A  study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2011 found “up to 41 percent of American adolescents and young adults have been arrested at least once for something other than a minor traffic violation.”

In the rare instance that a Trinity High School student gets into legal trouble, how much does Trinity know about the situation?  The school could find out about a student’s legal problems in one of three ways: Trinity is notified by the court system, the school finds out by the police showing up on campus, or Trinity is informed by someone in the community.

How easily Trinity finds out from the court system is in a way dependent on if the student in trouble is a minor or an adult.  If the student is legally an adult, things are much simpler.

Mr. David S. Mejia, a local defense attorney, said, “After the age of eighteen, anything and everything you do could be a public record.”

For this reason it is much easier for anybody, including a school, to find out what is going on with a particular person.  It becomes much more complicated when a juvenile gets into legal trouble because juvenile records are confidential, with the exception of a few extreme actions that demonstrate extreme danger to the public.

“While juvenile proceedings are for the most part intended by aspiration to be private and to not be public knowledge and information, sometimes they can be in a very limited area of court proceedings,” Mejia said. “There are certain activities that juveniles under the age of 18 may engage in where they will lose the protection of the Juvenile Court Act, and they lose the protection of privacy from schools for the safety of society. But those would have to be pretty extreme.”

It’s these extreme instances that lead to public knowledge of a juvenile’s legal situation, and almost always the notification of a school.  Mejia said, “There cannot be a very serious allegation of violence, sexual misconduct or threat of injury and the teachers, counselor, and administration not be told.”

It’s these instances of serious violence, sexual misconduct, and threat of injury that are most likely to be visible on a juvenile’s record for all of the public to see.   When it’s visible to the general public, Trinity is almost certainly going to know about it.

Trinity, however, can also receive information about juvenile charges that are not public knowledge and not as extreme.  The main reason this can take place is that in a legal sense the school is seen as the as the parent during school hours.  They are responsible for a student’s safety and education — and also the safety of other students.  The school may need information related to some juvenile cases to accomplish these duties.

“It isn’t as though the school is being told for some nonsensical or ridiculous reason,”  Mejia said.

Even in relatively minor instances, Mejia said, “if a judge orders notification or if the prosecutor’s reading of the regulations and law is such that they believe that it triggers notification to occur, then it will happen.”

According to Mr. Chris Brown, Juvenile Division Chief of the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office, all felonies are reported to a school and all misdemeanors involving controlled substances, physical harm to someone else or the possession of a deadly weapon are also reported.

Mejia said if the matter comes before a judge without the school already being notified by the prosecutors or the investigators, the judge would decide if the charge fits the criteria to issue notification to a school and then take the next steps.  The court system would only tell Trinity the charges, not the details.

“(The County Attorney’s Office) wouldn’t be allowed to disclose information to anyone that is not authorized to have it under statute, so we would follow whatever notification that we are bound to give them by law or the clerk’s office is bound to give them, but we wouldn’t go any further,” Brown said.

In other words the County Attorney’s Office will not provide any additional information to schools unless they are ordered to by the court system.  Often the parents of an involved student choose to provide Trinity with information not provided by the court system.  If a charge does not fall under one of the above criteria, it is entirely possible that it could go completely unnoticed by Trinity.

If Trinity finds out about legal problems by the police just showing up on campus to make an arrest, then the police cannot usually give Trinity much information, according to Officer Doug Curtis, with the St. Matthews Police Department.

“You have to be very careful when you are dealing with juveniles because so much of what is going on, especially if they are charged with something, is protected information, and it’s very private,” Curtis said.

Mr. Joe Henning, Trinity’s Dean of Students for Freshmen and Sophomores, said the police will usually tell Trinity only the charge a student is facing.  Trinity will normally know more information if an incident occurs on campus or if there is an ongoing investigation related to events that took place on campus.

Curtis said, “The school would definitely be notified by the police if it was believed that a student brought a weapon onto school property or was going to bring a weapon onto school property or had made threats to bring a weapon or do some type of criminal activity on school property. Certainly if an arrest was made on school property, especially during school hours, then the school would be notified by police of the situation.”

But if an incident occurs off campus and not during school hours, the department does not get involved with notifying schools, according to Curtis.

In instances that Trinity finds out about a student’s legal troubles from a member of the community, they are usually given more details than if they find out by other means.  The one drawback is that sometimes the information provided is incorrect or is very indirect.

Henning said, “Sometimes the information we get is accurate, and sometimes it is inaccurate, which is why we want to talk to the parents and student about the situation — and we ask families to be honest with us about the situation.”

According to Mejia, Trinity technically doesn’t need any evidence of a student’s wrongdoing to take disciplinary action.

It all stems from the voluntary relationship between students and Trinity. Just as one can leave Trinity for any reason, Trinity can ask someone to leave.  In a legal sense, Trinity is choosing to provide a service that a student’s family is choosing to purchase. Neither party is obligated to be in the relationship.

This situation gets much more complex if a student attends a public school, which is required by law to provide the student with an education. However, as a private school, it would be perfectly legal for Trinity to ask a student to leave if the administration feels such action is necessary.

“Schools have standards and practices and consistency in their conduct for their own integrity and for their own image or own standing as a legitimate and respected institution,” Mejia said.

The school chooses to follow the guidelines, such as the Code of Conduct, that it establishes for fairness and, and in return they ask their students to follow the same rules.

Private schools can put stipulations in place that allow for flexibility in making discipline decisions. At Trinity the decisions made are in accordance with a mission of  being “a Catholic, college-preparatory high school, forming men of faith and men of character.”

Flexibility in making decisions is outlined in several passages of the Code of Conduct:  Section 42 states, “The Principal or Student Affairs Directors reserve the right to deviate from any and all disciplinary regulation for just cause or at their discretion.”

Section 52 reads, “Trinity also reserves the right to exclude/dismiss at any time students whose conduct or influence it regards as undesirable.”

What can Trinity actually do when they find out a student gets in trouble? Since it is a private institution, legally they have discretion in making decisions about a student’s future at the school by examining the facts in the case and weighing those facts in light of the school’s mission.

Section 50.D of the Code of Conduct, which refers to Criminal Charges, states that if Trinity becomes aware of any criminal charges brought against a student, the student may be subject to immediate dismissal, other disciplinary actions, and in some cases an outside assessment of the student.

Henning said, “Oftentimes, we will suspend a student until a court case is settled.”  If a student is found innocent, Henning said, they are welcome to approach Trinity and have readmission considered.

If a student is not dismissed from Trinity, according to Henning, “the consequences depend on the nature of what happened.”

The policies leave much of the disciplinary action related to students who get into legal trouble up to the school administration on purpose, so that each case can be handled individually.   Although Trinity’s disciplinary action can vary widely, there is one thing that will be consistent: privacy in regards to the situation.

“The school can, however, notify the student’s teachers, the student’s counselor, and of course, a parent, but even though the school is notified, it doesn’t mean that the school can put it up on a bulletin board for every student to know,” Mejia said.

One benefit of the juvenile justice system for students is that there is not much Trinity can do once they either punish or dismiss a student from school.  They are not legally allowed to share any disciplinary records of a student. This includes everything from JUGS (detention) to legal charges.  This information is not even on transcripts and cannot be provided to any school or college seeking it out.

The only exception to this is that Trinity is required by law to notify a student’s future school if the student was dismissed for reasons related to drugs or alcohol.  In effect, no school after Trinity would know about legal problems a student had while enrolled at Trinity unless the student fit into one of the following scenarios:

* If a student committed one of the very extreme actions above that resulted in their record becoming public.

* The student was legally an adult when a crime was committed.

* The student was dismissed for drug or alcohol reasons.

According to Henning, most colleges ask students do disclose any legal or discipline issues. In reality, though, if a student is dishonest, a future school has virtually no other way of knowing about a student’s juvenile record, since it is kept so private.

The only people who have access to a juvenile’s record are prosecutors or judges; not even the police would know anything.

Curtis said the first time a police officer usually knows about a juvenile’s past is when the officer steps into the courtroom on the day of trial.  If a school in some way found out about a student’s failure to disclose serious issues, it would most likely lead to severe disciplinary consequences.

Although there are many technicalities, there is no disputing that the juvenile system benefits students by ensuring that small mistakes made when they were young won’t follow them forever.