Deputy Defender General outlines Vermont juvenile court rules, screening tool use and placement gaps

Marshall Paul, deputy defender general and chief juvenile defender for the state of Vermont, told a legislative committee on Oct. 16 that Vermont’s juvenile system uses a granular matrix of age and offense rather than a single age cutoff to decide whether youths are handled in juvenile or criminal court.

Paul said the system distinguishes by both maturity and offense severity and includes pathways for transfer between juvenile and criminal divisions. He described the youngest children (roughly ages 0–10) as generally immune from criminal charges except for the state’s most serious crime, and said older teens charged with the most serious felonies (for example, certain offenses in what he referenced as 5204(a)) are “presumptively criminal cases” that start in criminal court and may be moved to juvenile court only if the defense meets a legal burden.

The YASI screening tool: who uses it and how it matters

Paul described the Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument (referred to repeatedly as the YASI and sometimes pronounced “Yazzie” during testimony) as a two-stage, actuarial screening instrument used in Vermont for years. He said the preliminary YASI is roughly 35 questions and the full YASI adds about 40 more questions; both generate domain-specific risk-and-needs results. “It’s fed into a mystery algorithm that spits out a risk and needs level,” Paul said, adding that the tool has been normed to Vermont data over time.

He said…