Search Results

The use of a juvenile court for youth crime is almost universal throughout the developed nations. However, every American jurisdiction has provided for exceptions—circumstances and procedures that transfer those within the age boundaries of juvenile court to criminal court instead. This chapter is organized as follows. The first section argues that the necessity of transfers must be understood in the context of the functions and limits of juvenile courts. The second section examines three different structural accommodations to the need for serious punishment for a few youths: wholesale transfer of jurisdiction to criminal courts; the expansion of punishment powers available within the juvenile court so that even the most terrible crimes can meet their just deserts in a juvenile court; and the selective transfer of cases. The third section contrasts three different mechanisms for transfer: legislative standards that define both the necessary and sufficient causes for transfer; a legal framework that delegates power to judges to decide whether a particular case requires transfer; and a system that delegates total power to prosecutors. The concluding section describes a few of the minimum conditions necessary to justice at the interface between juvenile and criminal court.

Two justifications existed from the start for creating a juvenile court, referred to as the interventionist and diversionary justifications for a separate children's court. The diversionary justification for juvenile court was always the most important of the two rationales, and it remains so today. Diversionary principles of juvenile justice are well suited both to a modern theory of adolescent development and to concern about procedural fairness and proportionality in legal response to youth crime. This chapter shows both continuity and coherence to the diversionary rationale for juvenile courts through the first hundred years of their history. The chapter is organized as follows. The first section sets out the two discrete justifications for creation of a juvenile court and documents the diversionary agenda of turn-of-the-century reformers. The second section shows the extent to which the major programmatic elements of early juvenile justice were consistent with diversionary justifications and methods. The third section addresses the modern concept of juvenile justice as reflected in two leading Supreme Court cases. It was a diversionary theory of juvenile court that could accommodate due process rules without sacrifices of youth welfare. The fourth section is concerned with the contemporary understanding of juvenile justice as a passive virtue. It shows that the effectiveness of juvenile courts in protecting youth from full criminal punishment is the heart of the reason the court has so many contemporary enemies.

This chapter identifies some of the key policy choices that must be made in reducing injustices found in American juvenile courts. It argues that reducing the hazards of juvenile court processing may be a better approach to protecting minority youth than just trying to reduce the proportion of juvenile court cases with minority defendants. The chapter is organized into two sections. The first section concerns the conceptual equipment necessary to assess the impact of legal policies on minority populations. The second section attempts to apply the apparatus developed in the first section to discuss recent chapters in juvenile justice law reform: changes in transfer policy, the deinstitutionalization of status offenders, and the embrace of diversion programs.

This chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to explore whether the separate juvenile justice system should continue to exist and, if so, in what form. It proposes a reimagination of the legal basis for juvenile courts that facilitates their use as a way of ensuring that juvenile offenders end up on the right track rather than in prison. Four models of juvenile justice are discussed from a historical perspective. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter presents a framework for reconceptualizing due process in juvenile justice with the ultimate aim of striking an optimal balance between fairness, accuracy, and efficiency in handling delinquency cases. The first part recaps the procedural history of the juvenile court. Its primary message is that the Supreme Court's procedural reform of the juvenile justice system was based on the Due Process Clause and general principles of fundamental fairness, which leaves the door open to flexible approaches to juvenile justice procedure. The second part then plumbs developments in the broader constitutional jurisprudence of procedure, particularly in the administrative and civil law arenas, which enthusiastically endorse a flexible view of due process. With the legal groundwork laid for the proposition that juvenile justice procedure can be rethought, the third part summarizes research on “procedural justice,” which suggests that the adversarial model of procedure is not necessarily the most “just” model, whether viewed from a subjective or objective perspective. The chapter closes with a discussion of the implications of this research, and a proposal that due process in juvenile justice be reconceptualized in a way that allows empirical research and a performance-based management system to identify those procedures that best promote fairness, accuracy, and efficiency.

This chapter discusses the development of juvenile court. On July 3, 1899, Lucy Flower's vision of a “parental court” for Chicago became a reality when the Honorable Richard Tuthill, a Civil War veteran and respected jurist who had sat on the circuit court for more than a decade, ushered in the modern era for juvenile justice by informally adjudicating the case of 11-year-old Henry Campbell. Juvenile courts, including Chicago's model one, were not immaculate constructions; they were built over time. It took more than a generation to pour form and substance into the idea of a juvenile court. The length of this construction process, which—due to American federalism—varied from state to state, reveals that the history of juvenile justice has not been a simple story of a decline or fall from high foundational principles.

Child protection in the 20th century can be divided into two periods, one before 1962 and one following. This chapter chronicles developments prior to 1962, including the emergence of social work as a profession, the settlement movement on behalf of the poor, the child guidance movement, the pivotal 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, and the birth in 1912 of the U.S. Children's Bureau. It describes the continuing debate over orphanage care versus foster care for children, and the gradual resolution of the issue in favor of foster care. The juvenile court plays a key role in child protection, and the chapter provides detailed analysis of the emergence of the juvenile court. Finally, the gradual transfer of child protection from non-governmental child protection societies to government-funded and -operated child protection agencies is described. The roots of today's child protection system are clearly traceable to the period prior to 1962.

This chapter discusses the adjudicatory process in juvenile court. It covers the adjudicatory hearing, right to counsel, right to jury trial, burden of proof, rules of evidence, confrontation and cross-examination, corroboration of confessions, mental capacity, double jeopardy, and discovery. The chapter also describes waiver of jurisdiction, or certification, whereby the juvenile court waives its jurisdiction over a particular case and transfers, or certifies, the case for criminal prosecution; transfer hearing and requirements of due process; and waiver criteria.

This chapter discusses the substantive principles that should govern the punishment of adolescents who kill. The first section shows that the stereotypical versions of juvenile and criminal courts are not well suited to attain just results in adolescent homicides. The second section uses cases reported in the news to explore the multiple varieties of youth homicides. The third section uses the diminished responsibility and room-to-reform conceptions discussed in Chapter 5 as a method of exploring punishment principles for adolescent killers. The fourth section sets out specific case studies in the meaning of diminished responsibility: the ages at which homicide offenders should be considered to be partially but not fully responsible; appropriate methods for determining deserved punishments for adolescent killers; constructive homicide liability as a problem for the criminal law of adolescence; and capital punishment for young killers.

Chapter 7 describes broad societal changes to reduce child maltreatment. Even if such changes are implemented, some abuse and neglect will occur, and this chapter makes specific recommendations to improve the existing child protection system. It critiques reform proposals by leading scholars on child protection including Duncan Lindsey, Leroy Pelton, and Elizabeth Bartholet. It addresses the lingering effects of racism on decision making in child protection. It argues that one of the primary weaknesses of today's child protection is that no single profession is clearly in charge of child protection. Claims to leadership are made by physicians, mental health professionals, lawyers, and social workers. The chapter asserts that social work must be at the helm, but that social work — particularly social work education — has abdicated its leadership role. It argues for a less adversarial child protection system. In a similar vein, it advocates changes to laws requiring professionals to report suspected maltreatment. It offers recommendations to strengthen foster care, including the new type of foster care called Temporary Permanent Attachment Care (TEPAC). The chapter ends with a controversial proposal to reinvigorate America's juvenile courts.

This chapter discusses the way the juvenile court and its ancillary institutions—the Juvenile Detention Canter, Chicago Parental School, and Institute for Juvenile Research—handled black children’s cases. It also delineates the impact the disproportionate number of black children in juvenile court and an artificial inflation of the number of delinquent black children had on the evolution of juvenile justice law. The sympathetic public sentiment that made the Progressive juvenile justice movement viable had begun to wane by the 1930s. As a result, juvenile justice laws began to be more punitive, and the rehabilitative ideal began to be dismantled.

This chapter presents a discussion on juvenile justice. The Juvenile Justice Act 1986 replaced the Children's Acts. The Juvenile Welfare Board deals with neglected juveniles whereas delinquent juveniles are brought before the juvenile court. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000 expands the definition of the ‘neglected juvenile’ by adding new categories of children. It has brought in some significant changes in an attempt to make the system more child-friendly. However, several critiques of this Act are presented. Juvenile justice has been enhanced by reducing the number of ‘at risk’-youth who enter the system. It is noted that juvenile courts should be vital community resources. The needs of the children and the families who appear in juvenile courts have to be considered. A juvenile court of the twenty-first century must have interdisciplinary connections with law, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, and child welfare administration and management.

This chapter addresses the application of the fundamental fairness test to several areas of the juvenile process, including pretrial detention, arrest and search and seizure, interrogation, transfer between courts, adjudication, and disposition. In some of these areas, the Supreme Court has extended to juveniles some of the constitutional protections that adults enjoy. In other cases it has not. In all cases, however, the Court's analysis will begin with reference to the test enunciated in Gault. The chapter also addresses the matter of the juvenile court's jurisdiction.

This chapter discusses the expansion of juvenile-protection programs from 1918 to the mid-1930s, during which period Japan experienced the rise and collapse of the “Taishō Democracy.” It first describes the spread of social policy, which was meant to stabilize the lives of the poor, and then introduces the juvenile court, where referrals from procurators could be received. The chapter also considers the approaches used by caseworkers to treat delinquent or at-risk youths, and the challenges posed by custodial treatment.

In the Progressive Era South, Reconstruction gave way to the rise of white supremacist redemption, subjecting black youths and communities to more explicitly neglectful, exploitative, and violent forms of Jim Crow juvenile justice. North and South, growing juvenile court communities embraced the racial project of white citizen and state building, prioritizing white youth opportunity and community interests in their pursuit of rehabilitative ideals. The institutionalization of separate and unequal juvenile justice throughout the United States, not a new multiracial democracy, was the Progressive Era legacy of juvenile justice reform in the African American experience. This chapter examines how Progressive Era black youths and communities experienced the emergence of the juvenile court, an encounter dramatized by mass black migration to urban centers where modern juvenile courts emerged.

This chapter discusses the administration of juvenile justice. By passing the Funds to Parents in July 1911, the Illinois General Assembly not only allowed the Chicago Juvenile Court to begin construction of the two-track system for handling the cases of dependent children but also further politicized the administration of juvenile justice. Substantial increases in the system's budget, including the hiring of more probation officers to run the new welfare program, encouraged machine politicians to view the juvenile court as a rich source from which to distribute jobs and pension funds to supporters; in addition, critics of the court attacked its handling of dependency cases in order to challenge the basic premises of progressive juvenile justice.

This chapter uses the global portrait of juvenile courts found in the book to address a central and essential question: why is it almost universal in our contemporary world that special policies toward young offenders have come hand in hand with separate judicial institutions? It considers possible explanations for the almost ubiquitous existence of separate juvenile courts around the world. After briefly analyzing the role that power, emulation, and structural factors have played in the global diffusion of the juvenile court, it discusses what theory of juvenile courts may underlie their actual practices. It argues that the main function that juvenile courts has been to allow juvenile offenders to grow up out of crime and that such a function also provides the best justification for the continuing existence of these courts.

The fourth chapter places the focus on the period 1884-1910, analysing the situation in Scotland at the turn of the century; by this time the statutory system had evolved into a net-widening diversionary mechanism under which thousands of children were detained in institutions of a penal character. An important aim of this chapter is to assess the impact the Children Act 1908 and the introduction of the juvenile court, which means looking beyond this timeframe to the 1920s and 1930s. Crucially, this chapter provides a detailed analysis of archival case studies revealing the way children were dealt with by the courts, including the High Court of Justiciary.

This chapter considers one set of subjective personal factors that influence the extent to which adolescent defendants deserve punishment for particular blameworthy acts. It argues that even when a particular young person possesses the cognitive capacities and social controls necessary to be eligible for punishment, immaturity should continue to be a mitigating circumstance for some time. The chapter is organized into four sections. The first section attempts to create mutually exclusive definitions of capacity and diminished responsibility to avoid a persistent confusion between threshold issues of capacity and questions of the proper level of punishment for an immature offender. The second section argues that juvenile courts in the United States have been a recognized part of a punishment system for at least a generation. The third section first distinguishes between two separate reasons for lower levels of punishment of the immature: penal proportionality and theories of youth as a protected and privileged status. The diminished responsibility doctrine in penal theory is then developed at some length and contrasted to changes in adolescent punishment based on youth policy. The fourth section addresses the relationship between assumptions about immaturity that animate various conceptions of diminished responsibility and other legal doctrines that govern adolescence in modern industrial states.