Juvenile Justice the Juvenile Criminal Justice System

Juvenile Justice

The Juvenile Criminal Justice System

Juvenile courts and detention separate from adult courts is a relatively new concept (ABA, 2010). Before the turn of the twentieth century, the cases for individuals of all ages were managed by the same criminal and civil courts, and the same sentences were handed out to all parties. Of course, this has changed to a great extent since 1899 in the United States, but there remain those crimes for which youthful offenders, below the age of 18 are tried as adults. This paper examines how the juvenile justice system has evolved over the last 200 years, what can lead to the transfer of a juvenile case to an adult court, and what effect transfer laws have on society.

History

The system that is now in place to house young people who were convicted of some crime separately from adults began with the opening of the House of Refuge in New York in 1825 (CJCJ, 2012). This type of reform to the system in place at the time came from the realization that young people were not as responsible for their actions as adults. In the latter part of the eighteenth century this thinking began with the man who wrote the lawyers bible, Blackstone, when he split offenders into three groups -- infants (birth to 7 years), youth (8-14 years) and adults (older than 14) (ABA, 2010). He believed that children seven years old and younger did not yet have the abstract reasoning required to understand their crimes. However, he said that for those children in the middle group that "malice supplied the age" (ABA, 2010) which meant that if the youth understood that what they did was wrong, then they were liable for the consequent punishment.

Reformers though believed that youth, as well as children, were too young to be incarcerate with adults where they learned a new level of crime and were harassed by the older inmates (CJCJ, 2012). Thus, like the House of Refuge, other states and municipalities began to offer separate justice for youth and adults. Reform schools sprang up around the country with the express idea of rehabilitating the youth before they began a life of crime (ABA, 2010). These institutions tried to offer young people the opportunity to understand the heinousness of their offense and learn how they could become better people despite their early failures. This line of reasoning did not occur in every court, but the movement led to the establishment of the first codes of juvenile justice and the first courts specifically reserved for juvenile offenders.

The desire of these "early" courts was to "rehabilitate rather than punish" youthful offenders (ABA, 2010). A report from the American Bar Association (2010) says that "cases were treated as civil (noncriminal) actions, and the ultimate goal was to guide the juvenile toward a life as a responsible, law-abiding adult." The first of these juvenile courts was set up in Cook County, IL in 1899 (CJCJ, 2012), but it did not take other states long to follow this example. "Within [25] years, most states had set up juvenile justice systems" (ABA, 2010).

The juvenile courts system had issues though. Because of the reform mandate given to them, the justices were sometimes seen as too parental and did not offer enough justice for victims. This led to a rash of court cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) starting in the 1960's. The first of these cases, Kent v. United States, concerned whether a juvenile had the right to a hearing regarding whether s/he should have a case remanded to an adult court (ABA, 2012). SCOTUS found that the juvenile court judge had overstepped his bounds and it was worrisome "that [a child] gets neither the protections accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children" (ABA, 2010). This case was followed by and that sought to further narrow the breadth of possible treatments a juvenile justice could administer. A juvenile court had ordered a 15-year-old youth, Gerald Gault, confined to the Arizona State Industrial School until he reached 21. The Supreme Court heard the case because he was not offered due process and was sentenced to six years confinement same offense that carried a maximum $50 fine for an adult (ABA, 2010). SCOTUS declared that juveniles should be afforded the same due process rights as adults (with some exceptions) as citizens of the United States. A later court case established that juveniles had the same rights to a decision based on the statute of "beyond a reasonable doubt" as adults, and another decided that they did not have right to a jury trial (ABA, 2010). The issue that some justices had with these court cases is that they moved the juvenile courts too close to the proceedings of the adult criminal courts (CJCJ, 2012). This has led, in recent years to the idea of transfer laws which "transfer" a youth's case to an adult criminal court based on the age of the perpetrator, the heinousness of their crime, and the individual's ability to discern right from wrong (OJJDPP, 2010).

Transfer Laws

When a youth commits a crime that is considered serious enough, they can have their case remanded to an adult criminal court. These laws vary from state to state with regard to the age at which an offender can be subject to a transfer and with the severity of the punishment that can be handed down (OJJDP, 2010). The issue is whether these laws, which were enacted as a deterrent against serious juvenile crimes, are actually a deterrent. Many reformers believe that this is a return to the method used before the reforms of the early nineteenth century, and that it not only does not deter more serious future criminal action, the laws encourage it (OJJDP, 2010).