A proposal to bring the Becca Bill's runaway-detention provisions into compliance with juveniles' procedural due process rights

The Becca Bill, enacted in Washington State in 1995, changed the way Washin gton treats runaway juveniles. The Bill creates a series of secure crisis r esidential centers and authorizes law enforcement officers to take juvenile runaways into custody and place them in these secure facilities. The facil ities must keep the admitted juveniles for at least twenty-four hours but n o more than five days. This Comment argues that the Becca Bill, which provi des no judicial review of the commitment to detention, violates the procedu ral due process requirements of Washington and U.S. constitutions. While co urts have extended procedural due process protection to juveniles' liberty interest in freedom from bodily restraint in the context of both juvenile d elinquency proceedings and commitment for mental health care, no court has considered the due process rights of juvenile runaways in Washington. This Comment concludes that the Becca Bill's runaway detention provisions violat e constitutional procedural due process requirements and, therefore, the Wa shington Legislature should amend the Becca Bill to provide judicial review of a juvenile's detention within twenty-four hours of the juvenile's commi tment to detention. In the absence of legislative action to correct this pr oblem, courts should require such review.