Chain Reaction

Cory Mashburn made national news at age 13 when a teacher caught him slapping girls' bottoms at his McMinnville middle school—and prosecutors charged him with multiple counts of felony sex abuse.

On his fifth day in detention, a gangly Mashburn padded into court with his hands and feet bound in shackles. A belly chain secured his wrists to his waist. Another boy, his friend, also faced charges while wearing the same restraints. 

"I was being treated like I murdered someone," Mashburn, now 21, recalls.

Paula Lawrence, Mashburn's attorney, says an audible gasp rose in the courtroom that day in 2007. 

"You see these little boys, who look like little boys," she says, "and they come shuffling into the courtroom like they're in a chain gang."

Yamhill County prosecutors reduced Mashburn's charges, then dropped them altogether, amid huge public outcry and protest from the girls' families. Four years later, the county restricted the use of metal shackles.

Yet across Oregon—including in Portland—law enforcement officials routinely shackle juveniles accused of offenses, even misdemeanors, without first proving the need.

It's a practice barred for adults, because it could prejudice juries to see defendants as guilty. But bringing kids to court in chains persists in parts of Oregon despite the complaints of children's advocates, defense lawyers, some judges and the American Bar Association. 

These groups want Oregon to join several other states, including Washington, in barring the blanket use of shackles or other restraints when young people in detention appear in court.

Advocates say shackles do tremendous harm to a child's sense of self-worth and could prove counterproductive. 

"It's very humiliating," says Tom Crabtree, head public defender in Deschutes County, who once represented a shackled 7-year-old. "Kids who aren't treated with respect tend not to respect others."

The practice of shackling young offenders appears to have crept into juvenile courts for practical reasons. 

Youth detention facilities are sometimes connected to courtrooms through secure hallways. Where they're not, kids in custody sometimes have to walk through public corridors. 

Law enforcement officials, worried a kid would either hurt people in the halls or bolt, cuffed them. Lt. Steve Alexander, a spokesman for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, says the restraints protect the public and allow the county to assign fewer deputies to supervise proceedings. “It’s a safety thing,” he says. 

And since kids don't sit in front of juries, the shackles often stayed on. The idea was, the shackles were harmless.

"That mindset," says Marion County Circuit Judge Lindsay Partridge, "is obviously counterproductive to what we're trying to do with kids."

The U.S. court system doesn't allow law enforcement officials to indiscriminately shackle adults in court if they're not dangerous or liable to escape. Restraints would impede a defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial. And since it would be easier for a jury to imagine a shackled defendant's guilt, it would be prejudicial, too.

Juvenile defendants don't face jury trials. But advocates say the practice is unjust anyway. 

"Children are treated worse than adults charged with the same offenses," says Mark McKechnie, executive director of the Portland nonprofit Youth, Rights and Justice.

A patchwork of policies governs the use of restraints for kids in Oregon. Some of those policies are beginning to change.

In April, Deschutes County ended the practice of automatically restraining kids in custody who are accused of juvenile offenses. Chuck Puch, manager of Deschutes County's juvenile detention center, says law enforcement officials were fearful at first. They worried that unshackling the children would create chaos in courtrooms. 

"Well, guess what?" Puch says. "It didn't happen."

This month, Marion County also changed its routine. Now instead of restraining juvenile offenders in custody, the court makes a determination on an individual basis about whether restraints are needed. 

"We've flipped the presumption," says Partridge. "We're not going to restrain kids, unless we have a specific reason."

Multnomah County has mixed practices. Young people who are brought to court at the facility next to the juvenile detention center are sometimes shackled, depending on which courtroom they're going to. If for some reason they have a hearing at the downtown courthouse, they're also shackled. That's up to the sheriff.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Maureen McKnight, who often oversees juvenile cases, says there's no blanket policy about what happens once the child is inside a courtroom. "Depending on the youth, the practice is going to vary," she says.

Yamhill County restricted the use of shackles in the wake of the Mashburn "spanking" case. But officials use so-called "soft restraints" that resemble seat belts tied around juveniles' wrists when they walk to court. Officials remove the restraints in court.

Tracie Mashburn, Cory's mother, says her son's experience in detention steered him down a bad path. He had just turned 13 when he was arrested, but he looked as if he were 11. Teachers, she says, described him as a funny, easygoing kid. But that changed after his release from detention, where he was shackled and routinely strip-searched.

"He was very quiet, very afraid," she says. "He became very bitter and angry with adults and teachers, anyone having any kind of control over him."

At 17, he sought treatment for drug and alcohol abuse and started addressing his unresolved feelings about imprisonment.

“We have our son back,” his mom says now. “But we lost him for a good three or four years.” 

WWeek 2015