The county budget crunch for the coming year has the potential to place the community at risk despite the committed efforts of juvenile probation officers, therapists, volunteers and families.

The county budget crunch for the coming year has the potential to place the community at risk despite the committed efforts of juvenile probation officers, therapists, volunteers and families.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Robert Brutinel said the primary issue facing Yavapai County Juvenile Probation is the FY  2008-09 budget. With personnel cuts likely, the current hiring chill for new positions in the juvenile probation department could eventually become an issue of public safety.
Brutinel said he personally knows the youth in Yavapai County first start having problems in school but the Department of Education cut funding to intervention programs and the juvenile probation department cannot provide the intervention that is necessary to prevent youth from committing potentially serious crimes.
He said he wishes he could put youth who need residential drug treatment into a facility, but the only treatment facility is currently the juvenile detention center.
The current detention center is horrible, Brutinel said, as it is a jail, keeps the detention officers in a monitoring center and separates the staff from the youth.
He said he does not like seeing the county take on debt but respects the Yavapai County Board of Supervisor’s decision to take the $50 million Capital Program Loan and use a large portion of the money to build a new juvenile detention facility.
The new facility will be less costly to run and will be safer for the staff and youth as it will bring them into more direct contact where the focus can be on rehabilitation, he said.
Judge Robert Brutinel
Appointed in 1996 to the juvenile court, Division II of Superior Court, and later appointed as presiding superior court judge, Brutinel, now the county’s presiding superior court judge, held onto the Juvenile Court despite the demands of his position supervising the other six Superior Court Divisions.
Per his biography, Brutinel currently serves as chairman of the Arizona Supreme Court Committee on Juvenile Courts, was the president of the Arizona Judges Association and awarded the Prescott Area Leadership Man of the Year in 2007.
“The single biggest thing this court does is to impact the community,” Brutinel said, “and I frequently feel when I go home at the end of the day that I have made a difference.”
Brutinel said when he was first appointed to the juvenile court he lacked a great deal of knowledge and experience and had a steep learning curve to understand how the system works.
Yavapai County is the only county to operate juvenile sexual offender treatment court, Brutinel said, and the third to create a family drug court. There have been visitors from all over the state to see how the system works and some of the programs and policies created in the county have been implemented elsewhere.
The overwhelming majority of youth who are brought in to the system are not there for particularly serious offenses and generally do not return, Brutinel said. Unfortunately there are youth who will be criminals no matter what efforts juvenile probation makes and the only option left is to “lock them up,” he said.
Brutinel said the reality of being a juvenile probation officer is learning how to balance the responsibilities of being a social worker and a law enforcement officer. The officers tend more toward social work as their job is focused on rehabilitation and prevention.
There has never been an overall attitude by the community to focus on punishment and punitive measures as the majority of parents, teachers, administrators and community members want to help the youth while teaching them to be accountable for their actions, Brutinel said.
“I continue to believe Yavapai County is different from other counties in the state and I am grateful to the people who work in the system and volunteer their time and efforts to improve the lives of the kids we serve,” Brutinel said.
Judge Eileen Bond
Bond, a juvenile probation judge, is the current judge of the juvenile probation court.
Bond said she became deeply involved in the juvenile court system after she got her first dependency case in Maricopa County. A dependency case is part of the Child Protective Services system and she later moved to the Attorney General’s Office and represented CPS for the next 20 years.
Being on the bench for the first time, she said, was scary as the appointment was not something she looked forward to doing as she was accustomed to representing defendants in the system opposed to passing judgement. But she said she is really enjoying being the judge now.
Bond said the biggest difference from being an attorney is how she used to give a position to the court and now she gets to figure out what is right for the youth in her court. She is now ultimately responsible for the decision made.
The biggest frustration is not being able to find something that really deters the youth from re-offending, she said, but the best consequence she found is to have the youth turn in his or her most prized possession and have to earn it back from her.
Bond said her real belief is the better an attorney and family involved in her court understand how the system works the better they are able to work with the system as opposed to against it, which is where real change in the life of the youth happens.

Greg Nix can be reached at
282-7795, Ext. 122, or e-mail to gnix@larsonnewspapers.com