbia we have an intake center where she could address all the things that I'm sure is on everybody's mind here. You know, who's going to have custody of the children? Is there a custody arrangement in place if he's going to be ordered to stay away? Does he have visitation? Is there support? We have a visitation center here in the district where she could drop the children off and he could visit without having contact with her thereby allowing them to comply with the no contact order but permitting him to have visitation if appropriate with the children. So that there are other things out there that can make it more likely that she will succeed in this pre-trial phase and minimize the risk to the children that they will be hurt in the process. Good point. Several good points there. I think one thing that we want to tease out of this is that even though the federal courts don't deal with domestic violence cases so much on their merits or front and center because of the difference in dockets between state systems and the federal system, this is how these cases domestic violence can present itself within the federal courts and the importance among federal personnel who, criminal justice personnel, will be dealing with it or the judiciary, the judge, pre-trial services officer later on the probation officer, the familiarity they'll need to have with the local systems and the state systems that deal with domestic violence, with juvenile issues in the case of children who are involved, that kind of thing. We'll get more into that later on on the broadcast. It seems essential to me and you all are dealing with it on a daily basis especially you Bob. That's right and I would say that I think we're going to see on the federal docket more and more of these domestic violence offenses. We now have had violence against women act criminal laws that were passed back in 1994 that are being used more and more across the country and there are, there is interstate stalking, interstate acts of domestic violence that is traveling interstate or causing somebody to travel interstate to commit an act of domestic violence. Interstate violation of a protection order. So there will be and we are seeing an increase in the number of these domestic violence federally charged cases. A couple of things to mention and that is that October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, hence our little ribbons to commemorate that and also that again the ability to get a hold of these local systems and these state systems nowhere to turn when you've got a case that presents a domestic violence situation I think is critical. Susan, Galbraith, I wanted to turn to you as our resident clinician here to give us your analysis of the issues here, how you would handle it, what you think the main issues are for the system to deal with. Right and we are one of those local system, one of those local providers, community based providers. I would agree with everything that's been said. I think that the depression is a very important issue that needs to be addressed up front. She's not going to really be able to move forward unless her depression is treated. I would ask her what she identifies as her most pressing issues and to follow up in terms of the concerns around the children's safety. She did identify that she's really concerned about one of her children. I would talk to her about that concern. I would use her own identification of that as an opportunity to get the family into, to get the children into some therapeutic services as well as the family. She is, I imagine, a very isolated person given the way in which you've described her circumstances and I would want to see her connected with organizations with other women who have walked in those same shoes where she can get a sense that she's not alone, she can identify with other women and know that there's some community support for her that she just doesn't have to do this by herself. Now going back to this notion of employment as an issue, I mean we've got somebody here who is, may perhaps be incarcerated for a very short period of time but even more likely really may get this term of probation. Can you speak to that? Well I think it's important to, again, get a sense of what she's thinking about it. Certainly for her future and her family's future she's going to have to think about employment and I would talk with her about what she likes to do, what she has ever done, what is her educational level, what kind of skills does she have, at least to begin to think about the future and look at the future in a hopeful way, what are resources and opportunities available to her that we can help her avail herself of. So while employment, I think the recommendation that employment not be a condition, I think employment may be one of the most hopeful things in the future for her and may provide a lot of incentives for her to be moving forward in her life. Judge Gavia, so you're nodding your head. I was just thinking... Get into the fray here. Yes, I was just thinking what a challenging case this is for pretrial services officers because I've seen in the term, the sandwich generation, if you remember that, here's a woman who's right in the middle. She's got a mother who's disabled, who's reliant on her and she has children for whom she may well be the sole provider. So the most nagging concern of this woman is going to be how can I provide those who are dependent on me and I don't know whether our system really has available to pretrial services office the way to really address this woman's very considerable needs to get her right on the right path to become a protective citizen. So Dave, I don't know what your reaction is. It's very important that we're resourceful. You have to be creative. Prior to working for the federal government, I was employed with juvenile court back in Pittsburgh and you can often give a call to a children youth services worker to a co-worker and ask them what resources are available in your area and that can be very helpful as far as getting the children involved which is going to be paramount for the defendant to make a successful adjustment on the pretrial supervision because if her children and her mother aren't being taken care of, she will probably not do well. And the reality is that you're going to have to be resourceful at the pretrial services, I mean both pretrial services and the probation officer ultimately and sort of thinking outside of the box and coming up with resources in the community and networking, you know, that brokering and mapping that we refer to in the special needs offenders bulletin both for this program and for the reducing risk through employment and education program. Really important. And I want to come back to Cindy because Cindy, you dealt with a case that was very similar to this and in fact this case is in part based on the case that you worked on and I wonder if you could talk about that in terms of particularly the services that were available to the kids. Sure. Well, in her case, we actually were lucky in that our treatment provider volunteered his services to her children since that was an issue that she was bringing forward every week and saying, you know, I have this, you know, teenage boy who is acting out who's having trouble dealing with not only his own issues but the uncertainty of what she's facing and what's going to happen in the next couple of months with their family and so the treatment provider volunteered it and it made a lot of difference in her outlook and her ability to cope just having a child that was now able to speak with someone else and he really seemed to benefit from it but I think that's outside of the norm and we don't generally have that available to us so it would mean kind of looking in other places and into the community for who could help the children with her at the same time and keeping in mind that we're kind of limited in what we're able to do we have a lot of, the pretrial officer has a lot of constraints in terms of not only the time that we have with her but we're limited by statute in terms of what we really can do and how invasive we can be particularly if, you know, the children aren't under our supervision it's the defendant who is There are layers of issues here that we have again at Cindy State a very short time to deal with so for the pretrial services officer there are successes and very smileable That's a good point, Judge Goblin But you can't buy, you can't contract for that inpatient mental health if that was considered appropriate and you can't really buy services for the children, family therapy or individual therapy for the children that's just not within your purview That makes it really challenging This may not seem like an intuitive concern for defense counsel to have but in the immediate stage, the pretrial stage it actually is a collateral concern in terms of stabilizing the client so that she can focus on the very important decisions that she's going to have to make later on the merits of the case and in this case, this is a woman who not only has a personal history of depression but as is always or often the case she is also the primary caretaker which is more the case often with women than with men and she's concerned not only about this daunting criminal matter that's facing her she's a person who has no significant criminal history so she's probably traumatized just by being in the process and faced with an uncertain prospect for not only herself but the future of her children so this is a real critical stage for a collaborative effort to try to get her to services that she needs so that when she comes to the point in later phases of this criminal process where she's got to make very critical decisions she can process her options in a very clear-minded way as you're talking I'm reminded of the fact that she has no prior criminal record I mean this is her on the facts her first time involved in the criminal justice system and she's got these kids that she's got to take care of she's on public assistance and food stamps she doesn't feel skilled apparently in any way and perhaps isn't skilled in terms of job skills Susan, come in she's separating from her husband her life is falling apart and she's separating from the primary caretaker the primary breadwinner or provider however you define that in the family so she's going to be I'm sure very afraid of how is she going to pull this all together and that's why it is so important that she has a sense that there's going to be some support for her to pull it together and that it's possible to pull it together and provide the system to the community to figure out who is going to aid her in that process because she needs the community to help her get through this go ahead, Cindy the real case that this is based on to throw in another factor she's actually suffering with cancer and so that's yet another thing that she's dealing with and actually dealing with very well I mean she's remarkable in how she handles all these different issues that are going on and the treatment that she's receiving for that at the same time so there's another issue that she's facing perhaps it's even more serious than what's going to happen with her legal case but is she going to be able to beat this possibly terminal disease and still thinking about her children and where are they going to be etc I just think it's so important for her to feel like she has some control of her power in her life and where is she going to get that and where can that be reinforced and that because if she continues to feel powerless and hopeless she's going to be overcome by the depression she's going to be overwhelmed by having to care for the kids and I think you're absolutely right everybody is going to be at risk in that situation and it's not simply a matter of going out to all these different community agencies it's a matter of knowing that somebody's in her court with her and is going to help guide her through this process and help just the simple things if some of her basic needs start to get met if she says I need help for my son and she gets the help for her son then she has a sense that people understand her are listening to her are going to respond to her needs and that success builds on itself to emphasize this person is in a very fragile position and your reference to you just don't want to set her up with resources you want to check out those resources I mean yesterday when we were rehearsing this thing you talked about the importance of making sure the resources that you are referring her to if that's the case in the community you know are actually going to be helpful and how you would go about doing that can you just elaborate a little bit we all get frustrated when we make a call and ask for something and they tell us to call the next person or to come in two weeks or that's not a response that's helpful so you want to make sure that you're getting her connected to resources that are going to respond to her quickly that are going to actually provide a meaningful response and you don't want this family waiting for six weeks before the child gets into individual counseling you want to have some you want to monitor what's going on with these referrals and you want to know that they're of a high quality and there's no substitute for developing a relationship with all of those people you're working with it's my call to Cindy that's going to make that happen or my call to you that's going to make that happen it's not her call to the receptionist who may then fill her in to come in six weeks from now and I just think it's really incumbent especially in a crisis situation like this on everybody to be very thorough in making sure that those connections are made because she will fall through the cracks she's depressed she's a prime candidate to fall through the cracks and you can really use the judge the judge is there to help I have called recesses in my courtroom and we have then gone and made a phone call to a provider or I've said let's get the person on the phone to know that that immediate call will get some immediate attention and as you say these are people frequently who are not skilled like we are on how to work the system and get the answer and so I think we need to use the pretrial services office need to push the envelope for themselves and really ask the courts and the defense counsel and prosecutors sometimes to work collaboratively like the citizen for this person's best interest moving through to become a productive citizen staying in touch with the justice system and then becoming productive citizen doing the course of this initially the defendant is very nervous and their anxiety is ridden and then as the dust starts to settle it's going to be very important that we keep in contact with them and to know and to help them talk about what they're feeling in the whole process because so much of what you talk about their initial parents it's all going over their head so when they come to our office when all is said and done that professional relationship is so very important Bob I wanted I wanted you to comment so go right ahead and I would just point out that the judge makes a very good point in that she is a defendant in this case for credit card fraud but she's also a victim of domestic violence and in that role as a prosecutor for example I am plugged into lots of different things for victims of domestic violence and so although I have to approach it in one direction to start off at this stage we're looking at what the conditions are just in the world of making sure that she is safe as a victim her children are safe to prevent them from coming back in the system as victims of crimes as well or to go on to grow up and learn bad things and then take that out on other people so we do have connections so I think that communication even with the prosecutor by defense counsel for example is a wonderful thing I want to actually that was what I was hoping you would hit on because we really didn't rehearse this because I mean we're acting like it's one big happy family here this is still an adversarial process but you all are advocating a significant degree of collaboration among the parties Judge Gavi I think it's extraordinary what you just described that you would do is extraordinary and I think that you're bringing in your prior professional experience and your experience as a board member in a women's shelter in Baltimore and I just was wondering if the baby counsel could comment upon that because we're so used to this being adversarial you could talk about the balance and we'll get to that more in our second panel as well My job is not to prosecute I mean it's part of my job my job is to do justice to investigate and make good decisions and exercise some discretion and I would agree with Sagan here's a case that there's no indication that she should be held whatsoever but there are warning signs every place that we have to do things to make sure that nothing else bad could happen prosecuting the case absolutely am I dealing with SIG to work out what needs to be done on a legal basis absolutely but there are people involved here there are children involved here and if I can see the things that can be done to help along the way to put the family in a better position to make it more likely that she will succeed in whatever pre-trial or post-trial requirements she should have then by all means it is in my interest my client's interest the government of the United States the people of the District of Columbia to do that and so I have every interest now we're certainly not going to agree on everything and in the next scenario there'll be some things pointed out there but here it's clear that there are things that I can do to help this family and still do my job Sagan I agree with all that's been said and I think it's important to recognize a few things one is that in the case of Bob and I in particular we have adversarial roles but that's not to say that we have to be adversarial about everything that's involved in a particular case and there's the merits of the case and there are collateral issues and we may actually agree on some of the collateral issues and disagree on the merits we may in fact agree on some of the merits and disagree on the collateral issues but we have to work through them and in this particular case it presents a kind of unique situation because this is a situation where we also share some of the same concerns about her safety now how we define what kinds of restrictions should be placed on whom to protect those we may disagree on but we agree on the fact that she should be protected from threats and her children should be protected so it's a matter of working out the details of how these things will be put in place I also think that because she's going to be in the system for a long time and because of the nature of the facts in this case it actually contemplates the situation where she's pled guilty to this offense so she's been in the system for a long time on the pre-child services supervision given her lack of a criminal history and the fact that she probably according to the facts here played a very minimal role which is not unusual in these kinds of cases or in cases involving women offenders quite likely down the road Bob and I are going to come to a point where I'm going to be looking for a type of disposition that will involve greater cooperation vis-a-vis her role in terms of trying to work out a disposition in the case so it's not the unusual situation in a case like this where we would find ourselves working together but not necessarily having the same interest or compatible roles Cindy let's go with that she's pled guilty we're in a post-conviction situation now in prior conversations we've talked about how the pre-child services role officer's role has changed in David to jump in but how perhaps the attitude of the defendant has changed could you go into that a little bit and then I'll go to David and get his input we could go one of two ways often their anxiety is relieved once they've pled guilty and they have some idea of where the case is going but in her case it may actually increase if she starts to become more and more concerned or worried that she's going to maybe be sentenced to a period of time in jail or in a halfway house and be separated from her children and who's going to take care of her children and you don't often know what the answer to all that's going to be in terms of her sentence until the very end so her anxiety level may actually increase and in terms of communication like Sig has been talking about I think it's important I have a couple of mental health cases where we keep in touch not only with the treatment provider but with her attorney to make sure what stage are we at and what are you going to be communicating to her because she is relatively fragile and we want to make sure that there's support available if there's an outcome coming to her that she's going to be shocked by or something to that effect or need to be prepared for so it can go one of two ways. What's been your experience in this particular case that you've been dealing with? Did she get more anxious? Did she get less anxious? She had a lot to deal with because that was the case where she has the cancer as well. I think less anxious actually. And she was facing either the short term of incarceration or the term of probation if I recall correct. Right. And she does have provisions if she does have to serve a short period of time in a halfway house she has relatives that can assist her. What's your role? That's something that when David mentioned it earlier just to expound on that I think it's really important for the pre-trial officer none of these issues may be even available to go find referrals if no one's talked to her and found out that they're issues. For a pre-trial officer when you're caught in that rat race of running to the lock up and running to court and somebody's checking in with you instead of just the regular check in you just have to be mindful that sitting and talking with someone for five or ten minutes and really kind of getting fleshing out what's going on in their life is going to unearth certain things that may need to be addressed maybe even rise to a level that you want an additional condition. I think it's very important in the Cindy State that once you don't know if they're going to be get a sentence, probation or short term incarceration just to have more maybe increased contact with them and you can tell sometimes over the phone if they're really down. Well let's talk a little bit so you just can drop what you're doing and you can just give them that extra ten minute conversation to help talk them through some things that can be very beneficial until you can get to see them face to face or talk to the treatment provider. And I would really want to know in her case where she is in relationship to her husband does she want to be separated how long has the abuse been going on? Because it'll give you a good sense of how committed she is to going on her own how much she wants to look at reconciliation and those are going to all be important. How has she ever been involved in any kind of domestic violence counseling? What does she know about domestic violence? Does it matter at all whether the child that she's particularly concerned about is a boy or a girl? Do you think that that would matter or certainly it's serious regardless? I don't know. A 15 year old boy is going to be acting very differently is likely to act out very differently than a 15 year old girl but what that 15 year old is going to need in terms of resources and support is going to be similar. You're going to want somebody who can intervene who can understand those gender differences and be responsive to those gender differences. And the 15 year old boy there are I'm sure going to be a lot of issues about watching his dad beat up on his mother and that can go a lot of different ways. It's very important that that get addressed at that point. Judge Gavi? I was just thinking a little bit about what Justice Ginsburg and what we've all been talking about about how our decisions really about women inevitably affect many others and here there's a whole constellation of people and I'm also feeling that we don't really have the instruments to affect other people the way we should so we can talk about bartering and networking and things like that but I'm left with the concern that we don't have the ability to do what we know we ought to do with these individuals. The conversation. Go ahead, Susan. I think that's a very important point and one that we have to take on because if we don't have the resources then we're going to see them back in the courtroom and back in the system within a very short period of time so what will it take to have those kind of supportive resources that these families are going to need? You just raised an interesting point that I want to respond to about the possibility of them finding themselves back in court and this also relates to the issue of roles the various roles that we play in communication we all have to some degree a vested interest in this person not finding him or herself back in court and I think when we first look at the roles that we play Cindy and David they are accountable to the court and so while they certainly have an interest in my client they are accountable to the court for whether she complies with the conditions of release and Bob of course cares about her safety and her concerns he also cares about doing justice which means not only protecting her but also holding her accountable for this crime that she's pled guilty to I'm the only player in the system who is actually representing her whose interest she has at heart not only do we have privileged communications but because of that she may feel more comfortable sharing certain things with me but if I also have a dialogue established with the other parties involved here in this process we can communicate on things about which we have a common interest and if my client is not complying with the condition of release for example if David or Cindy felt comfortable calling me perhaps we could together flesh out what that is because they're going to have an obligation to the court non-compliance in which case Bob is going to become aware that she's not complying that's going to complicate the process it's going to potentially derail the success that we're all in agreement we should work toward for her without that information I'm left with no other choice but to of course start asking for sanctions for failing to comply with those conditions I do want to make one other point that everyone's been talking about resources and the need to connect in with community resources to deal with some of these issues I would just suggest that people just don't wait don't wait until you've got a woman offender sitting in front of you to finally start making those calls I mean do them now try to make those as Susan pointed out so you know who to call and you're not trying to negotiate your way through as one example each state has its own domestic violence coordinating council or coordinating committee it's a multidisciplinary group of people from lots of different organizations women and some children so that you can start making those connections now so that when the case shows up two months, three months, six months, next year you can go ahead and actually pick up the phone and know who to call and that's true of substance abuse treatment resources as well and mental health resources and of course you have to find out what the quality of those are and whether they're gender specific and you need to ask more questions but most localities have some systems of care this is a good discussion I want to now open it up to the field questions, comments and before I do that I wanted to also alert the field to a program that the center did a couple of years ago in 1998 on domestic violence it was abuser focused but it does give a very nice foundation and groundwork to what is domestic violence this was for federal probation and for pre-child services officers though I certainly think the bench could benefit as well from the information so if anybody in the field is interested in that they should contact me and I can put them in touch with the folks at the center who can help them with that program now let's go to the field my understanding is that we've got the Northern District of Illinois Pre-child Services office on the line hello how about the middle district of Michigan okay we're getting some feedback from Detroit hi is the Northern District of Illinois with us alright well let's continue here and if the Northern District of Illinois tunes in there you are I heard a voice okay hello is this the Northern District of Illinois this is the Northern District of Illinois what's your question or comment for the panel and if you could turn down your television that would help with the feedback in the studio how would the court this defendant for non-compliance if she totally decided not to go to any of the counseling services that we referred her to good question alright who wants to take that one Judge Govison you're the one who's going to be doing the sanctioning I'm happy to take that question to say first of all it's an excellent one because I think the questioner has got a lot of experience and knows that the defense are very tied in this situation because we have to consider those three children and we have to consider that disabled mother so we would be working in increments we would be trying to figure out how we can leave her in place but at the same time acknowledging or having her acknowledge that she has to abide by our conditions so that's when I turn to a very resourceful pretrial service officer talking to the defense counsel to come up usually and I want to say this in the situations where we've had violations of conditions I go into the courtroom with a great expectation that defense counsel and pretrial services officers have come up with a solution to the problem that's presented to me and in this case I think it is a difficult one whether you could have her have sort of a day care situation in the sense that she'd have to go report somewhere during the day when the children were in school do something that made clear that she has to obey the court this is an absolute condition but interfere as little as possible with the lives, the already fragile and difficult lives of her and her family I'd be interested in what the pretrial services officers what incremental work you could do I think day treatment mental health services would be very very appropriate and as a trump card we can do inpatient mental health services if they continue not to comply but like a day treatment type of program for mental health services where kids are safe at home and she can return every evening I think it would be very very good to be able to work up something on the weekend I don't know whether you could have any weekend requiring her to report somewhere for the weekend as we do sometimes in sentencing so that she'd know maybe they'd be able to have a surrogate there on the weekend take care of the children easier than during the week Cindy, any response? We can't really think of anything additional One of the things that we talked about in a prior conversation Judge Gavi is how we define danger to the community and in this case it's a little bit different Could you elaborate on that a little bit because I thought that that was very a creative interpretation I think we all agree this is not the case where she poses any danger other than the danger to the children the danger we think of in the drug situation going out having guns and that sort of danger to the community but it's a much more subtle kind of danger and I think really Bob spoke to it about the danger to the children the danger to the mother there's so much that she's being relied on so much that we're really going to upset the apple cart of a whole environment so there is danger if we do not appropriately address her needs the needs of the children and the needs of her mother all kinds of things can happen that we may not think of as danger in the same way as someone with a gun but really have the potential for lifelong problems for those involved I agree with the judges this is an excellent question because this is an example of areas that might have a common desire a common interest in a desired outcome but we may differ on how to arrive there and this would be a situation that we present that because if we found ourselves back before the court I would want to focus back on the two concerns of the bail reform act which is risk of flight and danger to the community and more specifically who is posing what danger and my position would be that my client satisfies both the concerns that are addressed within the bail reform act that she poses no danger and no risk of flight and therefore her liberty shouldn't be restricted notwithstanding that I would still recognize that the conditions that the court has tried to impose are in her interest her long term interest and maybe it would be an appropriate time to take a look back and try to understand why she's not complying and see whether maybe what we've imposed upon her is unrealistic in terms of her capacity and maybe scale it back a little bit so that she could comply with the court but at the same time not simply restrict her liberty merely because she couldn't impose a standard that aid doesn't go toward an assessment of risk of danger or flight but also just aren't realistic for her to meet given her emotional state at this point. Let me interrupt because we only got a couple minutes left in the segment and my understanding is that we've got the eastern district of Michigan pretrial services office on the line Michigan Eastern are you there? What's your question or comment or reaction to what we've been talking about thus far? We have a question in regards to are there any ideals or plans in place to address the vacuum that women with children often fall into regarding placement issues when they're placed on pretrial release. Reactions? I'm not sure what you mean by placement issues meaning often times when women refer to housing facilities they often do not take children and it becomes a problem in terms of recommending by I understand the question now thank you I think it's a huge problem that we do not have programs for women and their kids and it's a problem in every area of the country and I think it's really incumbent on us to recognize that and not just simply separate moms from kids but try to find reasonable accommodations alternatives to that separation but it's a very tough issue in every single community we face that every single day and very often the only alternative is for the children to go with another caretaker optimally and a mom to go into treatment depending on what her issues are in this case with this particular woman given that she has a low level depression I would really I can't imagine that she couldn't be treated on an outpatient basis and managed very well on an outpatient basis so if she were to comply with treatment I can't see why that family would have to be separated I think as a defense lawyer you have some concerns obviously when you begin a pattern of separating a mother from the child in terms of the future consequences absolutely it goes back to the point we were discussing earlier in terms of how it's going to impact her ability to process decisions that she's going to have to make later if she's distracted by concerns about her children the custody is taken from the mother I understand that that can be more difficult for it to be reestablished is a matter of the legal entitlements or legal rights well another collateral legal impact too is that she's now receiving public assistance and in our facts she's pled guilty to a felony offense and so that's no longer going to be available to her so she's going to have additional stresses in terms of finding a way to support herself I think that's a really important point that we want to emphasize and not something that's necessarily on the radar screen of the pre-trial services offices or the probation offices later on and you've got a situation here where somebody has a sporadic employment history I mean how is she going to be able to support this? Well I think it's also important too before we even talk about how she's going to do it is how it's going to impact her because my focus as a defense counsel intuitively would be to focus on addressing her legal concerns but the pre-trial is concerned about her complying and the judge is going to impose a sentence at some point but in this case the magistrate judge is also concerned about her complying and Bob is concerned about reaching a disposition in this case in addition to the collateral concerns about safety but she is concerned about other things and those other concerns that she has are going to directly impact the things that we're most directly concerned about in our respective roles and we have to recognize that Very important and difficult issues Thank you all We've reached the end of our discussion on pre-trial services issues As we go to our break let's take a look at the learning principles that we've covered in this segment and we'll see you in five minutes