The unnamed umbrella working group on crime and related issues has gained one success without even trying.
Starting in April, Vance County will have an extra day each month for juvenile court.
The working group spent a lot of time at its meeting March 2 on a discussion of the problem of juvenile court. Assistant District Attorney Quon Bridges told the group that Vance has too many juvenile cases to handle them properly in the two half-days a month allotted to young suspects. Bridges said he would have expanded juvenile court if he’d won election against Chief District Judge Charles Wilkinson last fall.
The working group appointed a committee consisting of businessman Cliff Rogers, lawyer James Green and Cynthia Yancey, the chief juvenile court counselor for the 9th Judicial District, to lobby for more juvenile court. Yancey had to leave the meeting early and was picked in her absence.
It turns out the committee wasn’t needed.
Even while the working group was making plans to fight for more juvenile court, Wilkinson was making plans to institute just that change, Yancey said in an interview last week.
“I was really excited about it,” she said.
Wilkinson did not return phone messages for comment.
Yancey said March is the final month in which Vance County juvenile court takes place in two half-days, sharing court time with child-support and domestic cases. Now the first and fourth Fridays of each month will be juvenile court days.
“It was something they had been looking at for a period of time,” she said.
The first Friday, starting April 1, will be a half-day of juvenile court and a half-day of child support cases.
The fourth Friday, starting April 22, will be a full day of juvenile court.
The change affects only Vance County, which Bridges said has a heavier juvenile crime load than the other counties of the 9th District, Granville, Franklin and Warren. The same pattern holds true for adult crime.
Yancey’s staffing reflects the higher demands in Vance. She has three counselors in the Henderson office, compared with two each in Franklin and Granville and one in Warren.