NCJ Number
163650
Journal
Juvenile Justice Update Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Dated: (August/September 1996) Pages: 1-2,8-11
Date Published
1996
Length
6 pages
Annotation
The author contends that the juvenile court has been transformed from a nominally rehabilitative social welfare agency to a scaled-down criminal court for young people that does not provide treatment or justice and that substantive and procedural convergence between juvenile and criminal courts has eliminated virtually all conceptual and operational differences in criminal social control strategies for young people and adults.
Abstract
The author believes no compelling reasons exist to maintain a procedurally deficient and punitive juvenile court separate from an adult criminal court. Rather, formally recognizing youthfulness as a mitigating factor in sentencing will provide young offenders with adequate protections for criminal law violations, avoid disjunctions caused by maintaining two inconsistent criminal justice systems, and affirm the virtue of personal responsibility. Recent changes in waiver statutes signal a fundamental reversal in juvenile court jurisprudence from treatment to punishment and from rehabilitation to retribution. Judicial discretion also frustrates rational social control and produces a "punishment gap" in the response to young career criminals due to lack of fit between judicial waiver decisions and criminal court sentencing practices. Over the past decade, legislatures have increasingly used age and offense criteria to redefine the boundaries of adulthood. In addition, the impetus to get tough on juvenile offenders is reflected in increased sentencing punitiveness. Although formal procedures of juvenile and criminal courts have converged, a substantial gulf remains between theory and reality. The welfare model of the juvenile court is rejected for two reasons: (1) the individualized justice of a rehabilitative juvenile court is necessarily lawless and lacks effectiveness; (2) the idea of the juvenile court as a social welfare agency is fundamentally flawed. Once social welfare is uncoupled from penal social control, there is no need for a separate juvenile court for young offenders. Nonetheless, certain substantive and procedural issues need to be addressed prior to eliminating the juvenile court. Also, the idea of personal responsibility and holding people accountable for their behavior provides an important cultural counterweight to popular views that everyone is a victim, that all behavior is determined and no one is responsible, and that wrongdoers cannot be blamed.