Juvenile offenders who commit serious or violent crime may need incarceration in order to protect public safety and concentrated supervision and involvement to become rehabilitated. On the other hand, a lot of offenders can be successfully rehabilitated by way of community-based supervision and intervention (Austin, Johnson, & Weitzer, 2005)
As such, the 1970's reflected considerable growth in diversion programs, bolstered by significant federal investments in these initiatives. Rising juvenile crime rates in the 1980's and early 1990's caused the political pendulum to swing in the opposite direction, fueling fears that the country was under assault by a generation of violent youth" (Skowyra & Powell, 2006)
The authors make the argument that the current system is both too costly and unfair. It is judges and prosecutors that decide whether or not a juvenile will be tried as an adult in cases of serious crimes (Crippen 1999)
Often times, these decisions are made only on the matters currently at hand, with little regard to long-term impacts on cost, and so these decisions can end up being extremely expensive in the long run both in terms of money and sanctity of punishment. Thus, the main reform issue here is not the integration of the juvenile system into the most cost-effective adult system, but rather "a regime that maintains a firm boundary between the juvenile and criminal systems and excludes from the juvenile court's jurisdiction only a small number of older youths charged with serious crimes" (Scott & Steinberg 2008 p 229)
Bishop et al. discovered that transferring juveniles to the criminal justice system from the juvenile justice system did have an impact on recidivism rates, but that impact was not the desired one; juveniles in the criminal justice system were more likely to reoffend than their matched controls in the juvenile justice system (Bishop et al
Putting aside the issue of whether it is even appropriate to punish these children at all, it certainly seems clear that they could benefit from the supervisory aspects of the juvenile justice system, rather than the punitive aspects of the criminal justice system. In fact, sanction-oriented programs have a negative impact overall, because they result in a larger number of youth spending greater period of time in the system (Ezell, 1989)
Moreover, historically transfer to the adult system was reserved for those juveniles whose pattern of criminal behavior demonstrated that they were not benefitting from the juvenile justice system, rather than due to the nature of the underlying offense. In fact, for more than five decades, juveniles charged with murder were more likely than not to be retained in the juvenile court, beneficiaries of both its diversionary and stigma avoidance rationales" (Fagan, 2008)
"Diversion programs must handle only youngsters who otherwise would enter, or penetrate further into, the justice system. We must have some reasonable certainty that they would do so; 6-year-old clients, many first offenders, and many minor offenders do not offer that reasonable certainty" (Klein, 1979)
As such, it is not equipped to deal with some of the serious issues in modern juvenile criminality. Kupchik points out that the juvenile justice system and the criminal justice system differ in three significant ways: evaluative criteria, sentencing goals, and the formality of the proceedings (Kupchik, 2003)
Pogrebin et al. pointed out that one of the problems with the juvenile justice system is that it fails to protect the constitutional rights of the youth that are involved in it (Pogrebin et al
Thus, "State laws that send some individuals under age 18 to trial and prison as adults have achieved the opposite of what the policy's proponents intended, a new research review concludes. Transferring young people into adult systems yields substantially higher rates of later serious crimes compared with youths handled by juvenile-justice systems" (Bower, 2007)
One such state is Texas, in which the death penalty for juveniles is not out of the ordinary (Axtman, 2001). While there are those that argue that murderous acts should be punished regardless of age, there are also opinions that consider that up to a certain age, the brain fails to develop to its full capacity and the centers that are responsible for reasoning are the ones that develop last, in the early 20s of a young adult (Juvenile System Reform Committee, 2011) It is rather difficult to argue on one side or another, however it must be pointed out that while other types of sentencing, such as life in prison, or maximum years spent in jail may be reversed as it has happened in numerous cases, the death sentence once completed cannot be reversed (Whitehead and Lab, 2012)
However, in order to be able to get out of custody before the full time, the minor has to prove that there has been a change of behavior and that he is not a danger to the community anymore, nor is he a flight risk. The other difference in the proceedings between the adult and juvenile court system is that juvenile courtroom is usually closed to the media and the general public during the adjudication unlike the adult court proceedings where the general public is allowed in and even the media is allowed into the proceedings (Katya Komisaruk, 2007)
This is the common age limit that exists across most states except in Wyoming where the age is 19 years or younger (Whitehead & Lab, 1999). It is worth noting that by 2006, there were 92,854 juvenile delinquents living in the detention centers and a significant 70% were teenagers who were between 15 years and 17 years old, a smaller 15% were 18 years and another 15% being the age of 14 years (Lesley Barker, 2011)
Some status offences are based on the sex, race, religion, nationality and so on. For instance there are some laws that prohibit using ladies public toilets f you are a man, curfew laws for people of some age are some other instances though not widely thought of as such (Net Industries, 2011)
New York: Wardsworth. Criminal justice-delinquency The English Common Law and the early American colonial law subjected juveniles aged seven or older to trial in adult courts so long as they were deemed legally competent (Austin, Johnson & Gregoriou, 2000)
After the reform movement, children were seen as immature, malleable and developing individuals who were different entities from the adults. As opposed to applying the retributive justice for the adults, the reformers advocated for educating and nurturing children so that they could become productive members of the society as opposed to being housed with adult criminals (Barry, 1999)
Juvenile court proceedings were informal. Their main purpose was to protect the children (Billchik, 1999)
The rehabilitative approach is also observed to be self regenerative in nature in that, the juvenile will clearly understand the mistake they made, they will be helped through it, then once they get back to the society, after the completion of the rehabilitation and not necessarily the full length of time, they will be able to act as examples to other juveniles out there and indeed teach them the values they learnt while under the rehabilitation project. Critics of rehabilitation have also averred that focus on rehabilitation produces sentencing disparity as sentencing becomes geared to the varying lengths of time considered required for rehabilitation (Weatherburn, 1982)
Societal, there was a sense of responsibility to the juvenile delinquent population to rehabilitate and possible deter them from further criminal activity and ending up a part of the adult justice system. The state took on increased responsibility as guardian for juvenile delinquents, and began to treat offenders in a youth focused system (Allen, 1981)