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Paper Abstract: Discusses the pros and cons of a separate juvenile system. Arguments and opinions on whether age should determine an individual's guilt and criminality. Contends that children who break the law should be treated differently from adults. The roots of juvenile justice as a concept in America. Public attitudes. Age and criminal intent. Paper Introduction: This paper is a discussion of the pros and cons of having a separate system of justice to deal with juvenile crime. Since the first courts were established to provide for different ways of dealing with youthful offenders, American society has gone through alternating waves in its opinions about whether age should determine an individual=s culpability and what the primary purpose of juvenile justice should be. Research has tried to find out whether more severe penalties or the assignment of certain crimes to adult courts, despite the age of the perpetrator, have any effects on the frequency or the rate of recidivism of especially violent crimes, with mixed results. The system as it exists treats younger offenders inconsistently, often depriving them of rights which are routinely part of the adult system. Most experts agree that juvenile justice in Ameri Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Values are still being formed,cognition is still developing, and the physical body is still growing andmaturing. (1985). Corrections Today, 61(6), 148-15 . H. Redding, R. Redding (1999, April) points out: Juvenile court adjudication . However, Friedman (1985) argues,AJuvenile justice was a reform hatched by the >child-savers= of thenineteenth century. Rosenbaum, S. Finally, growing public sentiment against very young criminals, thoseunder the age of 14, has increased the number of such children who areplaced in custody, as has the dearth of other choices of what to do withthem. Juvenile crime, even more sothan adult crime, occurs within a community context. . Friedman (1985) writes, AAs early as 1825,New York set up a >House of Refuge= for juveniles@ (p. Twelve-year-old Lionel Tate was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility ofparole for battering a 6-year-old girl to death in Florida when he was just1 . (1991). Kotlowitz (1991) notes that the increase Acould be [due to] therampant use of drugs or the unwillingness of the police to let juveniles gowith just a warning, or the greater effort, for political reasons, toprosecute even the most minor of offenses@ (p. He(1999, October) writes, AMajor issues we see repeated in troubledinstitutions have to do with crowding, special needs populations(especially juveniles who are very young, mentally ill or mentallyretarded), the increased use of adult correctional practices in juvenilefacilities and education@ (p. 149). E. Yet such a system should pay more attentionthan a adult system to individual needs, specific circumstances, and thepossibility for putting the offender back on track toward more sociallysanctioned behavior, and the existing system, stretched beyond its limits,does no such thing. 598). 15 ). That sentence stimulated a conflicted public reaction that Ripley(2 1, March 19) calls Aone glimmer of what legal experts describe as alooming backlash against the tough-on-juvenile-crime bills that politiciansscrambled to enact over the past 1 to 15 years@ (p. Psychologists have long realized that childhood is an earlier stage ofdevelopment of the mature human being. S. Corrections Toady, 61(2), 92-1 . Rosenbaum, chief of the Special Litigation Section of the Civil RightsDivision of the U. Since the first courts wereestablished to provide for different ways of dealing with youthfuloffenders, American society has gone through alternating waves in itsopinions about whether age should determine an individual=s culpability andwhat the primary purpose of juvenile justice should be. Just as Ait takes avillage to raise a child,@ so too does keeping children from becominghabitual criminals fall to the larger society. . 151). By lumping all infractions (except the most serious, which then getthe offender fast-tracked into an adult system that allows little or noconsideration of juvenile status to temper justice) into a single legalpool, the current system offers no chance for trying alternate solutions.Redding (1999, April) argues, AEven for violent offenders, some community-based programs have proved effective, particularly those that arecomprehensive and long-term . StevenH. 599). This paper argues that children who break the law should infact be treated differently from adults but that the existing structureneeds, at the very least, modifications that take their relative youth intoaccount. Even when a proper diagnosis is made,the child=s special needs may not be met as effectively as they would be inthe regular school system because of the lack of trained personnel andresources within the juvenile justice system. Alex Kotlowitz (1991) chronicles Illinois= system more than 9 yearslater, in which 25 probation officers and 137 state=s attorneys, publicguardians, and public defenders struggle to handle 75 to 8 cases each day,twice as many as the average adult court. not [troubling] themselves much with determiningthe motives of those usually considered to be still incapable of adultreasoning@ (p. . may tend to adjudicate juveniles as delinquent without sufficient evidence to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (p. 34). The first true juvenile court was establishedin Illinois in 1899, and, within 2 years, almost every state had someversion of its own of such court. References Friedman, L. 98). (1999, April). 94).Kotlowitz=s book focuses on two inner-city brothers whose encounters withjuvenile justice always seem to begin with the presumption of their guilt. . Crowding stretches institutional resources and often preventsinstitutions from separating Avulnerable juveniles from those who may harmthem@ (Rosenbaum, 1999, October, p. Rosenbaum (1999, October) notes, AOften, the decision to place thesejuveniles in secure facilities reflects the lack of other alternativeoptions, rather than a judgment of the true security risks of the children@(p. By 1884, New York=s judges had the discretion to assign delinquentsunder the age of 16 to the care of a guardian or an institution, ratherthan sending them to prison. Time, p.34. O. 268). Ripley, A. . Currently, many laws concerning juveniles, especially those whocommit particularly heinous crimes, do not allow judges and prosecutors totake the specific facts of the case into account in determining how tohandle cases on a unique basis. may lack the same reliability as [an adult] criminal court . Lawyers, many of whom seechildren=s court as a necessary stepping stone to Areal@ court, oftenhandle 4 active cases at a time, frequently with about five minutes toprepare for each one (p. Such recognition iscritical to an enlightened society that serves the needs of all itsmembers, including those who are still learning and growing. Even when children are not referred to adult courts, the systems towhich they are assigned is often modeled on the adult counterparts. Even in suchextreme cases, the public is beginning to understand that age does make adifference and ought to be considered in trying and sentencing juveniles. Most experts agree that juvenilejustice in America needs reform but disagree on the extent to which changeis needed. It isunrealistic to think that changes in the juvenile justice system will solvethe crime problem [by themselves]@ (p. Juvenile justice as a concept in America has its roots in the earlypart of the 18 s. The key to deciding this issue is to agree about whether or not agealone makes a fundamental difference in criminal intent, criminal activity,and the subsequent punishment that such behavior ought to trigger.Juvenile courts were first established because a consensus of opinionagreed that individuals under a certain age had less culpability, lessability to understand and act on the concepts of right and wrong, and weremore basically likely to be able to benefit from rehabilitation effortsrather than simple punishment. Children of poverty andwith minority backgrounds are disproportionately represented within thejuvenile justice system, and the societal forces that make these childrenmore likely to break the law must be addressed through positive economicand anti-discrimination efforts. 34), and it is unlikely that the adult mind canfully understand the mindset of the child who breaks an adult-written law. Social Work, 43(4), 324-334. A history of American law. This paper is a discussion of the pros and cons of having a separatesystem of justice to deal with juvenile crime. It also makes giving adequateeducation difficult or impossible, magnifying the problems faced inordinary classrooms with too many students and not enough teachers byadding the element of the delinquency of those students to an alreadycomplex mix. . New York: Simon& Schuster. [and] multisystemic treatment is costlyand resource-intensive, but far less costly than incarceration, which costsabout $3 , per year, per juvenile@ (p. The child who commits a crime, whether it is a minor infractionsuch as breaking a window or a much more severe crime, such as Tate=sdeadly actions, does so with less understanding and within a lesscomprehensive context than does his or her adult counterpart. . There generally is not a trial by jury; juvenile courts often follow evidentiary and procedural rules less rigorously and, in practice, the system . . Having a separate system for considering juvenile actions is, at thevery least, an acknowledgment that children are in fact different fromadults in significant ways. In times whencriminality is defined more strictly, more actions are defined as crimesand the recorded rate cannot help but rise. (1999, October). The system as it exists treats youngeroffenders inconsistently, often depriving them of rights which areroutinely part of the adult system. 34). Juveniles with special needs are sometimes more likely to enter thejuvenile justice system and may not be properly diagnosed, sinceApredictable behavior relating to mental illness [can be] interpreted byinadequately trained staff as disobedience, defiance or even threats(Rosenbaum, 1999, October, p. Howard (1998, July) note, AThe House of Refuge, andthe development of institutions for juveniles in Massachusetts, embodiedthe belief that children should be treated separately from adult offenders@(p. In order to more effectivelyserve both the children subjected to the system and the society in whichthey live, individual rights must be guarded and preserved with as muchvigilance as that given to guarding the rights of every adult accused of acrime. Civil rights issues in juveniledetention and correctional systems. Its paternalism, middle-class bias, and absence of dueprocess make it seem less progressive after eighty-five years than it didto the good people of its day@ (p. Kotlowitz, A. While the impulses fueling it have fluctuatedaccording to changing attitudes about crime and individual responsibility,they must recognize that children have, by definition, a diminishedcapacity for accepting responsibility and for fully understanding the adultconcepts of right and wrong and the rights of others. 328). There are no children here. Lawrence M. Public attitudes toward juvenile justice have been cyclical, as thesystem has alternately tried to focus either on rehabilitation orchastisement, depending on the prevailing force of public sentiment.Jenson and Howard (1998, July) note that 197 -85, for instance, were aperiod of decriminalization and deinstitutionalization, while the mid-198 ssaw a swing back to punishment and criminalization, the result of severalhighly-publicized crimes that influenced the public perception, largelyerroneous, that juvenile crime was becoming both more prevalent and moreviolent. 154).Yet, as Richard E. Rosenbaum (1999, October) observes, ABoth physically and operationally,juvenile facilities are increasingly like adult jails and prisons . The perception has also helped make it easier for many prosecutors totransfer more serious cases to adult courts. Yet many of those cases have started to swing the court of publicopinion back toward more individual considerations and toward a deeperappreciation of the special nature of the underage offender. . 149). M. Research has triedto find out whether more severe penalties or the assignment of certaincrimes to adult courts, despite the age of the perpetrator, have anyeffects on the frequency or the rate of recidivism of especially violentcrimes, with mixed results. Jeffrey M.Jenson and Matthew O. A number ofdifferent legal initiatives, including the much-discussed Athree strikes@laws and other forms of mandatory sentencing, are the results of the trendtoward taking discretion and individual circumstance out of the legalequation. 68). By looking for a diversearray of alternatives to simply locking up offenders, the existing systemmight actually be able to stretch its resources farther and make moreeffective use of its budgets. Examining legal issues: Juvenileoffenders in criminal court and adult prison. Amanda Ripley (2 1, March19) writes, ABetween 1992 and 1997, all but six states made it easier totry kids as adults . The system also gives fewer rights to juveniles, while labeling themas delinquent, a label that can linger long after the court record issealed and the child has become an adult. (1998, July), Youth crime, publicpolicy, and practice in the juvenile justice system: Recent trends andneeded reforms. Department of Justice, outlined some of the othersignificant problems with the juvenile justice system in America. 325). Jenson, J. As Ripley(2 1, March 19) writes, AWe will never know what vision 12-year-old LionelTate had of himself@ (p. . (2 1, March 19). M., & Howard, M. New York: Anchor. While some statistics do in fact show crime rates among minors tobe on the rise, experts disagree about whether or not this is an accuraterecord. . .despite the very different needs and legal rights of juveniles@ (p. Juvenile justice arose from a paternalistic effort to protect weaker,less mature members of society and work to turn them into productive,participating adults. Public opinion since then has wavered on this consensus. Jenson and Howard (1998, July) contend, ANumerous factors contributeto a young person=s decision to engage in crime, and members of thecommunity share the responsibility for addressing these factors. Throwing the book at kids. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.