Fifty years ago on May 15, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark decision of In Re: Gault. Connecticut's commitment to juvenile justice has given us hope that the legacy of Gault will continue to be honored for another 50 years.

In 1967, 15-year-old Gerald Gault was taken into custody for making prank phone calls to his neighbor in Arizona. His parents were not called or notified that he had been arrested. Gerald had two hearings before the judge but he was never formally told what he was charged with. There was no lawyer present on his behalf at his “trial,” which consisted of him being cross-examined by the judge. The alleged victim did not testify. Indeed, there wasn't even a transcript of the proceedings. The judge found him delinquent and committed him to the Arizona Technical School, the 1967 equivalent of our training school, for a maximum period of six years, i.e., until he turned 21. By contrast, if Gerald had been 18, the maximum penalty would have been a $50 fine or two months in jail.

The juvenile court system back then was markedly different from adult courts. With the focus on rehabilitation, not punishment, constitutional protections afforded an adult defendant were deemed unnecessary for juveniles. Those in favor of this approach wanted to de-emphasize the adversarial nature of the court system and instead wanted to give the state the role of parens patriae. As Gerald Gault's case demonstrated, however, this approach led to arbitrary and unjust results. As the Supreme Court noted, “unbridled discretion, however benevolently motivated, is frequently a poor substitute for principle and procedure.”