NCJ Number
192950
Date Published
2000
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This chapter traces the evolution of the transfer of juveniles to criminal court as a practice and an issue in the early days of juvenile court operations in Chicago.
Abstract
The chapter begins with a prehistory of the juvenile court that examines the radical reconstruction of the relationship between the child and the state in the late 19th century, which laid the conceptual foundation for modern juvenile justice in America as well as abroad. The author then examines the period from approximately 1900 to 1920, focusing on America's model court in Chicago in order to learn how early officials handled difficult cases that involved juveniles accused of serious crimes. The chapter then explores how in the 1920's and 1930's supporters of besieged juvenile courts articulated a theory of judicial waiver to defend them against mounting criticism. In these years, public concerns about modern youth and crime waves produced harsh critiques of court systems as inefficient and ineffectual. The theory of judicial waiver helped to shield juvenile courts against these charges by asserting that the juvenile court judge's expertise made him/her a qualified state actor to protect the community against dangerous youth. Accordingly, the judge should have the discretion to decide how individual cases should be handled. This defense of judicial wavier, which made the case for judicial discretion, set the terms for subsequent debates over the boundaries of juvenile justice that developed after World War II. After the war, renewed public concerns about youth crime and the beginning of sustained critiques of juvenile justice by the legal community focused attention on procedural matters, including whether children should have the constitutional right to due process in juvenile court. By the early 1960's, there were concerted attempts by scholars to discover how practices such as transfer worked and efforts to define how they should work. In "Kent v. United States" (1966) "Kent" was decided in this context of rethinking the basic assumptions of juvenile justice. The decision, however, clouded the issue of transfer by helping to establish the appearance of uniformity in how the Nation's juvenile courts exercised this procedure, while at the same time insulating the practice from appellate review on due process grounds. Moreover, the changing political landscape of the 1970's would leave "Kent" standing as a monument of a passing era instead of a symbol of a new age. 34 notes and 98 references