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Institutional Facilities for Delinquents and Civilly Institutionalized Juveniles
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If a state institutional facility has deprived a juvenile of his right to mental treatment or has deprived him of any of his civil rights, the juvenile may opt to file suit against the institutional facility. There are two basic methods that the juvenile may seek with respect to relief. The juvenile may request injunctive or monetary relief. With respect to injunctive relief, the institutional facility may be ordered to refrain from enforcing certain rules or conducting certain procedures, if the juvenile is successful. With respect to monetary damages, if the juvenile is able to show that he suffered emotional, mental, or physical harm as a result of his detention in the institutional facility, he may be entitled to monetary damages. In the alternative, the juvenile may seek and may be awarded both injunctive and monetary relief.
For juveniles that have been adjudicated delinquent, it is unclear what standard they are entitled to for purposes of the conditions of their confinement. Because most juvenile delinquency proceedings are not considered to be of a criminal nature, the courts typically have applied the following standard: whether the conditions of the institutional facility amount to punishment of the juvenile. The aforementioned standard is only applicable if the juvenile had not yet been adjudicated.
Juveniles Confined to State Institutional Facilities for Civil Reasons
The juvenile may be placed in an institutional facility for civil purposes. Some of the reasons that the juvenile may be placed in a state institution for civil purposes include:
- Mental illness.
- Developmental disability.
- Dependency, either chemical or physical.
As a result of the juvenile's confinement, he is entitled to be protected by the government. When the government places the juvenile in an institutional facility the juvenile's liberty has been restrained and leaves the juvenile unable to care for himself. If the government then fails to protect the child's basic needs such as simple habilitation and safety, the government may be subject to liability under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Copyright 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
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