...Juvenile Justice System History of the juvenile justice system The first juvenile court was established in Chicago in 1899. Leading up to this point children over the age of seven were tried in the regular criminal court which lead to many problems in the rehabilitation of juveniles. According to United States Courts (n.d.), “Gerald (“Jerry”) Gault was a 15 year-old accused of making an obscene telephone call to a neighbor, Mrs. Cook, on June 8, 1964. After Mrs. Cook filed a complaint, Gault and a friend, Ronald Lewis, were arrested and taken to the Children’s Detention Home” (para. 1). The Court closely examined the juvenile court system, ultimately determining that, while there are legitimate reasons for treating juveniles and adults differently, juveniles facing an adjudication of delinquency and incarceration are entitled to certain procedural safeguards under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act of 1968 and the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, both stress the importance of separation between noncriminal (status) offenders and those who are accused with criminal offences in terms of legal treatment. In addition, the Acts call for deinstitutionalization of those “light” offenders and demand that convicted juvenile will be removed from adult jails and prisons. Treating young offenders as adults has proved counterproductive and raised questions about the fundamental...
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...old (minors/juveniles/adolescents) ever be tried and sentenced as adults? The legislation of trying and sentencing youth criminals under adult justice system has been a hot topic of debate. Supporters of tough laws on insist the need to enforce harsh penalties to uphold justice. The practice of treating youth criminals as adults since the 1990s is a result of the steep rise in youth crimes. However, youth advocates argue that tough laws should not be applied to youth offenders anymore. The core issue of the controversy is whether, because adolescents are biologically and mentally different from adults, they should be treated differently. For minor offenses such as property crime in which nobody is killed, it is understandable that harsh punishments are not necessary. But there need to be tougher penalties for severe crimes that threaten and take others’ lives. Hence, juveniles under eighteen years old who commit violent crimes such as murder and rape should be tried and sentenced as adults in order to punish them for their mistakes, to lower the crime rates and to protect the society. Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor from Temple University, describes the adolescent brain as “a car with powerful gas pedal and weak brakes” (cited in Hansen, 2010, p.123). This is a good illustration of the fact that humans’ psychosocial abilities do not develop fully before reaching adulthood as cognitive abilities do. A series of experiments studying adolescent and adult impulse control...
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...Some of the challenges that the juvenile justice system is facing due to the adultification of juveniles in the system, is it considered to be unreasonable punishment or it is the justice system way of doing what is best for the child under the notion of parens partiae? Under parens partiae is the notion that the state has the ability to render the state as the child’s guardian. The problem here is that there has been an increase in violence in the juvenile justice system, now this does mot mean that these juveniles are considered to be violent offenders. In Bolin and Applegate research suggest that when adultification happens to a child they do not the mental capacity to withstand the charges and punishments against them. When it comes to the juvenile justice system there have been studies that show that juveniles are more willing to follow the orders of a probation and parole officer more than an adult who sees a probation officer....
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...several changes to the juvenile justice system as well as punishments handed down to juvenile offenders throughout the years, moreover, the controversy surrounding the transfer of juvenile offenders to adult court has been the topic of many debates. Interestingly, it was not until 2005, following a ruling by the United States Supreme Court in the Roper v Simmons case, that the execution of persons under the age of eighteen was prohibited (Elrod & Ryder, 2014). Additionally, this case placed restrictions upon governing courts handling the cases of juvenile offenders to limit their ability to issue punishments mirroring those of an adult offense. A harsher stance was taken in an attempt to combat juvenile delinquency in the 1970s carrying into the 1990s allowing more juveniles to be prosecuted in adult courts (Elrod & Ryder, 2014). This approach nearly doubled the number of juveniles being transferred to adult court, consequently, the number of juvenile offenders being transferred currently have declined as equally as they increased by 2009. A large number of juvenile offenders are still being transferred to...
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...The court case was brought to the Supreme Court in 1967. The court case is about a young 15 year old boy named, Gerald “Jerry” Gault, who apparently made an inapropriate phone call to his neighbor Mrs.Cook. Mrs. Cook filed a report on Gault and another friend of his named, Ronald Lewis. They were then arrested and taken to The Children's Detention Home. At the time Gaults mother and father were at work and were never notified of his arrest due to the officer never making an effort to notify them. His parents eventually learned about the arrest from Ronald Lewis’s parents. When Gaults mother arrived at the detention home, she was then informed that Gaults hearing was scheduled in juvenile court the next day. There was an informal hearing on...
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...never be tried as adults in any court of law. It has been a large and heated debate about if adolescents should be able to be tried as an adult for adult crimes. One side of this argument is that if a teenager commits an adult crime, they should be sentenced reflecting the crime and not the age. Whereas others believe that if a child does not have the same legal rights and responsibilities as adults, they should not be held to adult standards in this case either. In this paper I will explain the disadvantages and inhumanity of this injustice toward our future by using facts, statics, and blogs. In the 18th century, children as young as seven could be tried as adults, in criminal courts, in America. These children were jailed with adults because the first institution designed to accommodate children wasn’t established until the year 1825. The Society for prevention of Juvenile Delinquents founded the New York House of Refuge, which prompted other states to follow their examples by building group homes and half way houses for child offenders. The first juvenile court wasn’t established until the year 1899 in Cook County, Illinois. It took until the year 1925 for 48 out of the 50 states to found juvenile courts as well. An amendment in 1980, mandated that juveniles could not be placed in adult jail, with few exemptions. But these exemptions were later used as loop hole,” In the 1990: almost every state passed laws making it easier to try juveniles in adult criminal courts; 31...
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...Plan to Improve Correctional Facilities Patricia Saylor Dexter Levin Corrections November 10, 2013 In general, rehabilitation programs have been effective in reducing recidivism among prison convicts since they are mostly focused on treating the criminal causing behavior of prisoners by eliminating completely the factors or circumstances that drive them to commit criminal acts. Criminologists such as Martinson who conducted research on the effectiveness of rehabilitative programs such as educational, community based and transcendental programs noted that rehabilitative programs had a higher efficacy when they were oriented towards providing treatment to prison convicts so as to reduce recidivism. Martinson noted that both the educational and transcendental rehabilitative programs were designed to provide prisoners with life skills that they could use to manage their criminal causing behavior as well as equip them with technical skills that would improve the quality of their lives (Prison conditions, 2013). Rehabilitative programs that are focused on the principles of effective intervention are able to target the known factors of recidivism thereby necessitating change and also enabling the incorporation of cognitive or behavioral treatments to reinforce the behavior of the criminal offender by eliminating criminal thinking patterns. Principles of effective intervention ensure that rehabilitative programs are able to take into account the various characteristics of offenders...
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...Keith Carr The Constitutional safeguards provided by the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the United States Constitution describe the means to the principle of due process. These laws are set into place to ensure a safer living environment for all citizens. This paper will focus on these rights and the safeguards with in a juvenile setting as well as adult setting on a day to day basis. The 4th Amendment was put into place to prohibit unreasonable search and seizures of ones property without reasonable cause and without a warrant. Over time the Supreme Court has allowed some changes to this Amendment such as; allowing the police to search a person that has been arrested, the officer sees something in plain sight and search property where the officer feels that there may be danger to their self or the suspect. When it comes to juveniles there are restrictions on this amendment. Only juveniles under age 18 that have been accused of criminal conduct are granted the 4th amendment rights. If the juvenile is being accused of non-criminal behavior the constitution has not been defined (Kenneth T. Hanley, Fourth Amendment Protection for the Juvenile Offender: State, Fordham L. Rev. 1140, 1981). The 5th Amendment states that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public...
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...Juvenile and Adult Courts: A Comparative Analysis Introduction Juvenile and adult courts have different language barriers that separate the two. Juvenile courts tend to use words such as detention hearing, petition, and adjudication to make things seem less harsh. Adult courts use words such as bail hearing, complaint or indictment, and the verdict. Adult courts deal with a stricter sentencing than juvenile courts do. Juvenile courts take the approach of a more controlled approach. Adults are taught to live a healthy and productive life, unlike minors. Juveniles have been reinstated so that they can be released back into society with a fresh start. The languages for juvenile courts are different than that of adult courts. Here are the different languages that separate juvenile courts from adult courts: Adult Courts • Bail Hearing • Trial • Complaint or Indictment • Defendant • Verdict • Guilty Juvenile Courts • Detention hearing • Fact-Finding Hearing • Petition • Respondent • Adjudication • Delinquent or Involved In juvenile courts they don't get a jury; instead the judge is the only person who determines if a minor has broken the law and what his or her punishment will be. The courtroom is closed to the media as well as to the general public. Juveniles are more prone to probation for longer times than adults. (#2)A juvenile's conditions of them being on probation tend to be obnoxious, including having a curfew, getting adequate grades...
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...Since the 1890's, Americans have recognized that children who commit crime should be treated differently than adults. That separation has been eroded significantly since the 1980's and 1990's when the violent crime rate was very high. More recently, with neurological evidence of immature capacities of adolescents, we again acknowledge the differences between youth and adult offenders. Perhaps it is time for another period of reform in our juvenile justice system. When punishing crime there are four goals that can be achieved: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. The modern adult criminal justice system focusses mainly on retribution and incapacitation. As a society, we want to be "tough on crime" so we have all but...
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...Kids Kill Recently the number of murders committed by children increased dramatically. This issue is spreading at a fast rate and is touching families, friends and civilians. Children are becoming more sophisticated and are dealing with new, bigger problems at a younger age. Combined with a violent surrounding, dealing with these problems may cause a more disturbed and brutal “solution” that will be executed by the child. Nothing still shocks as much as a child killing an innocent person or even a parent. Dealing with these children is another problem. Should they be treated as adults or as normal kids and just blame their acts on a childish explanation? With such a serious and alarming concern, an effective solution is desperately required. A child must be taught what’s good and what’s bad. In these conditions, it is best to put these children in a non-violent juvenile prison where they will face a rehabilitation that will hopefully prevent the recurrence of similar future crimes. To begin with, there are several reasons that push children to commit such crimes. According to Heide (2009) a child usually has a tremendous difficulty in accepting that his actions lead to an irreversible result. Many factors may come into place that will cause such behaviors. The psychological side is a major reason in this issue. Children will become dangerous and will most likely commit crimes when they experience difficult and hard conditions in their home places...
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...This issue paper will cover the subject of “Trying Juveniles as Adults”. This has brought up a very controversial topic that people seem to be very passionate about. The rate of minors committing horrendous crimes has been on a steady rise for the past couple of decades (DOJ National Report Series Bulletin, 2011). There are many differences between the court system for Juveniles and the justice system for adults. In Juvenile courts there are no juries and no trails by jury either. In adult courts the sentencing is much harsher and the chance of getting off the hook with some counseling is very slim. If a juvenile is defined as a person under the age of 18, how can you justify trying them in a court designed for adult offenders? Some juvenile cases get transferred to adult criminal court through a process called a “waiver”—when a judge waives the protections that juvenile court provides (www.ojjdp.gov). Usually, juvenile cases that are subject to waiver involve more serious crimes, or minors who have been in trouble before (nolo.com/juveniles youth adult criminal court). Being tried as an adult gives a juvenile more constitutional protections, but it also has disadvantages such as losing the juvenile protections as well. Depending on the crime of the minor, both court systems can punish the individual, but which court can give the appropriate punishment or the “crime”, not the age of the person committing the crime? The big question now is should we the courts show more...
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...Showers consisted of using a bucket to wash yourself as best you could. This caused a lot of sickness and disease, not to mention the stench. Today prisoners are not forced to work and are fed 3 meals a day inside of a cafeteria like atmosphere. Prisoners that do get to perform work are called “trustees”. This is an earned privilege that prisoner request and is granted if qualified by the staff. They are given proper medical attention and also have showers and toilets. Children were later separated from the adults for 3 different reasons. First and foremost, children being placed with adults were taken advantage of, both physically and mentally. They were also treated like adults and needed to be cared for in a different way. By treating them like adults this left little room for them to actually be rehabilitated and learning. The guards of a correctional facility or prison had no way of knowing how to treat a juvenile. This could leave juveniles looking to adult inmates for guidance and comfort....
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...Margie P. Permenter CJ 606: The Transferring of Juvenile Offenders Commentary Three Dr. Yaschica Williams The most serious juvenile crimes have always been the political Achilles’ heel of the American juvenile court Fagan & Zimring (2000). Even when public opinion is tolerant of juvenile delinquency, the teen killer is the nightmare case for the juvenile justice system. In an age where the phrase juvenile super predator is often heard in the federal congress and state legislatures, the deep-end adolescent offender is a particular threat to public acceptance of the mission and objectives of juvenile justice. It is little wonder, then, that legislation concerning transfer is a near-universal feature of the politics of juvenile justice. The traditionally stated purpose of judicial wavier is to permit individualization of the decision whether a particular person is capable of being rehabilitated in the juvenile system-the amenability decision Fagan & Zimring (2000). In addition, the judicial wavier procedure provides a safety value for the juvenile system to exclude children who commit offenses that are believed to require the imposition of sanction that are beyond the capacity of the juvenile system to provide. Some form of judicial wavier or a substitute safety value is necessary in order to preserve the juvenile justice system politically within the context of modern penological expectations. It is difficult empirically to evaluate the contemporary role of judicial...
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...In 2012, The Sentencing Project released results from a survey of people sentenced to life in prison as juveniles and found the defendants in other cases were not uncommon. Seventy-nine percent witnessed violence in their homes regularly, 32% grew up in public housing, and 40% had been enrolled in special education classes. Fewer than half of the prisoners were attending school at the time of their offense, 47% were physically abused, and 77% of girls reported histories of sexual abuse (“Juvenile Life Without Parole”). Is a child who has been through so much mental trauma at such an age of there life deserve to be put in prison for life? “In the U.S. each year, children as young as 13 are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison...
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