Filling the Legal Gap for Incarcerated Children

In most states, a child's right to counsel ends at disposition, meaning kids sent to youth prisons typically never speak to a lawyer while they are there. Sam Lawrence, an Equal Justice Works fellow at the Center, sponsored by The Clorox Company Foundation and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, is working to fill this gap in representation. Sam, who holds a JD from Duke Law and an MSW from UNC Chapel Hill, draws from over a decade of experience with court-involved youth.  

During his fellowship, he has pioneered a model to help lawyers remain involved in their clients’ cases when they are sent to North Carolina’s Youth Development Centers (YDCs).  He believes that every incarcerated child deserves someone to advocate for adequate therapeutic and educational services as well as timely release.  

 His fellowship is just the first step in a vision he laid out in his 2024 Duke Law Journal article, "Children Are Different" and Their Lawyers Should Be Too. The right to counsel is currently weaker for children than it is for adults. Sam plans to spend his career fighting for a right to counsel for children that is not only equal to the right for adults, but in fact more expansive and tailored to protect the unique vulnerabilities of children.  

Learn more about his work, the model he's building, and the future he envisions for representing incarcerated children in this Q&A:

 

Walk us through what a typical week at the Wilson Center looks like for you. 

It's a really nice mixture of direct representation, research, policy work, and community organizing. I have a handful of youth clients in YDCs in North Carolina and a couple of adult clients who are serving life sentences from when they were children. I'm working with law students on research related to juvenile sentencing laws across the country, and I've also organized a coalition of local youth defenders and impact litigation lawyers around conditions at the county-run detention center for youth. That work has already produced results, including a successful complaint to the NC Department of Public Instruction, finding that children were being improperly denied special education access. So, in a given week, I'm probably making a couple of visits to YDCs, staying in contact with my adult clients, and working with students and other stakeholders on policy, research, and organizing. 

 

For readers who don't know, what happens to a child after disposition, and why is your role so important there? 

Once a child is committed to a YDC, contact with their attorney typically ends. That's problematic for a few reasons. Children are less able to advocate for themselves than adults. There's no one monitoring whether they're getting therapy or an education. And critically, children don't have a judicially set release date — they receive what's called an indefinite commitment. The YDC gets to decide when the child is rehabilitated, whether they go directly home or to a step-down facility, and the terms of their post-release supervision. Without an outside advocate, kids often spend more time incarcerated for lower-level offenses than an adult would. 

 

What does that first visit with a client actually look like? 

It's a mix of law and social work. The first and most important thing is building rapport with the child and gaining their trust. Then it's critical to help them understand their sentence or “commitment.” The sentencing scheme is quite confusing, and understandably, a lot of kids don't understand what an indefinite commitment means. They hear that they have a six-month minimum and that there is a maximum age they can stay, but it is difficult for them to understand what this means about when they will actually be released, and where they will go next. Helping them understand how long they will be incarcerated is essential. I also gather their legal and social history so I can provide context to the YDC team that they often don't have, like mitigating information about prior progress or time already spent incarcerated waiting for adjudication or placement. I also explain to the child what it means to be successful inside, and what exactly can contribute to them being released sooner. 

 

You have both a law degree and a degree in social work. Explain how your social work background informs your legal day-to-day work. 

Getting families involved matters for the child emotionally, but it also shows the YDC that there's a viable alternative to continued incarceration. Many of these families are navigating trauma, poverty, and generations of contact with oppressive systems, and my social work background helps me understand how that system functions and how to motivate different members to participate. I also draw from my years as a therapist when approaching trauma, which is nearly universal in this population. Being able to identify trauma, explain it to decision-makers, and advocate for the right therapeutic response, often outside a carceral setting entirely, is something my therapy background makes possible. 

 

What does forming a reentry plan actually look like as a lawyer in this space? Who are you presenting it to? 

Mostly the YDC itself, because under the law, that's where release decisions get made. Each child has a monthly service plan meeting attended by the YDC’s social worker, sometimes a teacher and therapist, a court counselor (similar to a probation officer), and the family. But there's no advocate just for the child. I go to those monthly meetings, which lawyers traditionally don't attend, and push for better services and more appropriate timing of release. Occasionally, we go back to judges to advocate for certain services or release, but typically, the law gives that power to the YDC. There have been a few situations in which I have engaged in advocacy with prosecutors, especially when a child has pending juvenile or adult charges, and I can point to their progress at the YDC to get pending charges dropped. I have had some success getting pending adult and juvenile charges dropped so that they don’t need to face additional charges after they have come home. 

 

How do you define or understand success in this role? 

Success has taken many shapes over the course of the fellowship. Sometimes it’s a tangible legal outcome. For my work with children, it’s getting their adult charges dropped or getting them released a few months sooner and making sure they get to go straight home with meaningful services instead of to another facility. For my adult clients serving life sentences from when they were children, it could be getting them resentenced so they can have an opportunity for parole. Other times it is seeing that my presence results in a less traumatic experience while incarcerated. For example, seeing that my advocacy has led to children getting more frequent and meaningful therapy sessions, less time in their cells and more time and educational support in the classroom. Success can also be helping my clients see their own worth, when I overcome institutional barriers to get an estranged family member able to participate in their meetings or when I get the group talking about their strengths and advocate for their needs. Overall, success is anything that makes these kids, who often feel forgotten, know that they matter and deserve a nurturing childhood full of opportunity. 

 

What's been the biggest surprise or barrier throughout this work? 

I did similar work in Louisiana before law school, and judges there had more room to intervene and set release timelines. In North Carolina, that discretion sits almost entirely with the Division of Juvenile Justice, which can have advantages and disadvantages. The idea is that the juvenile system should be informal and non-adversarial because all the stakeholders have the child's best interest in mind, but in practice, that means children have fewer due process rights than adults and no lawyer to advocate for their expressed interest during their time at YDC, which is often the longest phase of their case. This contradiction within the juvenile system, in which we recognize that children are uniquely vulnerable yet we provide them fewer legal safeguards, is what I tried to work through in the Duke Law Journal article. The long-term goal is both a constitutional right to counsel that extends into the post-disposition phase and statutory changes that rein in the discretion which YDCs and other youth prisons around the country currently have to keep children incarcerated longer than an adult would be for the same behavior. 

 

As you near the end of the fellowship, what do you want to leave behind at the Center? 

I'm finishing a manual for youth defenders across the state on how to stay involved with their clients after they are sent to YDCs. I've already taught a CLE for the Office of the Juvenile Defender that 44 lawyers attended, and the manual will give attorneys a practical guide for a kind of representation very few if any are currently doing.  

For the Wilson Center, I'm hoping the momentum we’ve generated around youth incarceration issues continues. The Center has built a strong interdisciplinary approach to the adult criminal legal system, and part of what I've tried to do is bring that same research and policy lens into the youth incarceration space, which hasn't been a focus here before. That includes helping shape research collaborations and connecting the Center to defenders and stakeholders working on these issues across the state and nationally. Indefinite commitments within youth prisons exist in most states, and there's almost no research on what happens to kids once they're inside. People often describe youth prisons as being surrounded by a "legal moat" because the right to counsel doesn't extend past the prison walls. A research institution like the Wilson Center turning attention to this dark corner of the youth legal system is critical to shaping policy for children across the country for years to come. 

 

Sam leaves the Wilson Center at the end of this month to begin a one-year clerkship with a federal court of appeals. He hopes to return to this project at the end of his clerkship and the Wilson Center is currently seeking funding so that Sam can continue to work toward a future in which no incarcerated child is without a legal advocate.