NCJ Number
159976
Date Published
1995
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This essay examines current trends in the incarceration of juveniles, traces the history of the juvenile justice system, and considers why juvenile incarceration rates are increasing while juvenile arrest rates are decreasing.
Abstract
On a typical day in America in 1989, more than 92,000 children were incarcerated in public and private institutions; juvenile facilities had more than 750,000 admissions in the course of the year. These record numbers occurred while the number of children in the population was decreasing; it constituted nearly a 20-percent increase over 4 years in the proportion of American children held in custody. While the number of incarcerated children was increasing, the rate of youth arrests for serious crimes declined by 17 percent from 1979 to 1989. One of the reasons more juveniles are being incarcerated while fewer are being arrested is pressure from a public that mistakenly believes that juvenile crime is out of control. Although the press did not create the defects in society's current response to juvenile crime, it does bear some responsibility for failing to identify issues that should be debated in order to improve the juvenile justice system. First, reporters and editors should make sure that some of the stories about violent crime committed by juveniles include information on the frequency of such crime and whether it is increasing. Second, journalists should counterbalance their coverage of violent youth crime with occasional investigative pieces that examine particular aspects of the juvenile justice system, such as recidivism rates for various types of programs or evidence of differential treatment by race. Journalists should also press for access to juvenile courts and expose the departure of the juvenile justice system from its original goal of rehabilitation to a punitive system analogous to the adult system.