Misbehaving while under probation supervision
For kids who have already been to court (for either a status offense or another charge) and have been put on probation supervision, misbehaviors are captured as “technical violations of probation.” On probation, kids are required to abide by a prescribed list of terms and conditions, which may specify that they “attend school,” “adhere to curfew,” and “obey parents/guardians.” When a kid does not comply with these conditions, their misbehavior becomes a technical violation that can result in more severe consequences, such as being detained providing a workaround to the JJDPA mandate, much like the VCO exception.
In 2013, kids charged with either status offenses or technical violations made up 27 percent of kids in detention and 22 percent of those in out-of-home placement facilities (including youth prisons).[] Sarah Hockenberry, Juveniles in Residential Placement, 2013 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, May 2016), https://perma.cc/Z2Z7-8FGJ. Proportions are even worse when looking at just girls, with status offenses and technical violations accounting for 37 percent of detained girls and 34 percent of those in placement.[] Ibid.; and Francine Sherman and Annie Balck, 2015, https://perma.cc/UVR9-RWWY. (More on this in "Why criminalization is not the answer.") These figures only begin to show the scope of system involvement due to misbehavior.