Issues for Resolution in the Eighties - Family Courts and Retribution

• NCJ Number: 85458
• Journal: Today's Delinquent Volume: 1 Dated: (1982) Pages: 57-68
• Author(s): H Hurst
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 12 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In the 1980's, family courts are likely to be affected by the revival of retribution, rediscovery of the reformatory, youthful offender laws, actuarial sentencing, determinate sanctions, the commitment of juveniles to the criminal process, and the loss of confidentiality for juvenile offenders.

Abstract

Most factors that will influence family courts in the 1980's will stem from a return to classical and punitive concepts of corrections. The use of the least restrictive alternative as a principle to guide the disposition of juveniles who violated a criminal law is dead. By the end of the 1970's, virtually every populous State had at least one institution for delinquents that could be described as a maximum security facility. Some States have enacted youthful offender laws, which make it possible to restrain juveniles beyond their minority without sentencing them to adult prisons. Actuarial predictions of criminality are becoming more popular. This may lead to the enactment of laws that will prolong the institutionalization of persons predicted to be violent or habitual offenders. Determinate sanctions are also the trend. While this construction of fixed sentences for particular crimes may point toward a reduction in sentencing disparity, it also makes inadequate provision for variations in the conditions of the same offense and the characteristics of the offender. Increasingly the mandate of the family court to give priority to the needs of the child rather than the severity of the offense is being eroded as the processing of juveniles assumes more and more the character of the processing of adult criminals, which is oriented toward determining the guilt of the defendant and dispensing sanctions commensurate with the severity of the offense. Also, the emphasis on the identification of the chronic offender early in his/her career is undermining confidentiality for delinquency proceedings. Eighteen references are listed.