A Comprehensive Recidivism Analysis By Outside Auditors Over The Past Thirty Years

It has been understood by society that juveniles have been committing more serious crimes while the juvenile justice system had also become lenient with juvenile offenders. They were only getting a ‘slap on the risk’ as some members of society interpreted it, by the juvenile justice. This therefore led to a massive response from many state legislators who decided to enforced punitive laws to control juvenile serious crimes (Witehead & Lab, 2015) These laws have been enforced to prevent future juvenile offenders from committing serious crimes. Additionally some of the punitive laws which were implemented enable juvenile offenders who have committed serious crimes to be removed from the juvenile justice system to the adult justice system. Some also suggested that the justice system is to treat juveniles who have committed serious crimes as criminals within their jurisdiction in the juvenile courts. This they suggested will be as an example to other juveniles who intended to commit serious in the future to be treated as criminals and in some states prosecutors can file some cases directly in the criminal court than in the juvenile court (Lawrence & Hesse, 2009 Pg. 21).

Discussed earlier was the idea of rehabilitating youths in reformatories at the House of Refuge, but only youths deemed reformable (Fox, 1996). What about the youth who were not reformable? What about the youth that commit a serious violent offense such as murder, rape, torture, or armed robbery? In the 1980’s during the “get tough” on juvenile crime movement, states passed waiver legislation that allowed for the transfers of youths to adult court (Kupchik, 2003). Not only has there been no significant findings that trying juveniles as adult does not lower the potential for recidivism, but it has not been found to be an effective means of crime control (Fagan, 2008). Although being tried as an adult opened up even more constitutional safeguards than had been provided post-Gault, the transfer of juveniles to adult court went against the moral notion of keeping youths out of court and out of the system (McGowan, A., Hahn, R., Liberman, A., Crosby, A., Fullilove, M., Johnson, R., … Stone, G., 2007). How does the juvenile justice system, after years of reform and change get back to being a therapeutic and focused on individualized justice? Is it possible?

The super predator myth began with predictions of future increases in youth violence made by James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio. They made claims that by 2010 there would be more juvenile “muggers, killers and thieves” and that this new wave would be upon us by 2000. This myth caused government responses towards juvenile crime to be dominated by fear of the young, anxiety about immigrants and racial hatred of the poor. The predictions of a juvenile crime wave were wrong, instead juvenile crime rates began to steadily decline. In 1994 juvenile crime rates were reaching low levels that had not been seen since the late 1970’s. However, the public was not seeing this decline, in a survey it was shown that 60% of the public believed youth were responsible for most of the violent crimes. But in reality youth under 18 years accounted for only 13%

Barry Feld (1999) argues against juvenile courts by stating that the historical ideal of a rehabilitative welfare agency for young people has been scaled down to a second-class criminal court for kids. The juvenile

Children are a subject all on their own. Would you put a third grader in a sophomore class because he or she has the same behaviors of one? Juvenile delinquents have better prospects for rehabilitation compared to that of the adult offender population for numerous reasons. One is being juveniles’ have a lower guilt factor than adults (Ameen, 2012). Also when discussing culpability and consequences, the law views children free from those (Velez, 2009). Those who favor rehabilitation is not making an excuse for culpability, rather showing that juvenile offenders are responsive to rehabilitated treatments in many ways that adults are not. They are also realizing that deterrence through the punishment use of incarceration is ineffective in in decreasing juvenile delinquency and recidivism.

Juvenile justice is the area of criminal law applicable to persons not old enough to be held responsible for criminal acts (US Legal, 2015). Until the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1967 in In re Gault. The juvenile court system did now have legal constitutional rights. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s there were more serious crimes starting to happen, and this is where the traditional emphasis on rehabilitation began to fade away and the justice system began to move more in the direction of tougher punishments for youth (DJS, 2015). In Maryland and Pennsylvania some of the milestones that came about throughout the years were in 2004 Maryland’s inquired the “step down aftercare”. This was to provide rehabilitation for the youth that will be returning back to their communities. In 2010 Maryland required that all law enforcement officers who were assigned to school grounds required competency model training. And in Pennsylvania the juvenile justice system required that all juvenile defendants are to be represented by counsel and the juvenile judges are to state their

Prior to the Progressive Era, child offenders over the age of seven were imprisoned with adults. Such had been the model historically. But the actions of political and social reformers, as well as the research of psychologists in the 18th and 19th centuries, began a shift in society’s views on juvenile delinquents. (12) Early reformers who were interested in rehabilitating rather than punishing children built the

Since the 60’s the juvenile justice system has been concerned with problematic children and juvenile offenders. The aim of the justice system was to act in the child’s best interest and according to the child’s needs. In 1967, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967) recommended that the juvenile court should be the agency of last resort and that juvenile delinquency should be prevented through early intervention and services outside the juvenile justice system. (Farrington, 2012) The Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 restricted the of the juvenile court to handle status offenders, non-offenders, child delinquents, and dependent and neglected children. This is how the juvenile justice system (juvenile

Since the 19th century, policymakers have been struggling to develop and explore new ways of responding to juveniles engaging in criminal offenses and rehabilitation. In the traditional justice system, juveniles were subject to the same types of punishments and housed in the same facilities as adult criminals. However, due to the underlying issue of increased criminalization among juveniles, their welfare, and the fact that the Bill of Rights did not apply to minors in which the

Initially the article makes it a point to distinguish the differences between the Juvenile Justice System and the Juvenile Delinquency System. The article pushes further in this classification to determine how services can be made available for juveniles prior to them becoming an adjudicated minor in the system. This research provides the argument that adjudicated youth become less likely to succeed due to the constraints of the Juvenile Delinquency System and the barriers that keep them away from society due to emotional and behavioral issues. (Nelson, Jolivette, Leone, & Mathur,

The rights and responsibilities of juveniles and there parents continue to evolve as time moves into the 21st century, however, it is still unknown why and how the criminal mind truly works across the board. With progress and legal assistance the ‘system’ may have fewer juvenile clients, and less repeat offenders.

Interestingly, in the last years, some states have implemented revised approaches to juvenile offenders, due to research has shown that imprisonment actually increases the probability that a young girl or boy will commit another crime. As a result, some states have been mandated into changing the methods used to deal with juveniles by state or federal court rulings. Regrettably, documentation shows that 22 states have been reported for abusive conditions and violent behaviors in the juvenile justice system (Childress, 2014). Impressively, several states began to reform their juvenile justice system. In my opinion, based on this research, the legal condemnation and

In the early 1990’s, a large increase in delinquency led to a general increase in the stringency and punitive treatment of juveniles by the criminal justice system. However new evidence suggests there are ways of dealing with young offenders that are more effective and less costly than prosecuting them as adults and imposing harsh sentences (Juvenile Justice, 2009). Community based programs can help keep youth out of the juvenile justice system. Informal probation and consent decrees provide stipulations that the juvenile must abide by in order for their case to be closed so that no further action is taken. This sort of alternative gives juveniles the opportunity to be held accountable while keeping a clear record. Societal view on youth incarceration has changed since the 1990’s ‘get tough on crime’ approach. "Our country is plagued by the shameful disproportionate treatment of minority youth at all stages in the justice process, and stands alone in the world in our punitive approach to children," observed the National Juvenile Justice Network in December 2008. A blue-ribbon task force in Louisiana reached much the same conclusion in 2005: "Rather than receiving proper rehabilitative care, young people are incarcerated in violent, unsafe facilities that compound preexisting problems, such as child abuse, mental illness, learning disabilities, and school failure (Cose,

Presently, juvenile justice is widely acknowledged as being in a state of flux in the United States. The early 1990s saw the most substantial rise in violent crime committed by juveniles ever experienced in this country. On the heels of decades of skepticism about the effectiveness of parens patriae (the state as parent), this rise was the "proof" for many "experts" who believe that the juvenile justice system should be abolished. These skeptics reason that one criminal court could still have some latitude when sentencing younger offenders, but that kids are now committing adult crimes, so it is time to treat them as adults.

The juvenile justice system was founded on the belief that children are different from adults; therefore, the justice system and corrections sanctions for juveniles should acknowledge the differences. “Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court” (Fagan, 2008). The acknowledgement of these differences should be the bases for a proper juvenile justice system. The examination of the juvenile justice’s systems history, trends, and causation theories will provide an insight into the future of the juvenile justice system.