- Video shows Judge Wendy Avila in court, three Latina judges in Kern county, and statistics on the impacts of the justice system on minority youth.
- Judge Wendy Avila paved the way for Latinos in the justice system in Kern county as the first Latina to take the bench. She remembers the challenges in her life and how she uses them to make a difference in our community.
Judge Wendy Avila now works at the Juvenile Justice Center in Bakersfield as the first Latina judge to ever take the bench, and it was her life experience that made it possible.
Before the title and before the bench, Wendy Avila was just a girl raised in Bakersfield.
“I don’t know where I was prior to three months old," Avila said. "I was actually adopted at three months old by my parents.”
She shared silly moments with her adopted older brother.
“He had gotten a whole stack of red licorice, and I love red licorice,” she smiled.
She remembers spending time with him at a local park.
“He wanted me to hang out with him I guess, and so he like used these red licorice just to have me follow him around, which is really sweet now because I realize that, you know, how many big brother’s want their little kid sister just to follow them around,” Avila said.
It’s moments like this, she now cherishes, in the wake of tragedy.
“When I was a junior in high school, my brother was killed. He was murdered, and I saw the way that my family was treated, which really wasn’t very good,” she remembered.
Avila said the road leading to her brother’s murder began when he started using marijuana and missing school.
The investigation into her brother's death was her first exposure to the criminal justice system, a system she says never took the time to make her family feel heard.
“I had kind of vowed then that if I was to ever become a part of that system that I would essentially handle it differently,” Avila explained.
As a first-generation college student, Avila said it was her mother who pushed her to pursue her dreams.
“She would constantly repeat to me. ‘Honey, get your education.’”
She did just that, attending the University of California Santa Barbara.
Here she discovered, she could be a lawyer, eventually attending law school at the University of San Francisco.
“When there is representation, there is a higher possibility for second chances,” Ivy Cargile, an associate professor in political science at California State University Bakersfield said.
According to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that works to address racial disparity in prisons, nationally, Latino youth are 28 percent more likely to be detained or committed to juvenile facilities than their white peers.
Cargile said those numbers can bring frustration to our local minority communities.
“The thing is is that some people have been given second chances more often than not, and the law has literally been applied to some and not to others," Cargile said.
Cargile explained seeing Avila in the justice system can create those second chances for minority youth in our community, but while in college, more loss.
Both Avila's parents dying from health complications, but she is thankful she was able to return to Bakersfield to care for them in their final days, adding she uses the struggles she faced to help others.
“I really try to use sort of whatever adversity I’ve had in my life for the positive,” she said.
That goal became a reality during her more than 18 years as a deputy district attorney where she created the first truancy reduction program, in honor of her brother.
In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her as the first Latina judge in Kern county.
Now taking a seat in her courtroom as Kern county’s Lady Justice.
Early in her career, Avila spoke at the Hispanic youth conference at Cal State Bakersfield.
She left immediately after her speech only to be chased down by a young girl.
“She comes up to me and she says, Miss, can I ask you a question? and I tell her yes, and she looks at me and she says are you really a lawyer?”
Avila assured her of her status as a lawyer.
“She says I’ve never seen a lawyer that looks like you before,” Avila continued.
Realizing what the girl meant, Avila said, "I look like you don’t I, and she just smiled and said yes.”
Now, Avila won’t be the only judge in Kern county able to say that.
A total of three Latina women now sit on the bench in Kern county, an example for young women who want to follow in their footsteps, and Avila hopes to see even more representation in Kern county in the future.
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