ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603010012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
THE GENERAL Assembly's excuses for delaying implementation of a family-court system in Virginia sprout like crabgrass.
The concept of putting all family-related cases - divorce, child custody and support, adoption and juvenile delinquency - under the purview of a family court makes sense. It received overwhelming, bipartisan support from lawmakers this year, as it did in 1993.
Yet, once again, the creation of a single court to handle interwoven family matters currently scattered across the judicial landscape has been postponed - because legislators can't agree on a way to finance it.
Now implementation has been delayed until 1998. That's ridiculous, considering that the cost has been estimated at only $10 million a year, and the need for the court has been growing for decades.
Let's not oversell the idea. Bureaucratic adjustments won't make a big dent in the turmoil claiming countless victims among Virginia families - victims of abuse, violence, drugs, poverty, neglect, selfishness and all variety of social conflicts and pathologies.
Still, the new system would be a marginal improvement. As it now stands, children and families, often at a time when they are most vulnerable, are being jerked around by the legal system - bounced from circuit court to juvenile court and back again in a process that's more likely to exacerbate family tensions and disputes than resolve them.
The family-court concept - in pilot projects, including one in the Roanoke Valley - has proved more user-friendly. It is more likely, for instance, to use mediation to help families work out their problems.
Proponents of the family court, which would replace the juvenile court system, offered funding mechanisms this year, including a proposal to tack $4 on to court filing fees. The funding bills were killed or tabled, perhaps because added court fees strike taxophobic legislators as some sort of tax increase.
Arguments for delaying implementation also included this one: The family-court concept would add to the work load of a juvenile-court system already overwhelmed with cases of juvenile crime.
What seems to have been forgotten is that many juvenile crimes are an outgrowth of family disintegration. A court that could address family issues even marginally better in their complex, entangled interrelationships might also be better able to address some of the emotional and psychological wounds inflicted on children that are often forerunners of juvenile delinquency.
Excuses aside, the $10 million-a-year price tag is cheap compared with the costs of incarcerating ever-growing numbers of such children.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB