Evolution of the juvenile justice system

Criminal Justice - Juvenile Justice

EVOLUTION of the AMERICAN JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Parens Patriae vs. The Due Process Model:

The parens patriae model dates back to the Roman Empire and in more modern times, to British justice system. In principle, it refers to the substitution of the King or the State for the parents of children who are incapable of being controlled by their parents (Schmalleger 2008). Under the doctrine of parens patriae, government authorities adopt the responsibility for controlling, disciplining, and punishing children in the place of their parents.

According to the way that parens patriae was employed in the early nineteenth century America, the state sometimes assumed this role in cases where no acts of criminality were involved, such as where the basis of the state's involvement was vagrancy or parental disobedience. This raised a fundamental conflict with the American constitutional principle of due process.

That issue was central to the 1838 case of Ex-parte Crouse because the girl involved (Mary Ann Crouse) had not been convicted of any crime before being confined to the nineteenth-century equivalent of a juvenile detention and rehabilitation center in Philadelphia called the House of Refuge. She had been committed after her mother complained that she was "incorrigible" but she never committed any actual crime. Her commitment by the state was upheld by the appeals court based on the distinction between punishment and assistance and because her confinement was not intended as punishment (Schmalleger 2008).

The next important case that helped reshape the parens patriae approach to juvenile delinquency was decided in the 1870s by the Illinois supreme court in People ex-rel O'Connell v. Turner. In between the two cases (Crouse and O'Connell), the child savers movement had become the basis of the American criminal justice system's philosophy for dealing with juvenile crime and delinquency. The main method used to control and rehabilitate juveniles who could not be controlled by their families and communities was confinement to reform school.

Reform schools were intended to provide a correctional purpose with elements of a family-type of environment. The idea was to remove delinquent children from their families of origin and then relocate and house them in remote rural areas in institutions that fulfilled some of the roles of parent and guardian while also encouraging their rehabilitation in an atmosphere where they were to be "saved" by a family-like structure (Schmalleger 2008). Unlike the 1838 Pennsylvania case, in People ex-rel O'Connell v. Turner, the Illinois supreme court decided that Daniel O'Connell could not be confined against his will to a reform school because, like Crouse, he had not committed a criminal act.

Whereas the due process issue was overcome in Crouse because of the non-punitive nature of the Philadelphia House of Refuge, in O'Connell, the confinement to reform school was clearly punitive and therefore impermissible without a trial by jury (Friedman 2005).

The principle for that decision was that under the doctrine of parens patriae, the state only has the same rights as the parents did originally and cannot legally do anything that exceeded the authority of the parents. The O'Connell case is considered to be the origin of the modern distinction between criminal and non-criminal juvenile conduct (Schmalleger 2008).

In the next two decades following the Illinois O'Connell decision, several other American states (Massachusetts in 1870, New York in 1877, Rhode Island in 1898, and Colorado in 1899) followed the lead of Illinois by separating the administration of juvenile criminal justice from the administration of adult criminal justice. The rationale for the shift was that the purpose of juvenile justice was to distinguish true criminality from mere delinquency in order to prevent stigmatizing troubled children for life by characterizations of their conduct as children. The main principle that underlay this mechanism was expressed as the need to protect the "best interests of the child" in the Illinois Juvenile Court Act, which included protection from adult offenders in correctional institutions as well (Schmalleger 2008). The most important difference between the criminal justice model first introduced by the Illinois legislation and the traditional American constitutional due process model was that it authorized judges to depart from strict legal concepts such as guilt or innocence in the case of juvenile offenders. The idea was that adult offenders are already mature and deserve to be punished for their crimes; on the other hand, juvenile offenders could be still be effectively rehabilitated and taught to conform to society's rules and laws.

This approach left decisions in the hands of judges and encouraged their full consideration of all of the other factors in the life of each juvenile that could have contributed to delinquency. The goal was to take control of offending juveniles in a manner that enabled authorities to help the children and prevent them from developing into adult offenders. In that respect, the system was designed to emphasize correction over punishment and institutional confinement (Schmalleger 2008).

The federal government adopted this particular model in the Juvenile Court Act of 1938 and within the next seven years, every American state had also established a different system for the administration of criminal justice in the case of juvenile and adult offenders. More specifically, this concept of juvenile justice reform reflected five specific principles: (1) the traditional parens patriae concept of state authority over juveniles; (2) the use of non-punitive methods to save children whenever possible; (3) the importance of nurturing juveniles and preventing long-term stigmatization from early offenses; (4) the importance of considering and addressing the different elements that resulted in delinquent or criminal conduct in individual cases; and (5) the use of non- criminal methods in order to avoid a conflict with due process principles that apply to any imposition of criminal punishment by the state (Friedman 2005; Schmalleger 2008).

The Supreme Court and Juvenile Justice Administration:

In the second half of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court issued several important decisions that changed the administration of juvenile criminal justice in the U.S. significantly. In Kent v. U.S. (1966), the Court took its first position on juvenile justice issues and established that juvenile defendants are entitled to procedural hearings at the juvenile court level. In re Gault (1967), the Court decided that juvenile court defendants are also entitled to the same notice of charges, right to counsel, right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and to the fifth amendment right against self- incrimination as defendants in adult court (Scmalleger 2008).

In re Winship (1970), the Court decided that juvenile defendants in family court are entitled to the same standard of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) as defendants in adult court rather than the preponderance of evidence standard of proof previously used in New York in connection with judicial determinations of juvenile delinquency. The following year, in McKeiver v. Pennsylvania (1971), the Court differentiated the standard of proof issue from other traditional rights of defendants and refused to order that all traditional due process standards necessarily apply to juvenile court proceedings, including trial by jury (Scmalleger 2008).

In Breed v. Jones (1975), the Court decided that an adjudication in juvenile court on the issue of delinquency followed by transfer to and adjudication in adult court violated the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution. In Schall v. Martin (1984), the Court decided that preventative detention of juvenile defendants prior to conviction was appropriate when not imposed for punitive purposes but to prevent dangerous delinquent acts before trial. The Court also established procedural requirements of notice, equitable detention hearings, and a judicial explanation of the reason for detention (Scmalleger 2008).

The Unique Problem of Drug Abuse in Society and Juvenile Justice:

The problem of drug abuse raises serious issues about the appropriateness of the due process model of criminal justice administration. On one hand, in contemporary American society, drugs are a scourge that destroys lives, especially in communities already stricken by poverty and other difficult social issues (Dershowitz 2002).

Likewise, the drug trade is always associated with other forms of significant criminal conduct; in some respects, it may even undermine aspects of the War on Terror, such as where large profits from illicit drugs filter back to drug lords in areas of the world where those drug lords finance terrorism (Pinizzotto, Davis, & Miller 2007).

On the other hand, the drug trade typically involves juvenile offenders that are often too young to know any better, in addition to having had no adult role models outside of their criminal gangs. In most gang-infested urban city areas, violent criminal gangs often focus their recruiting efforts on children as young as eight or nine years old, many of whom already have older family members in gangs by that time (Pinizzotto, Davis, & Miller 2007).

The fact that they commit serious crimes of violence means enforcement is absolutely necessary. However, the age of some juvenile offenders makes it difficult to hold them criminally accountable for their crimes and suggests that some form of non- punitive approach could be more beneficial to them and to their communities than introducing them into the criminal justice system at such an early age.

The problem of determining the right approach is compounded by the effects of the culture of violence to which many young offenders are exposed. In some cases, it is possible to reform their behavior but in other cases, juvenile offenders already take on the hardened attitude normally associated with adult offenders. As a result, some juveniles are too far gone to reach through non-punitive methods by the time they reach high school age.