Juvenile justice system overview and reform approaches

¶ … Juvenile Justice System - Contemporary Juvenile Justice System and Juvenile Detention Alternatives" by William W. Patton (2012)

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extended the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to all American citizens, including juveniles. Today, juveniles in the United States, though, are considered special cases that require a different adjudicative approach than that provided adult offenders, but it has not always been this way. In fact, until the end of the 19th century, juveniles in the United States who became involved with the criminal justice system were treated in the much the same fashion as adults. By the fin de siecle, reforms had been made to adjudicate youthful offenders in separate channels from adults. Nevertheless, critics maintain that the American criminal justice system continues to respond to periodic calls from the general public for harsher treatment of repeat juvenile offenders in ways that deny them the due process that these young people need to overcome their behaviors and become contributing citizens. To gain some fresh insights into these issues, this paper provides a summary and review of the essay, "Juvenile Justice System - Contemporary Juvenile Justice System and Juvenile Detention Alternatives" by William W. Patton (2012), followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Summary and Review

Although the juvenile criminal justice system is taken for granted today, it took 125 years for the United States to recognize the need for a special venue to hear juvenile criminal cases. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, juveniles in America were largely adjudicated in the same fashion as adults, and children as young as 7 years of age were routinely incarcerated with adult offenders. In response to demands from reformers, special courts and procedures were implemented across the country to handle youthful offenders separately from adults in an effort to rehabilitate them rather than punish them. By the mid-20th century, though, it became increasingly clear that the laudable goals of the reformers for youthful offenders had not been achieved. According to Patton, "From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s the U.S. Supreme Court on several occasions held that the informal structures of the nineteenth century juvenile court denied juveniles due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution" (para. 3).

During the period from 1980 to 2000, the American public developed the erroneous perception that juvenile crime was on the upswing and there were increasing calls for stronger measures against these youthful offenders. These erroneous perceptions were fueled in large part by media reports that sensationalized isolated cases and these high-profile cases painted the juvenile population with a very broad brush. In reality, juvenile offenses have held steady or been declining in the United States for the past 30 years, but there has been an increase in gang activity and bullying in the schools identified in recent years. In this environment, developing effective and timely interventions for these young people has assumed new important and relevance, but American jurisprudence has been slow to react. Indeed, the goal of the American juvenile justice system has changed from rehabilitation to retribution. According to Patton, "Even though the 1990s and early twenty-first century have ushered in a new era of retributive juvenile justice, federal government policies still emphasize a juvenile crime prevention model formally established in 1974" (para. 4).

More worrisome still are the sheer numbers of juvenile offenders that are being subjected to the same conditions as adult offenders despite the availability of a wide range of sentencing alternatives for juveniles. In this regard, Patton emphasizes that, "In 2000 approximately 14,500 children were incarcerated in adult facilities; 9,100 were housed in adult jails and 5,400 in adult prisons" (para. 4). During the period from 1983 to 1998, there was a staggering 366% increase in the number of juveniles who were incarcerated in adult facilities. The implications of these trends are severe: "Juveniles are more likely to be violently victimized and five times as likely to be sexually assaulted if they are placed in an adult rather than a juvenile facility" (Patton, 2012, para. 5). More recently, there have been some moves to restore the rehabilitation model by including parents and criminal justice authorities, but it remains unclear whether these initiatives will achieve their respective goals of reducing recidivism and truancy in ways that will have a corresponding effect on criminal behaviors.