Juvenile Justice System Reflection

Placing a juvenile in a detention center early in the court process increases the risk that youths will be found to be delinquent and damage their prospects for future success. A majority of the youths that are placed in these facilities pose little or no threat to the public and essentially do not need to be there. This portion of the juvenile court process is detrimental to the future and mental aspects of a youth’s life. We desperately need to change the way that we handle the juvenile court system because we are only reinforcing the delinquent behavior that these youths have been exposed to. We need to focus on the rehabilitation and prevention efforts for these youths not the punishment aspect and until then (insert a better ending).

The juvenile justice system is a foundation in society that is granted certain powers and responsibilities. It faces several different tasks, among the most important is maintaining order and preserving constitutional rights. When a juvenile is arrested and charged with committing a crime there are many different factors that will come in to play during the course of his arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing, and rehabilitation process. This paper examines the Juvenile Justice System’s court process in the State of New Jersey and the State of California.

It has been one hundred years since the creation of the juvenile court in the United States. The court and the juvenile justice system has made some positive changes in the lives of millions of young people lives over the course or those years, within the last thirteen years there has been some daunting challenges in the system.

Today’s juvenile court system handles most cases involving those under the age of 18-year-old. This was not always the case and the ideal of a separate court system for adults and children is only about 100 years old. When looking at the differences that set juvenile courts apart, it is important to study the history and see how it developed over time.

The juvenile justice system was subject to a lot of corruption and civil rights violations in its early stages. Juveniles did not have the same rights as adults and could be forced into terrible living or working conditions. With no child labor laws, delinquent juveniles could be sentenced to forced labor in factories or to houses of refuge. With the ruling of Ex Parte Crouse, the state took ultimate responsibility of children and send them to these institutions, even against the will of the parents. Some of these institutions, such as houses of refuge may have started with good intention, but they ultimately led to rampart corruption and abuse of juveniles.

The Juvenile Justice system, since its conception over a century ago, has been one at conflict with itself. Originally conceived as a fatherly entity intervening into the lives of the troubled urban youths, it has since been transformed into a rigid and adversarial arena restrained by the demands of personal liberty and due process. The nature of a juvenile's experience within the juvenile justice system has come almost full circle from being treated as an adult, then as an unaccountable child, now almost as an adult once more.

During the Progressive Era - a period of industrialization, capitalism, and stratification of the class system - reformers helped establish the juvenile justice system as a way to decrease the rising juvenile crimes while also maintaining the dignity of the ‘uncontaminated’ and therefore deserving youth (Platt, 1977; Peirce, 1869). However, in reality, the complicated nature of working with children and crime have left the juvenile justice system continue to struggle with clarifying and following through with its mission. As social workers, whose mission is to strive for social justice as well as pay “particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty” (NASW, 1996), it is critical that we look more closely at the reasoning behind why we are still unable to define and follow through with what social justice looks like for these youth 200 years later.

The juvenile justice system exists to separate the youth from the adults that are imprisoned. The separation exists because of the different levels of maturity that are present between the two age groups. These young offenders are not arrested for the reason of punishment; they are arrested to be rehabilitated so they do not become habitual offenders later on in life. It gives them the opportunity to see what life will be like for them if they are to be adult offenders. With that being said, there are some instances where these young adults are to be tried as an adult offender with an adult punishment. Throughout most of history, young offenders were tried by the same courts as those that tried adults and were subject to the same sanction which does include execution and incarceration. (Masters, p 450, 2013) There are some places that truly believe that young criminals shouldn’t be treated like adults, such as in England. There is a law in affect called the “infancy defense” which says that children under the age of 7 are not to be tried as adults because they haven’t yet formed criminal intent. A child that was between the ages of 7 and 14 could be prosecuted but only if the prosecutor could prove that the child knew what they were doing was wrong. (Lectric Law Library, 2003) Lawmakers and social scientists found that those who were found guilty

The juvenile justice system is a foundation in society that is granted certain powers and responsibilities. It faces several different tasks, among the most important is maintaining order and preserving constitutional rights. When a juvenile is arrested and charged with committing a crime there are many different factors that will come in to play during the course of his arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing, and rehabilitation process. This paper examines the Juvenile Justice System’s court process in the State of New Jersey and the State of California.

Juvenile crime is a term around the world that is difficult to pinpoint and although there are several definitions many fail to be concrete. There are many factors that play into sentencing juveniles or minors upon a crime committed. How old are they? Can they mentally form criminal intent? Are they old enough to no longer be treated as children? Some people would argue that a criminal is just that, regardless of age. Research on the other hand shows that juveniles have underdeveloped brains who at times have difficulty rationalizing decisions and weighing out consequences. It is important that these issues are addressed because of the implications this has on not only the juveniles but the community around them. These

Juveniles committing crimes is not a new issued being introduced to society; actually, it has been an issue for centuries. However, the big question is, should juveniles be tried in adult courts? Before answering, take into consideration every possible scenario that could have led them to commit the crime. For instance, were they the leader in the act? Did they participate in the crime? Was the juvenile even aware of what was taking place? Were they peer pressured? Did they have any other choice at the time? There are so many other questions we could consider when making a decision here.

“The juvenile justice system was first created in the late 1800s to reform United States policies on how to handle youth offenders. Since that time, a number of reforms - aimed at both protecting the "due process of law" rights of youth, and creating an aversion toward jail among the young - have made the juvenile justice system more comparable to the adult system, which is a shift from the United States’ original intent (2008,Lawyer Shop.com).” The

 Juvenile justice systems must reorient to using positive, strengths-based models with youth and whenever possible make deliberate shifts away from the traditional deficit-based, medical model.

Although based on the adult criminal justice system, the juvenile justice process works differently. Juveniles can end up in court by way of arrest, truancy or for curfew violations or running away. A youth may also be referred to the juvenile court system by school officials or a parent or guardian for being continuously disobedient. The juvenile justice process involves several different steps including intake, detention, adjudication, disposition and aftercare following release from a juvenile correctional facility. In this paper we will breakdown the numerous steps involved in the juvenile justice process as well as compared some

The juvenile justice system is similar to the criminal justice system. This system is where juveniles are processed, and may be arrested after referrals for juvenile delinquency. Juvenile justice is very different in every state and can be very similar as well because every system has limited jurisdiction and that most focus on the offenders and not their offenses. Therefore, there are 51 juvenile justice systems in the United States. The United States has the juvenile justice system because children are very different than adults – in that they can be better receptive for change and also being easier to rehabilitate. Moreover, the main goal of the juvenile justice system is rehabilitation (Juvenile Law Center). The juvenile justice system is made up of police, courts, corrections, probation and parole services, as well as community-based programs to name a few (book).