Yvette McGee Brown calls her mother a hero, a special woman who raised three children as a single parent while often working two jobs.
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| Judge Yvette McGee Brown, BSJ '82. |
Much like her mom, McGee Brown has gained a reputation as a stern but compassionate person who is interested in the kids she meets each day. At 37, she is ap proaching the end of her first six-year term as the lead juvenile court judge of Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, Domestic Relations Division, in Columbus. At 32, she became the youngest elected judge in Ohio and the first African American to serve on the Franklin County Court of Domestic Relations.
In judicial circles in Columbus, McGee Brown has become known as an advocate for the kids she sees in court and as a supporter of reform efforts for sentencing and treatment of juvenile offenders. H er goal is to consider a sentence that can point a young person in the right direction, hopefully not toward incarceration.
“We keep punishing the kids and we punish them and return them to the same environment that created the problem,” McGee Brown says. “I want to find out why you committed the crime. I want to make sure there’s a presentence investigation. I want to know who the family is, what the prior record is.
“Even most of the kids who I have incarcerated will tell you that I gave th em a fair deal. But there’s only so much sympathy you get from me. There are kids who have tried to scam the system and say, ‘Feel sorry for me because I’m poor.’ I don’t buy those excuses. And I have no sympathy for juveniles involved in gun-related crime.”
Among reform efforts in juvenile court, McGee Brown has worked with Project 2000, an extended rehabilitation program at the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center that she says emphasizes the “value in living a life where you’re not always con cerned with being shot or being arrested.” Her court also has created different types of probation to fit the crime — one probation used to apply to all juvenile crimes — and increased both the electronic monitoring of juveniles on probation and the requirements for presentence investigation.
A 1985 graduate of Ohio State University’s College of Law, McGee Brown previously was chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and the Ohio Department of Youth Services. She credits Joan Pringle, an adviser at Mifflin High School in Columbus, and Ohio University Associate Professor of Journalism Sandra Haggerty for helping change the direction of her life.
Pringle convinced McGee Brown that attending college should be a priority, and Haggerty coaxed a young public relations major interested in speech writing to consider law school. McGee Brown, who says she “loves OU,” was an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha and the minority programming staff.
The winner of se veral community service awards, she serves on the boards of United Way of Franklin County and Columbus YMCA and the David Thomas National Adoption Board.
Four years ago, McGee Brown married teacher Tony Brown, whom she met at church shortly after his first wife died of cancer. McGee Brown has since adopted his two children and given birth to her first child, David, in March.
She says motherhood has made her a more sensitive judge and slowed down career aspirations that some thought would lead her to run for political office in the near future. McGee Brown now says she will seek re-election as a Franklin County domestic relations judge in November 1998.
“I want to be here long enough to make some changes in the juvenile system that will survive long after I’m gone,” she says.
— Bill Estep
