NCJ Number
77329
Date Published
1981
Length
34 pages
Annotation
Following discussions of the role of the juvenile court in providing youth services and recent trends in the juvenile justice system, this article argues that judicial control over youth services provides better assurance of due process than would executive-administered services.
Abstract
The juvenile courts are inherently legal institutions and not social institutions. The courts have been increasingly transferred out of the social agency community into the justice community because of Gault and subsequent decisions. Indications of this trend include transfers of prosecutorial decisions to prosecutors, the rules and superintendency of higher courts in unified State court systems, and the constant monitoring of all judicial actions by opposing counsel in juvenile adjudicatory hearings. Juvenile courts' authority as employers of court services personnel provides a critical mechanism for successfully maintaining due process in the court services operations. Other factors promoting the courts' elimination of due process problems in their own service arms include their own rulemaking powers and their need to respond to public and appellate court demands for reform. All these factors produce a legal milieu that constrains arbitrary procedures and decisions and fosters accountability. Probation officers will better conform to legal constraints as employees of the court than as executive branch staff members. Departures from impartial decisionmaking at juvenile justice processing stages are best checked by active prosecutor and defense counsel representation. The emerging authority of the prosecutor at the intake stage is a desirable trend. Although abuses of due process occur in courts that both do and do not administer probation, the integration of the juvenile court into the judicial mainstream has promoted due process in the administration of probation services. Footnotes are provided. (Author abstract modified)