The 19th Century : The Nineteenth Century

Department stores, Chain stores, and mail order's houses were how retail sales and distribution techniques of the late nineteenth century made goods and conveniences formerly enjoyed by city dwellers available to Americans in small towns and the countryside. Americans no longer had to make their own clothes but, now they had the leisure of picking and buying clothes from a department store. Due to chain stores buying in preparing food had changed. A new industry of packing and selling foods had been invented. The mass production and new development of tin can had inspired an industry of canned foods. Refrigerated railroad cars and iceboxes made it possible for perishable food items to be kept fresh. These developments brought a healthy improvement

During the progressive era, which occurred between 1880 and 1920, social conditions in the United States were characterized by large waves of immigration and a large increase in urbanization. As a direct result, hundreds of needy children wandered the streets, and many became involved in criminal activity. Initially, children who were convicted of crimes were housed with adult criminals. Social activists, law makers, and other officials realized that children institutionalized with adults were learning adult criminal behaviors and were exiting those institutions ready for life careers in criminality. Because of this negative influence, separate juvenile court systems and additional correctional institutions were developed.

One hundred years ago, the Illinois legislature enacted the Illinois Juvenile Court Act (1899 Ill. Laws 132 et seq.), creating the first separate juvenile court. The policy debates raging around the country in this centennial year(1899), however, make it uncertain whether the traditional juvenile court will prevail. Early in the 19th century, juveniles were tried along with adults in criminal courts. In common law, children under

Colonists placed their children either in the homes of others or, as technology enabled the industrial revolution, in factories and other locations of modern industry near the home. Writes Feld, ?The coterminous location of home and workplace and the limited range of occupations enabled young people to learn most of their required economic skills either from their parents or from surrounding adults and quickly to achieve adult productivity,? (21). More importantly, children from a relatively young age were expected to assume adult culpability for crimes they committed. Punishments for children rivaled those for adults.

Per Klug (2001) by 1925, 48 states had juvenile courts closely following the Chicago Juvenile Court. But “changes were made when the policy makers and the public were dissatisfied with the effectiveness of the treatment techniques available to juvenile justice practitioners” resulting in waiver situations instead of adjudication (Klug, 2001, p. 100). The juvenile court system started moving away from rehabilitating a child, instead it was looking like the adult criminal justice

The juvenile justice system of the 1800’s is much improved in today’s society and it's still undergoing lots of changes in order to develop a better strategy of dealing with juveniles. Moreover, drastic changes made such as young offenders being tried different from adults in all states depending on the crime. These changes can be seen under the English common Law, the colonial America era, and the industrial revolution era. Today’s juvenile systems, changes made during the late 1800s were to protect the right of young offenders from harsh punishment but rehabilitate them back into the society.

“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

To completely understand the current issues surrounding the direction of the juvenile justice system is easy to obtain when one focuses on how the juvenile justice system has changed since its inception. The United States wanted to reform its policies for dealing with juveniles that enter the justice system, so in the late 1800’s was the beginning of a number of reforms. Several reforms focused on protecting the rights of youth, such as through “due process of law”. The United States has shifted from their original intent and purpose for the juvenile justice system to a system more comparable to the adult justice system.

How can a 15 year old boy be sent to an adult prison for the rest of his life? In order to answer that question we must first understand the history of the Juvenile Justice System. Social conditions during the progressive era, 1890-1920, were characterized by large waves of immigration and an increase in children left wandering in the streets (Reuters, 2011). According to Reuters, hundreds of indigent children were left to find ways to survive in a new place with little to no assistance, from family or government, many typically ended up getting involved in criminal activity. This led to a large increase of children in the adult court systems, as children were treated and punished like adults many were sent to adult institutions. For instance, under English common law, children who were under the age of 7 were considered to lack the cognitive capacity to know and understand the aftermath of their actions. Therefore, without criminal intent, or mens rea, such adolescent children were not capable of committing a crime. Juveniles older than 14, were considered adults, subject to the full weight of the law and punishment, including the death (Soulier and Charles). Nineteenth-century reformers had become uneasy about the effects of immaturity and development in juvenile cases. In response to the rise in

The juvenile law in America’s system was created on the premise that due to young people’s immaturity, the crimes they have committed should be handled in a different manner from those ascribed to adults. The young people were mostly under the age of eighteen. The key basis was to address the cause of their misdemeanors and to ultimately restore their responsible membership within the community (Bernard, 2012). Juvenile courts date back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the United States, juvenile courts vary in structure and organization, but all serve the common goal of rehabilitating young people.

In the early nineteenth century juveniles were treated the same as adults when it came to the legal system. We did not have separate courts or jails for juveniles and they would often receive the same punishments as adults that had committed crimes. “At the beginning of the

Before the Progressive Era, children who were over the age of seven were put in jail with adults. In the early part of the 1800’s reformers started to become concerned with the overcrowded environment in the

Juvenile justice has proved to be as imprudent as it is practical. Snyder and Sickmund (1999) found that as early as 1825, there was a significant push to establish a separate juvenile justice system focused on rehabilitation and treatment. The procedure continued to stay focused on the rehabilitation of a person, even though financial support and assets sustained to hold back its achievement. In reaction to rising juvenile crime rates in the 1980s’, more corrective laws were approved (Snyder and Sickmund 1999). In the 1990s, the United States legal system took further steps regarding transfer provisions that lowered the threshold at which juveniles could be tried in criminal court and sentenced to adult prison (Snyder and Sickmund 1999). Furthermore, laws were enacted that allowed prosecutors and judges more discretion in their sentencing options; and confidentiality standards, which made juvenile court proceedings and records more available to the public (Snyder and Sickmund 1999), were reduced.

The first half of the 19th century was a time of sweeping changes. With transportation, and factories increasing, North America was in for a major upgrade. While all of those things are going on, the two regions that made up the growing nation was the North and South. These two sides were very different in their approach of lifestyle which would soon lead to conflicts. Two issues stood out more than others as the North and South headed towards civil war. One reason increase of tariffs and taxes the Congress placed on the south to ship goods to other countries. The other was the idea of keeping slavery in the country. The tariffs placed economic inequality between the northern states and the southern states.

The juvenile justice system is a system that evolves with society focusing on the welfare of the child, and the protection to the community. The history of the modern juvenile justice system began with the English common law. The common law specified an age limit on when a child could begin to be held accountable for criminal acts, which placed the age limit at seven (Champion, 2010). Although an age limit was placed on offenders, during the 1700s criminal offenders were treated in the same manner, which could include banishment, whippings, and other corporal punishments for offenders over the