This is a hopeful but complicated era for those with ambitions to reform the juvenile courts and youth-serving public institutions in the United States. As advocates plea for major reforms, many fear the public backlash in making dramatic changes.a Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice aprovides a look at the recent trends in juvenile justice as well as suggestions for reforms and policy changes in the future. Should youth be treated as adults when they break the law? How can youth be deterred from crime? What factors should be considered in how youth are punished?What role should the police have in schools'. This essential volume, edited by two of the leading scholars on juvenile justice, and with contributors who are among the key experts on each issue, the volume focuses on the most pressing issues of the day: the impact of neuroscience on our understanding of brain development and subsequent sentencing, the relationship of schools and the police, the issue of the school-to-prison pipeline, the impact of immigration, the privacy of juvenile records, and the need for national policiesOCoincluding registration requirements--for juvenile sex offenders.a Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice ais not only a timely collection, based on the most current research, but also a forward-thinking volume that anticipates the needs for substantive and future changes in juvenile justice."
This is a hopeful but complicated era for those with ambitions to reform the juvenile courts and youth-serving public institutions in the United States. As advocates plea for major reforms, many fear the public backlash in making dramatic changes. Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice provides a look at the recent trends in juvenile justice as well as suggestions for reforms and policy changes in the future. Should youth be treated as adults when they break the law? How can youth be deterred from crime? What factors should be considered in how youth are punished?What role should the police have in schools? This essential volume, edited by two of the leading scholars on juvenile justice, and with contributors who are among the key experts on each issue, the volume focuses on the most pressing issues of the day: the impact of neuroscience on our understanding of brain development and subsequent sentencing, the relationship of schools and the police, the issue of the school-to-prison pipeline, the impact of immigration, the privacy of juvenile records, and the need for national policies—including registration requirements--for juvenile sex offenders. Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice is not only a timely collection, based on the most current research, but also a forward-thinking volume that anticipates the needs for substantive and future changes in juvenile justice.
"Juvenile justice is part of a broader human rights movement that is concerned with far more than society's response to juvenile lawbreaking. Indeed, as globalization, urbanization, industrialization, and communications quickly spread across the globe, the world's attention increasingly is directed to the plight of all children, regardless of circumstances. This concern is extremely late in coming. Approximately twenty-five percent of the world's population today is age 15 or younger, and the magnitude of the problems these youths face is staggering. Poverty, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and religious differences all influence how children are treated. The reality is that in many societies, children are considered to be economic hindrances and expendable. Local, municipal, state, provincial, territorial, and national governments often lump together the needy, the dependent and neglected, the status offender, those who are mentally ill or violent, and the victims of abuse. These children are discriminated against, victimized, persecuted, and sometimes executed by citizens, police, and paramilitary forces. The problems youths face go to the core of cultural thinking, far beyond the needs of societies simply to fine-tune agencies and the rules already in place for the handling of youths in need. English-speaking countries such as the United States provide many of the ideals that are behind current worldwide efforts to reform the world's approach to juvenile justice. Unfortunately, even world leaders often fall far short of their own ideals. In this regard, the United States is an excellent case study of what is and what could be in juvenile justice in the world today.Evidence-based research provides reason to be positive about the future of juvenile justice in the United States. All of the remaining chapters of this text discuss evidence- based practices in juvenile justice. "Gold standard" programs that have recently been developed to benefit youthful lawbreakers are Blueprints for Violence Prevention developed by Dr. Delbert Elliott, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Model Programs guide, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices.3 In the midst of these hopeful program innovations in the juvenile justice system, there remains wide criticism of juvenile justice in the United States. Some of the criticism focuses on the juvenile court, as well as on the court's rehabilitative parens patriae ("the state as parent") philosophy. Indeed, one characteristic of juvenile justice today is the proposal, from both liberals and conservatives, to reduce the scope of the juvenile court's responsibilities. Conservatives want to refer more law-violating youths to adult court, while many liberals recommend divesting the juvenile court of its jurisdiction over status offenders ( juveniles who have engaged in behaviors for which adults would not be arrested). Some also believe that the adult court could do a much better job than the juvenile court with youthful offenders"--
Winner, 2020 ACJS Outstanding Book Award, given by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences A major statement on the juvenile justice system by one of America’s leading experts The juvenile court lies at the intersection of youth policy and crime policy. Its institutional practices reflect our changing ideas about children and crime control. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court provides a sweeping overview of the American juvenile justice system’s development and change over the past century. Noted law professor and criminologist Barry C. Feld places special emphasis on changes over the last 25 years—the ascendance of get tough crime policies and the more recent Supreme Court recognition that “children are different.” Feld’s comprehensive historical analyses trace juvenile courts’ evolution though four periods—the original Progressive Era, the Due Process Revolution in the 1960s, the Get Tough Era of the 1980s and 1990s, and today’s Kids Are Different era. In each period, changes in the economy, cities, families, race and ethnicity, and politics have shaped juvenile courts’ policies and practices. Changes in juvenile courts’ ends and means—substance and procedure—reflect shifting notions of children’s culpability and competence. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court examines how conservative politicians used coded racial appeals to advocate get tough policies that equated children with adults and more recent Supreme Court decisions that draw on developmental psychology and neuroscience research to bolster its conclusions about youths’ reduced criminal responsibility and diminished competence. Feld draws on lessons from the past to envision a new, developmentally appropriate justice system for children. Ultimately, providing justice for children requires structural changes to reduce social and economic inequality—concentrated poverty in segregated urban areas—that disproportionately expose children of color to juvenile courts’ punitive policies. Historical, prescriptive, and analytical, The Evolution of the Juvenile Court evaluates the author’s past recommendations to abolish juvenile courts in light of this new evidence, and concludes that separate, but reformed, juvenile courts are necessary to protect children who commit crimes and facilitate their successful transition to adulthood.
Juvenile Justice: An Introduction is a student-friendly analysis of all aspects of the juvenile justice system. The book covers the history and development of the juvenile justice system and the unique issues related to juveniles, including police interaction, court processes, due process, movements toward diversion and deinstitutionalization, and community intervention. This book also examines particular issues within juvenile justice, such as female delinquency, gang delinquency, and the use of the death penalty and Life Without Parole with juveniles. Evidence-based suggestions for successful interventions and treatment are included, with a focus on performing cost-benefit analyses of what works versus what is ineffective with juveniles. The book concludes with a look to the future of the juvenile court, including the real possibility of abolition .
Several million reported and unreported delinquent acts take place each year. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, juvenile delinquency, acting-out and oppositional behavior, illegal drugs, guns, and youth violence are pervasive throughout American society. Juvenile Justice Sourcebook is the first comprehensive volume devoted exclusively to the biopsychosocial assessment, police and juvenile court processing, and institutional and community-based treatment and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. The overriding objective of this sourcebook is to trace the tremendous progress achieved toward resolving juvenile justice issues, dilemmas, and controversies, while providing futuristic visions for the juvenile justice field. Each chapter, authored by preeminent expert practitioners and researchers, explores topics ranging from innovative counseling and multisystemic programs, to restorative justice, to rehabilitation programs such as aggression replacement training, wilderness programs, family treatment, substance abuse treatment, restitution, and aftercare. This volume, grounded in history and exhaustive research, presents the latest evidence-based policies, programs, and innovative treatment alternatives. Examining the entire juvenile justice system, including juvenile law, policies, practices, and research, the Juvenile Justice Sourcebook will be invaluable to all juvenile justice practitioners, policy analysts, researchers, and students.
In 2003, when Terrence Graham was sixteen, he and three other teens attempted to rob a barbeque restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida. Though they left with no money, and no one was seriously injured, Terrence was sentenced to die in prison for his involvement in that crime. As shocking as Terrence's sentence sounds, it is merely a symptom of contemporary American juvenile justice practices. In the United States, adolescents are routinely transferred out of juvenile court and into adult criminal court without any judicial oversight. Once in adult court, children can be sentenced without regard for their youth. Juveniles are housed in adult correctional facilities, they may be held in solitary confinement, and they experience the highest rates of sexual and physical assault among inmates. Until 2005, children convicted in America's courts were subject to the death penalty; today, they still may be sentenced to die in prison-no matter what efforts they make to rehabilitate themselves. America has waged a war on kids. In The War on Kids, Cara Drinan reveals how the United States went from being a pioneer to an international pariah in its juvenile sentencing practices. Academics and journalists have long recognized the failings of juvenile justice practices in this country and have called for change. Despite the uncertain political climate, there is hope that recent Supreme Court decisions may finally make those calls a reality. The War on Kids seizes upon this moment of judicial and political recognition that children are different in the eyes of the law. Drinan chronicles the shortcomings of juvenile justice by drawing upon social science, legal decisions, and first-hand correspondence with Terrence and others like him-individuals whose adolescent errors have cost them their lives. At the same time, The War on Kids maps out concrete steps that states can take to correct the course of American juvenile justice.
In Our Children, Their Children, a prominent team of researchers argues that a second-rate and increasingly punitive juvenile justice system is allowed to persist because most people believe it is designed for children in other ethnic and socioeconomic groups. While public opinion, laws, and social policies that convey distinctions between "our children" and "their children" may seem to conflict with the American ideal of blind justice, they are hardly at odds with patterns of group differentiation and inequality that have characterized much of American history. Our Children, Their Children provides a state-of-the-science examination of racial and ethnic disparities in the American juvenile justice system. Here, contributors document the precise magnitude of these disparities, seek to determine their causes, and propose potential solutions. In addition to race and ethnicity, contributors also look at the effects on juvenile justice of suburban sprawl, the impact of family and neighborhood, bias in postarrest decisions, and mental health issues. Assessing the implications of these differences for public policy initiatives and legal reforms, this volume is the first critical summary of what is known and unknown in this important area of social research.
In 1962, a 15-year-old Arizona boy named Gerald Gault may or may not have made a lewd phone call to a neighbor. Gerald was arrested, prosecuted, removed from his parents’ custody, and sent to a juvenile prison, all without legal representation. Gerald’s mother’s outrage at the treatment of her son eventually propelled the case to the United States Supreme Court. With its sweeping 1967 decision in In re Gault, the Court revolutionized the American juvenile court system by finding that children charged with delinquency have a constitutional right to counsel. This anthology, which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Gault decision, blends, across its three parts, legal and historical analyses, oral history, and personal narrative to provide an overview of modern Supreme Court juvenile justice jurisprudence, the advocates and organizations that defend children in juvenile court, the role these lawyers have played in the fight for justice for accused children, and the contemporary challenges facing juvenile defenders and their clients. The authors are leading juvenile justice reformers, advocates, and scholars, all of whom have been deeply involved in shaping modern juvenile justice policy and practice and most of whom have represented children in juvenile court. This book is for everyone concerned about justice in America. The personal narratives about children in the system will intrigue students and academics, engage lay individuals who are interested in children’s rights, and guide professionals, legislators, and other policymakers involved in juvenile justice reform and criminology.
