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 the tool is used both at the precharge screening stage (voluntary at that point) and later at disposition, and that results can influence charging, diversion decisions and the individualized case plan created at disposition. Paul told the committee that he believes the YASI is paid for by the Department for Children and Families (DCF) and that who administers it varies by county — in many counties a contracted diversion provider performs the screening, and in others DCF or other local providers do it.

Paul said the precharge YASI is voluntary because it occurs before counsel is assigned and therefore cannot be compelled, but that in practice prosecutors accept a subsequently completed YASI and use it when making charging or diversion decisions.

Disposition, supervision and custody

Paul described juvenile dispositions as highly individualized: “the magic of juvenile court is the disposition process,” he said, explaining that courts prepare case plan reports and tailor probation conditions to each youth’s needs rather than imposing standardized sentences. He said most youths are not placed in custody after disposition and are instead supervised in the community.

He explained differences in supervision ages: for felony cases, DCF may supervise a 16– or 17‑year‑old until 19½; if an 18‑year‑old commits a felony, DCF supervision can extend to 20½. Paul also distinguished delinquent status from “youthful offender” status: “Youthful offender is more like an adult status that uses the juvenile court as a venue,” he said, warning that youthful offender proceedings carry adult rights and adult consequences, including the possibility of being held in adult facilities following certain violations.

Red Clover, Woodside and capacity concerns

Paul said the system’s major gap is the “middle tier” of residential care: semi-secure and intermediate residential programs. He told the committee that community-based services and low-level treatment are generally accessible, but beds and specialized residential placements remain limited since the pandemic reduced residential capacity and staffing. “During the pandemic, residential programs were closing entirely, and the ones that stayed open were cutting the number of beds they had dramatically,” he said, adding that some programs that once served 20–30 youth are now accepting only 10–15.

On the recently opened secure program Red Clover, Paul said, “our experience with Red Clover has been overwhelmingly positive,” while noting the building itself is “a crappy old building” even though program services and safety practices he described have been strong.

Use of custody, emergency placements and staffing

Paul described how DCF custody differs from adult corrections custody: when DCF takes custody, it may exercise parental‑style authority over education, medical and placement decisions. That difference, he said, allows DCF to place youths in residential settings or foster care as it deems necessary after a brief hearing when a judge issues a statutory order (referenced in testimony as a 5291 order) to place a child in a secure program.

He also said the practice of using DCF staff to “sit with” youths in nontherapeutic locations during crises — staff‑in‑hotel‑room arrangements criticized in earlier testimony — has diminished substantially.

What the committee heard next

Committee members asked about algorithm validation, access barriers to YASI screening and how often missing precharge screens delay diversion. Paul said the vendor has re‑normed the tool to Vermont data several times and that, in his experience, missed precharge screens have not led prosecutors to refuse diversion when counsel later provides a YASI: “I’ve never had a situation where I’ve gone to a prosecutor and said, ‘my kid never completed the YASI,’ and had the prosecutor say, ‘tough luck,’” he said.

The discussion ended with the committee taking a short recess to continue the hearing and a note that the committee will separately focus on the “raise the age” issue later in the week.

Ending

No formal committee decision or vote occurred during this presentation; the session was informational and focused on differences in juvenile versus adult procedure, the mechanics and use of the YASI screening instrument, supervision ages and the system’s current placement and residential capacity challenges.