juvenile justice history
The problem of how to deal with juvenile offenders has plagued society since before the establishment of the first juvenile court in 1899. Prior to that development, delinquent juveniles were processed through the adult court and often received harsh punishment. By 1945, separate juvenile courts existed in every state. Like the adult system, throughout most of the 20th century, the juvenile justice system was based upon a medical/rehabilitative model. The original goals of the juvenile court were to investigate, diagnose, and prescribe treatment for offenders, not to adjudicate guilt or fix blame. The court operated under the doctrine of parens patriae that meant that the state would step in and act as a parent on behalf of a misbehaving juvenile. Proceedings were informal and a juvenile court judge had an enormous amount of discretion in the disposition of juvenile cases, much like the discretion afforded judges in adult criminal settings until the 1970s. In line with the early juvenile court's philosophy of protecting youth, juvenile offenders' placement was often in reformatories or training schools that were designed, in theory, to keep them away from the bad influences of society and to instill self
-control through rigorous structure and harsh discipline. Contrary to the underlying theory, throughout the first part of the century, the institutions that housed juveniles were often dangerous and unhealthy places where the state warehoused delinquent, neglected, and abandoned children for indefinite periods. Common problems included lack of medical care, rehabilitation programs, and even food. Some poor conditions persist even today. As stated earlier, for the majority of this century, the principles underlying the practices of the juvenile court and the juvenile justice system were the protection and rehabilitation of offenders. Informality was the rule. Procedures observed in the separate adult criminal system, such as the right to counsel, notice requirements, and other due process guarantees, were not formally available to juveniles. The corresponding notion of punishment was that juveniles would receive guidance and treatment from the system. In reality, juvenile dispositions could be as harsh and incapacitative as adult sentences. In the late 1960s, concern about the apparently unconstitutional contradiction between the informality of the juvenile proceedings and the possible deprivation of liberty faced by a juvenile offender led to a series of court cases that would forever change the face of juvenile justice. These Supreme Court decisions extended many of the same due process safeguards to juvenile offenders that previously had been available only to adults. Some believe that extending these procedures to the juvenile justice process removed most of the substantive differences that separated the
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1092
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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