Juvenile Justice
Policy regarding juvenile crime and justice has moved to the center of public attention and political debate in recent years. Increases in youth crime, stories of frustrated parents seeking help for their troubled children, and criticisms of juvenile justice programs have led to demands for change in the way young offenders are charged, punished, and treated (Howell, Krisberg, & Jones, 1995). Public concern about violent juvenile crime is also at an unprecedented high (Butterfield, 1996). The increasingly violent nature of contemporary youth crime and the escalating number of young people involved with the juvenile justice system have challenged established beliefs guiding policy and practice with offenders.
Traditionally, the juvenile court has striven to maintain a balance between rehabilitating and punishing offenders. The extent to which policy with young offenders has emphasized rehabilitation vs. punishment has changed intermittently over the past 30 years. Influenced by principles of deinstitutionalization, practice in the 1970s and 1980s was based on an individual treatment model encouraging placement of offenders in nonsecure, community-based programs rather than incarceration institutions. Historically, youths have held this special status in the law, distinct from that of adults.
The emergence of the current juvenile justice system in the United States, however, began with the rise in urbanization and industrialization in the late nineteenth century. Believing that poor environment rather than willful behavior caused delinquency, these reformers pushed for a rehabilitative model of handling delinquent youths. The rehabilitative model removed the processing of youths from adult courts, in the belief that a separate court system could provide youths with greater protection. The system promoted individualized treatment of delinquents, attempting to rehabilitate them by correcting the mental and moral deficiencies in their characters.
However, in recent years, the trend in traditional juvenile justice systems has moved slowly toward the same outcome which is produced by adult justice systems. The juvenile is not rehabilitated, nor is he equipped morally to leave the criminal behavior behind. Increasing amounts of juveniles are being tried as adults because of the violent nature of their crimes. These teen criminals show all the moral hardness of an adult committing the same crime. However, when the juvenile is placed in an adult facility, the chances of him or her ever leaving the live style of crime decrease significantly. As a response,...
When an offender is paroled, special conditions may be placed by the parole board upon the individual, to ensure that the rehabilitative process began in prison continues. "In addition to establishing the standard rules which include paying restitution, maintaining contact with their parole agent, submitting to searches and not leaving the state without permission" ("Division of Juvenile Justice: FAQs, 2008, CDCR). These special stipulations may include counseling for substance abuse
In principle, the United States should follow international treaties only if it is a signatory to that specific treaty. However, the Supreme Court of the United States cannot ignore international standards completely either. There are several reasons for this. The world is becoming more and more globalized. Large numbers of immigrants have flocked to the United States in the last several decades and likewise American military and the FBI increasingly
Ideally, diversion should take place at the earliest stages of juvenile justice processing, to refer a youth to essential services and avert further involvement in the system. On the other hand, diversion mechanisms can be put into place at later stages of justice processing, to avoid further penetration into the system and expensive out-of-home placements. Efforts to keep youth out of the juvenile justice system who otherwise would be processed
This Act was more focused on preventing juvenile delinquency and separating the juveniles from the adults in the correction facilities. It was argued that the juveniles learnt even worse crimes and became more radical criminals if detained together with the adult offenders. This was more pronounced during the 'Progressive Era' with proponents like Morrison Swift suggesting that the juvenile delinquents only benefited to learn more criminal tactics from the
The rest were charged only with minor offenses. The harshness of punishment in such cases appears to be disproportional to the crime. Indeed, Macallair states that the system was originally implemented to target the "worst of the worst." This does not appear to be the case in reality. A further problem specific to Florida entails the disproportionate representation of race in cases transferred to the adult court system. According to
Essentially, the authors focus on keeping the separate juvenile court active within the context of American states. Therefore, Scott & Steinberg (2008) are not proposing the abolition of the juvenile court entirely, like what Feld (1998) is proposing. Scott & Steinberg (2008) believe rather that the adult system would be unable to provide any additional benefits beyond what is provided through the juvenile courts. Keeping up with a separate system
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