Status Offenses on Juveniles Criminology and Crime Control

CRIMINOLOGY

Criminology: Status Offenses on Juveniles

Status offenses are those crimes that are committed by minors, people below 18 years of age. They are not considered a crime but are misconducts due to their age. If they had been adults, their same actions would have been considered illegal. These illegal actions could include drinking alcohol, smoking, unlawful possession of weapons or drugs, running away from home, or violating lawful policies. This paper aims at providing a stance on the discussion of status offenses. Juvenile courts in the United States have been adjudicated on such dependency cases, and many states have given their standpoints on how they should be adjudicated.

Analysis of Massachusetts Juvenile Court System

The analysis of the juvenile court system in Massachusetts depicts that several young persons of ages 12 to 18 are detained for having committed status offenses, largely alcohol drinking, and have been detained that have harmful effects on their personalities (Citizens for Juvenile Justice, n.a.). The data was retrieved from 2015 results, and it was inferred that these adverse effects later result in incarcerations in future crimes.

Massachusetts has been declared 46th worst among the rest of the states, where the racial and ethnic disparity is observed while arresting the youth offenders for incarceration. However, Massachusetts law declared in 2016 that children committing illegal acts would be provided free counsel regardless of their socioeconomic status or poverty level. It has also been deduced from the same data that children of color and certain ethnicities are detained at higher rates than the rest of juveniles.

Department of Youth Services (DYS) is responsible for taking the offenders as ‘committed’ and lock up in incarceration facilities out of the home. The Massachusetts judge has the duty of adjudication for judging whether the child should be handed over to DYS until he or she reaches 18. After an arrest, when the case is given to the district attorney, the parents or guardians of the children are informed and consulted to conclude whether they should be imprisoned or released to their parents.

The children who end up being detained are less likely to complete their graduation as well. Their healthy social interactions are disturbed, which affects their behavior within incarceration. Therefore, the adjudication of only a small amount of offending juveniles, mainly 3% to 5%, is assigned to DYS.

Currently, Massachusetts police have taken precautionary measures to prevent such children from going deep into the juvenile court system. Alliances with therapeutic communities for children and Massachusetts’ police department have been made to make fewer children arrest with even lesser discrimination based on race and ethnicity. New Massachusetts justice law relevant to juveniles lowered the age gap to 70 to 12 years of children who became par with international standards. It meant that juvenile offenders of this age were to put to incarceration facilities, rather were consigned to social services.

Opinion on United States’ Juvenile Court Jurisdiction about “Status Offenses”

Keeping juvenile offenders under probation would have been a more suitable solution than keeping them locked in an incarceration facility since research has cited that it has negative outcomes. They might turn out to be more stubborn and commit crimes at a higher rate rather than self-regulating and improving one own self towards becoming a better human. Removing them from their homes and putting them in isolation in jail would worsen the matters since addressing the corrective actions would become harder (Arthur & Waugh, 2009).

Finding the causes for running away from homes, especially for girls, has been an acute issue since girls are prone to be exposed to sexual abuse at detention or probation centers. Dealing with troubled girls or boys requires positive treatment for children of adolescent age to develop a productive approach towards society and do not prove to be harmful to the community in the future.

Discrimination against Gender

A study was conducted by collecting data from Oklahoma, US Office of Juvenile Affairs, to evaluate whether girls outnumber boys in juvenile offenses and whether gendered adjudications are given more to boys rather than girls (Spivak et al., 2014). The results revealed that there was a bias in the court’s jurisdictions since girls were more likely to be viewed as guilty and outnumbered boys in this regard. Previous literature has been reviewed in the same study that stated that there were certain times when females faced leniency, and at other times, they face d harsh consequences.

It was for the reason that when females took to opposite gender roles in committing a crime, they were exacted to face stricter reactions in the punitive reinforcements. In light of the ‘evil women’ hypothesis, females are expected to play a specific gender role rather than becoming masculine. The status is offending, and sentencing decisions from the juvenile court in the US are based on the females’ attitudes when criminal offenses occur being a minor.

Also, the results revealed that if poverty level, race, age, historical background, and social class were not taken into account, girls were more likely to face status-offending case reviews than boys based on the ‘evil women’ hypothesis. However, very few were adjudicated guilty or assigned to incarceration facilities by the juvenile court. A weak relationship in the bivariate analysis showed that girls were given custody compared to a probation sentence.

Discrimination against Race or Ethnicity

There has been a slight indication of discrimination of juvenile courts and verdicts regarding status offenses from minorities or youth belonging to different races. A study was conducted based on the collected data from the National Juvenile Court Archive (NJCA) for sixteen states, including 72 countries, for the last thirty years (Leiber & Peck, 2014, p. 82). The study had its foundation rooted in Sampson and Laub’s theory of inequality and social control.

The results indicated limited evidence for the hypothesized relationship between disadvantaged minority communities and mistreatment for juvenile offending. Although there was a slender manifestation in the collected data from several countries, harshness and severity of punishment increased when minorities were involved in certain states, and the strict court treatment on youth shaped the outcomes in their adult years.

This presented an important implication for the juvenile courts, and the state policymakers since intelligent tackling of racial inequalities at earlier stages of juvenile crimes and status offenses would play a major role in increasing crimes in the future, surely implying parameters coupled with demographic, geographic, and contextual basis.

This exploration provided strong substance for creating a link among legal factors, procedures, and adjudicatory decision-making of the state and the country. Legal counseling, behavioral counseling, and punitive control measures have to be remodeled so that status offenses could be handled fairly but controlled.

Suggestions for Appropriately Adjudicating Status Offenses

Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Protection Act (JJDPA) primarily prohibited the detention for status offenders. Still, they were soon faced with rejection from family and juvenile court judges who could not enforce any punishments on the minor committing illegal acts (Arthur & Waugh, 2009).

As a response, the enactment from JJDPA was amended for incarcerating those status offenders who violated court orders (VCO) regarding avoidance of engaging in criminal behaviors like running away from home. This exception has still led the status offenders to be brought to detention centers when they could not stick to the court order, posing a greater risk of harmful influences of the incarceration centers.

The act’s public policy rule has been endangered except for VCO since misbehaving offenders are directed to detention centers to be more exposed to negativity. Even if the juvenile offenders are to be given in the custody of social service agencies so that their behaviors could be improved and positivity could be instilled in their conduct, then the jurisdiction of status offenses would be served. As juvenile offenders are under age for being punished under lawful acts, they are considered troubled if they were forced to engage in illegal activities. Therefore, they should be treated with care and sensitivity to prevent their rash behavior from overcoming them completely.

Each state has its way of approaching this matter since juvenile courts adjudicate the status offenses in their respective ways. For instance, some were in support of protection by assigning juvenile criminals to social service agencies. Other courts were seen adopting the deterrence approach where incarceration for repeat criminal activity was adjudicated. There is a debate amid these two strategies so that negative outcomes in juveniles’ behaviors could be addressed with proper adjudications and jurisdictions from the US’s juvenile court.

Therefore, it is suggested that status offenses should be treated with leniency. The purpose of saying so is that if the first three warnings are given to the juvenile offenders. Still, he engages in wrongdoing. He should be given strict probation orders out of home, probably headed by the social services where he could be engaged in positive activities for changing their attitudes towards delinquency.

If three warnings and probation from social services do not work, then strict orders from the court could be generated. If still VCO is observed, then states have their way of punishing the juveniles. The penalties often include suspension of their driver’s license, paying a certain amount as a fine, placing in supervision like that of foster homes, or requiring the juvenile to attend an educational and counseling program (Michon, n.a.).

These measures would have to be incorporated based on the age levels of the juveniles. For example, if a 15-year-old teen commits a status offense regarding alcohol drinking or possession of a weapon, then for the next three years till he reached the age of 18 and becoming an adult, he would be given various chances and opportunities to revert to his normal routine life without any offensive behaviors.

On the contrary, if he still recidivates, he could be either under probation with a guardian for one year, under the guidance of a social service agency for another year if the problem persists, have his driving license suspended for the third year if the issue is again witnessed, and finally when he is 18 and does not abstain from his illegal activities. He should be tried under a court case.