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Juvenile Crime And Crime Rates

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Juvenile crime is one of the nation 's most serious problems. Concerns about it are generally broadcasted by federal, state, and local government officials and by the public. In years prior, the burden developed beginning with the dramatic rise in juvenile violence in the eighties reaching an all-time peak in the first part of the nineties. Even though juvenile crime rates seem to have lowered since the mid-nineties, the reduction has not eased the concern. Many states began taking strict statutory stances toward juveniles in the late seventies and early eighties. This was an era in which juvenile crime rates were steady or dropping slightly, while federal reformers were commending prevention and less disciplinary actions. Some of the conflict between the federal program and what was happening in the states at that time may have been initiated by substantial changes in legal measures that made juvenile court procedures more similar, however not equal to those in adult (criminal) court. The reaction to the most recent spike in vicious juvenile crime has been a portrayal of laws that uphold blurred differences between juvenile courts and adult courts. Some states continued to strengthen their juvenile crime laws over the years first by making sentencing more severe, two by increasing allowable transfers to criminal court, or doing away with some of the discretion protections of juvenile court. Many such changes were enacted after the juvenile violent crime rate had already

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