Juvenile Justice Juvenile Delinquency Is the Misdemeanors

Juvenile Justice

Juvenile delinquency is the misdemeanors or the breach of law that is committed by an American or a person living in America but still under the age of 18 years old. This is the common age limit that exists across most states except in Wyoming where the age is 19 years or younger (Whitehead & Lab, 1999). It is worth noting that by 2006, there were 92,854 juvenile delinquents living in the detention centers and a significant 70% were teenagers who were between 15 years and 17 years old, a smaller 15% were 18 years and another 15% being the age of 14 years (Lesley Barker, 2011).

In order to fully comprehend the nature of the current Juvenile Justice System, it is of paramount significance to peruse through the history of the juvenile system from the early years till now. Children above five years old were taken as either small adults or property in the colonial times in America. They were sentenced in criminal courts for offences like cursing parents, petty theft and other such lots of cases. This continued for a long time till in 1825 when the Society for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency pushed for the separation of the juvenile from the adults in terms of justice administration. There after numerous cities built juvenile facilities which were majorly aimed at reforming the delinquents through hard work, prayers, whipping and even studies. However, by mid of the century these facilities were accused of child abuse hence the state took over the management of the juvenile facilities.

With this development, the first juvenile court was established in Chicago in 1899 for handling children offenders or delinquents of 16 years and below. This was also focused on rehabilitation rather than pure punishment. With the precedence set, by 1952 almost all states, with exception of two, had set up juvenile courts where warning, confinement, probation were some of the methods employed to help turn possible criminal in the future into useful citizens to the U.S.

There are, therefore, significant differences that exist between the adult courts and the juvenile courts that help set them apart. In the adult courts, there is usually what is referred to as bail hearings conducted against the suspects that are presented before the courts. This is quite different in the juvenile court system. In the juvenile court system this is referred to as the detention hearing which involves basically what is happening in the bail hearing but applied in the scope of the juveniles.

The adult court system also carries out full trial with the attorneys availed to defend both arguments for the two sides of the cases, while the juvenile court is a fact-finding hearing that is formatted to find out the hard facts about the misdemeanor of the juvenile as indicated by the community officer or the parents.

In the adult court system, the person accused faces a Complaint or Indictment against him that the court judges will have to go through and determine the truth of the crime and accordingly pass a judgment while on the other hand, the juvenile system hosts a petition against the juveniles in a bid to mitigate against the repeat of a given misdemeanor displayed by the juvenile.

In the adult court system, there is a defendant that is put to task to prove their innocence by themselves or through their lawyers, yet in the juvenile justice system, we have respondents and not defendants. It is also worth noting that against the respondents adjudication is passed, different from the verdict that is passed against the defendants in an adult court. Adjudications in the juvenile systems are also pronounced differently from the adult court, since the juveniles can be found delinquent or involved in the delinquency but in the adult court, the defendant can be pronounced guilty.

The other very significant difference that exists between the two justice systems is that there is no jury in the juvenile cases, instead the judge alone takes the mandate to decide on the delinquency or otherwise and as well determine the punishment for the involved minor.

Another significant procedural difference is that the juveniles do not have the options of bail. However, in order to be able to get out of custody before the full time, the minor has to prove that there has been a change of behavior and that he is not a danger to the community anymore, nor is he a flight risk.

The other difference in the proceedings between the adult and juvenile court system is that juvenile courtroom is usually closed to the media and the general public during the adjudication unlike the adult court proceedings where the general public is allowed in and even the media is allowed into the proceedings (Katya Komisaruk, 2007).

There are some crimes that are considered status offence in many countries including USA. Status offence is an offence that is committed not based on the omission or commission of prohibited acts but is purely based on the fact that the offender has some personal character or condition most of which are not immediately changeable. If the same act was committed by an adult, then it would not be considered an offense. Juvenile status offence cannot be committed by adults and some examples include possession of firearm is not allowed for minors but adults can possess, consumption of alcohol, truancy, tobacco smoking and running away from home. Some status offences are based on the sex, race, religion, nationality and so on. For instance there are some laws that prohibit using ladies public toilets f you are a man, curfew laws for people of some age are some other instances though not widely thought of as such (Net Industries, 2011).

According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) (2009), there was a drop in the juvenile arrest from 1996 to 2008 by a significant 33%, presumably due to the decreased crime rates and not laxity on the part of the police or law enforcement agencies and parents. OJJDP also indicated that in 2008, there were 6,318 arrests for every 100,000 youth of the ages 10 through 17 in the United States.