For more than 15 years, the Juvenile Justice Symposium has educated college, high school and middle school students and their families about criminal and juvenile law and school discipline.
The program was founded by Recht Kornfeld Shareholder Lara Marks Baker. Baker, who is a criminal law and trial attorney, is often asked to give programs and presentations on this topic in Colorado. She said she puts on this symposium once or twice a year to summarize important or new information for families and children across the state.
The symposium returns on Jan. 22 at Regis Jesuit High School’s “Z” Theater in Aurora from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. It’s free to attend, open to all families in the community with middle- and high-school-aged kids and will cover a few different topics, according to Baker.
“The four broad topic areas that we see with all kids include alcohol, drugs, social media and technology and sex offenses,” Baker told Law Week. She noted these types of topics have provided a backbone for the presentations.
“But there’s a lot of storytelling, a lot of anecdotal information that I share about things like Title IX and how kids get in trouble in school,” Baker continued. “And the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, some of the constitutional protections that apply for kids when they find themselves in trouble.”
Baker added the presentations sometimes cover miscellaneous issues that come up in defense of criminal cases.
“So kids’ cell phones become evidence in a criminal case, they also become the vehicle to commit a crime,” Baker explained. Part of the program also seeks to inform parents how to better monitor and navigate the devices kids use to help keep them out of trouble.