I don't pretend to know juvenile law, but I will try to muddle through this.
Silva is an at risk youth. He violated the court's order. The court determined he needed some in treatment. The court put him in lockup for 5 days, found him in contempt at a hearing, and sentenced him in for 45 days which could be vacated if he underwent 28 day inpatient rehab and complied with all other court orders. The problem, the judge used punitive sanctions for contempt without affording criminal due process (as opposed to the 7 day remedial contempt ability found in RCW 7.21.030(2), of which remedial sanctions are only civil, and not criminal). Prior to imposing criminal contempt sanctions, you have to establish that your civil remedies were inadequate.
The concurrence (Madsen and Fairhurst) notes that the characterization that all remedies need to be found inadequate is a mischaracterization of the court's previous plurality opinion. I'll leave it to the juvenile justice peeps to sort out.
Yes, I know...this is a muddled, lazy, interpretation. But its 8:00 on a Friday night. If you're reading this...you need to shut down the computer.
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