If your child has been charged with a criminal offense in juvenile court, there can be a lot to worry about. While criminal charges are enough to deal with alone, there may be additional ramifications from public access to criminal records. If a 16 or 17-year-old juvenile offender is charged with a felony offense, court proceedings are public, and the records are public. Regardless of whether the charges were dismissed or reduced, the record is still public, and anyone can access it. In Addition, if a juvenile as young as 14-years-old is charged with a felony-level-offense and is certified to adult court or has the adult portion of an extended jurisdiction juvenile sentence executed, all of the records pertaining to the proceeding are public.
This can present problems when your child is pursuing employment opportunities or trying to find housing. Employers or landlords can access such records and deny employment or housing based upon your child’s criminal record.
Disqualifications from Employment opportunities or Housing opportunities may be based upon arrest or charges without any finding of guilt. Even if your child has not yet been found guilty of a crime, there may still be negative impacts due to public access to the records.