Juvenile Justice System

The juvenile justice system under English common law and early American colonial law did not differentiate between legally competent minors and adults regarding criminal sanctions. Juveniles aged seven or older who had sufficient criminal capacity were tried in adult courts and sentenced to adult institutions. In the United States from about 1825 until 1899 a reform movement ushered in dramatic changes in the philosophy toward juveniles in the criminal law system. Children were seen not as sinners but rather as immature, malleable, and developing individuals who were very different from adults. Rather than applying the retributive justice of the adult criminal system, the reformers argued that children should be educated and nurtured so that they could become productive members of society rather than being housed with adult criminals who would further mold them into hardened recidivists. By 1899 a separate juvenile court was established in Chicago. The reformers argued that in order for a judge to properly determine the specialized care necessary for each juvenile who came before the court, the formal due process structure of the criminal court must be abandoned so that judges could assess all relevant data.

By the middle of the twentieth century it became clear that the good intentions of the reformers had never materialized and that children in the juvenile court were receiving neither the specialized care nor the due process necessary for the public to have confidence in juvenile court determinations. From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s the U.S. Supreme Court on several occasions held that the informal structures of the nineteenth century juvenile court denied juveniles due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Except for the right to a jury trial and bail, the Court held that juveniles were entitled to a panoply of due process protections, including the right to timely notice of the charges, confrontation, and cross-examination; proof beyond a reasonable doubt; and the privilege against self-incrimination.

During the 1980s the public perceived an escalation in juvenile crime, and a new reform movement developed that aimed to make the juvenile justice system more responsive to public safety and to assure personal responsibility by juvenile delinquents. States experimented with mandatory juvenile sentences, mandatory transfer of serious juvenile offenders to adult criminal court, modification of confidentiality of juvenile records, active participation by victims, mandatory victim restitution, and new correctional alternatives for dangerous juvenile offenders.

Experts have identified a juvenile justice cycle that has continued to revolve since the nineteenth century. The initial cycle starts when the public perceives a dramatic increase in juvenile crime and that the juvenile justice system is providing too lenient dispositions and too little public protection. The system responds with harsher treatment of juvenile delinquents and a reduction in informal resolution processes. Then, according to a 2000 article by Sacha M. Coupet, "following a period of extreme harshness and largely punitive policies, when the level of juvenile crime remains exceptionally high, 'justice officials…are forced to choose [once again] between harshly punishing juvenile offenders and doing nothing at all"' (p. 1329). From 1990 to the early twenty-first century, the American public has viewed juvenile crimes as constantly escalating in number and severity. By the early twenty-first century, U.S. society was at that point in the cycle where retributive justice had substantially overtaken the nineteenth century reformers' notions of rehabilitation and individualized treatment of juvenile delinquents.

The Reality of Juvenile Crime Statistics

There is a substantial disconnect between the public's perceptions of juvenile crime and the reality of juvenile crime statistics. Although juvenile crime is still a major social problem, contrary to the impression portrayed by the media regarding the explosion in youth crime, the juvenile crime rate began decreasing in 1995. In 1999 juveniles comprised only 17 percent of all arrests and 12 percent of all violent crime arrests. In 1999 the juvenile murder arrest rate fell 68 percent, to the lowest level since the 1960s, and juvenile arrests for violent crime dropped 23 percent from 1995 to 1999.

Many have argued that the most significant factor in the public's misinformation is the distortion of juvenile crime by the news media. A comprehensive examination of crime in the news conducted by Lori Dorfman and Vincent Schiraldi in 2001 found that: (1) the press reported juvenile crime out of proportion to its actual occurrence; (2) violent crime, although representing only 22 to 24 percent of juvenile crime from 1988 to 1997, dominated the media's coverage of juvenile offenses; (3) the media presented crimes without an adequate contextual base for understanding why the crime occurred; (4) press coverage unduly connected race and crime; and (5) juveniles were rarely covered by the news other than to report on their violent criminal acts.

Significant changes in the demographics of juvenile crime occurred between 1988 and 1998. Not only did the number of juvenile delinquency court cases increase, but also many changes in the age, sex, and race of delinquents altered the landscape of juvenile offenders. In 1988 the juvenile courts processed 1.2 million cases; by 1997 the total had increased to 1.8 million. According to a November 2001 fact sheet issued by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a study of California delinquency cases found that "a small percentage (8%) of the juveniles were arrested repeatedly…and were responsible for 55 percent of repeat cases." The most important types of cases and trends during the period from 1988 to 1998 included violent juvenile crime, juvenile property offenses, juvenile drug offenses, and juvenile gangs.

Violent juvenile crime. In 1988, 24 percent of juvenile court cases involved crimes of violence against a person. Of those violent crimes, 20 percent were committed by females and 62 percent by children under age sixteen. White children represented 56 percent of violent delinquents while African-American children represented 40 percent. In 1998, by contrast, 23 percent of the juvenile court caseload involved crimes of violence, females committed 28 percent of the violent crimes, children under age sixteen accounted for 64 percent, and 62 percent were committed by white youth and 35 percent by African-American children. Thus the juvenile population of violent offenders in 1998 was comprised of more females, more white children, and younger juveniles than in 1988. The percentage of violent crimes among children, however, remained relatively constant. The dispositions for juvenile offenses also changed during that same period. In 1989, 33 percent of juveniles found in court to have committed a violent crime were placed outside the home, compared to 27 percent in 1998. Also, in 1989, 54 percent were placed on probation, compared to 58 percent in 1998. During the period between 1988 and 1997, the number of adjudicated cases resulting in out-of-home placement increased more for African-American children (60%) than for white children (52%).

Juvenile property offenses. From 1988 through 1994 the juvenile arrest rate for property offenses was relatively stable. Between 1994 and 1999, however, the juvenile arrest rate for property offenses dropped 30 percent to the lowest level since the 1960s. The disposition of sustained property offense petitions in 1988 resulted in out-of-home placement in 28 percent of juvenile cases; by 1997, however, the rate had dropped to 26 percent. In addition, in 1988 property offenses comprised 52 percent of all juvenile court out-of-home dispositions, but that number dropped to 42 percent in 1997, reflecting a softening juvenile court attitude toward property offenses in relation to other juvenile crimes.

Juvenile drug offenses. Several dramatic shifts in the numbers and demographics of juveniles arrested for drug offenses occurred between 1988 and 1999. Drug abuse violation arrests were relatively constant from the 1980s until 1993. From 1993 and 1998, however, the number of drug offenses more than doubled. In 1994 drug offenses comprised 8 percent of all delinquency cases, and in 1998 the rate increased to 11 percent. Although the number of formally processed juvenile drug cases increased by more than 50 percent from 1994 until 1998, the percentage of out-of-home placements for drug offenses decreased from 36 percent in 1989 to 23 percent in 1998. This decline has been credited to an inadequate number of out-of-home placements and/or to a shift in juvenile court attitude regarding the seriousness of drug offenses in relation to violent person offenses. The age of juveniles arrested for drug cases remained relatively constant. In 1989 children age fourteen and younger comprised 18 percent of arrested juveniles compared with 19 percent in 1998. There was a dramatic shift, however, in the race of arrested juveniles. In 1989 whites represented 58 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and African Americans comprised 40 percent. In 1998 whites represented 68 percent and African Americans only 29 percent of all juvenile drug cases. Finally, the percentage of drug arrests for girls increased from 14 percent in 1989 to 16 percent in 1998. The drug arrest rate for both sexes was twice the average of the rate in the 1980s.

Juvenile gangs. Juvenile gang crime was a significant social issue during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The number of cities reporting youth gang activity rose from 300 in the 1970s to nearly 2,500 in 1998. In the 1970s only nineteen states reported gang problems, but in the 1990s all fifty states reported gang crimes. In 1999 there were approximately 26,000 gangs and 840,500 gang members in the United States. Compared to the figures for 1998, these numbers represented a decrease in gangs of 9 percent and an increase in gang members of 8 percent. Also, the average age of gang members increased; gang members aged fifteen to seventeen decreased 8 percent from 1996 to 1999. In addition, the number of girl youth gang members increased greatly from the 1970s through the 1990s. It is estimated that in the 1970s girls comprised only 10 percent of juvenile gangs; in the 1990s, however, girls made up between 8 and 38 percent of many gangs. Female youth gang members are arrested most frequently for drug offenses, and arrests for prostitution increased from 0.8 percent in 1993 to 9.8 percent in 1996. Youth gangs continue to be a major problem that the juvenile justice system has not yet begun to control.

An Increasing Emphasis on Juvenile Crime Prevention

Even though the 1990s and early twenty-first century have ushered in a new era of retributive juvenile justice, federal government policies still emphasize a juvenile crime prevention model formally established in 1974 when the president and the U.S. Congress created the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) as part of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs. The goal of the OJJDP, according to its 2000 annual report, is "to provide national leadership in addressing the issues of preventing and controlling delinquency and improving the juvenile justice system." The OJJDP operates a host of juvenile delinquency crime prevention programs and research in the following areas: gangs, girls, mental health, safe schools, state coordination, drug education, juvenile mentoring, national youth network, violence in the media, truancy reduction, very young offenders, child development, gun violence, children's advocacy centers, and Internet crimes.

A unique and very controversial juvenile crime prevention policy of the latter part of the 1990s and the early twenty-first century is a partnership between police departments and public schools to identify, treat, and punish juvenile delinquents. This partnership is the result of four different intersecting juvenile problems. The first is the nexus between truancy and juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, gang activity, and adult crime and poverty. According to a 2001 bulletin by Myriam L. Baker, Jane Nady Sigmon, and M. Elaine Nugent, "adults who were frequently truant as teenagers are much more likely than those who were not to have poorer health and mental health, lower paying jobs, an increased chance of living in poverty, more reliance on welfare support, children who exhibit problem behaviors, and an increased likelihood of incarceration" (p. 1). Research conducted in 2000 determined that 60 percent of juvenile crime occurs between 8 A.M. and 3 P.M. when children should be in school. The most common truancy delinquency prevention programs include a sharing of data between schools and police and prosecutors, holding parents criminally responsible for their children's truancy, assessing parents fines, and requiring parents to attend parent training classes.

A second partnership between public schools and law enforcement was spurred by a few high-profile multiple-victim homicides involving teenagers that occurred between 1993 and 1998. Because of the media attention on these very few high-profile school violence cases, parents pressured school districts to develop serious school violence prevention programs. In reality, according to a 2001 article by Margaret Small and Kellie Dressler Tetrick, "school-associated violent deaths are rare…less that 1 percent of the more than 1,350 children who were murdered in the first half of the 1998–99 school year…were killed at school" (p. 4). Public schools responded, in part, by using law enforcement as references in designing preventative and emergency response programs and in monitoring and investigating suspicious student activity.

Third, after empirical studies demonstrated that the adult criminal conviction rate of children who bullied other children in school was almost twice as high as the rate for those children who did not engage in bullying, public schools began focusing on less-violent aggressive student behavior. A 2000 study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that 1.6 million children in grades six through ten were bullied at least once a week. Many schools have instituted "zero tolerance" programs that expel students after one sustained finding of bullying. These children are also often referred to law enforcement for consideration of juvenile justice intervention.

Finally, because research has demonstrated a correlation between abused children and high rates of juvenile delinquency, schools and law enforcement have partnered in establishing programs that identify, treat, and prosecute child abusers. All states mandate that teachers report suspected child abuse to either law enforcement or to children's services workers.

Modern Juvenile Law Disposition Alternatives

Because rehabilitation is no longer the central goal of the juvenile justice system, new forms of placement have developed to assure community safety and juvenile responsibility to victims. Traditional juvenile delinquency dispositions involved individualized indeterminate terms based upon the needs of the child for rehabilitation. During the 1990s the model shifted to a determinate sentence length based not on the child's needs but rather on the seriousness and frequency of criminal law violations, with a goal of deterrence and retribution. Further, the trend in the early twenty-first century is to shift sentencing discretion in cases of violent crime from the juvenile court judge to the legislature. In 1997 Congress enacted the Innovative Local Law Enforcement and Community Policing Program, requiring those states that accept federal funds to create accountability-based dispositions that balance the interests of the community, victim, and offender. Therefore, juveniles whose delinquency hearings are litigated in juvenile court usually face one of the following disposition alternatives. If the child committed a minor offense and does not have a prior delinquency record, it is likely that the juvenile trial judge can grant a form of probation termed a "home of parent custody" order in which the child agrees to abide by relevant probation conditions; a violation of a probation condition, however, can lead to institutionalization. In 1998, 665,500 children were under probation supervision, an increase of 56 percent since 1989. Some juveniles are released home upon the condition that they wear electronic monitoring equipment, which limits the child's freedom without the necessity of formal incarceration. If the crime charged is minor, but the juvenile has a prior delinquency record, the judge usually has discretion to order the child detained out of home in an institutional setting until the child reaches the age of majority in that jurisdiction. If the minor commits a serious offense, a modern trend is developing for the legislature to create a mandatory minimum sentence that may also involve a "blended sentence" in which the juvenile upon reaching the age of majority is transferred to an adult institution to serve the remainder of the mandatory minimum sentence. Prior to the blended sentence movement, juvenile courts did not have discretion to hold children accountable beyond the age of majority.

Because many juveniles are being transferred to adult courts, the adult correctional systems have responded with a new variety of sentencing schemes. The total number of juvenile delinquency cases transferred to adult criminal court peaked in 1994, and the number of children tried in adult courts increased 33 percent in 1998. In 2000 approximately 14,500 children were incarcerated in adult facilities; 9,100 were housed in adult jails and 5,400 in adult prisons. There was a 366 percent increase in the number of juveniles confined in adult jails from 1983 to 1998. Juveniles are more likely to be violently victimized and five times as likely to be sexually assaulted if they are placed in an adult rather than a juvenile facility. There are fewer sentencing alternatives in adult court than in juvenile court. In "straight adult incarceration" jurisdictions, juveniles are sentenced like adults with little or no differentiation in the terms of the confinement. In "graduated incarceration" models, juveniles receive adult sentences, but they are housed in juvenile or separate wings in an adult institution and are transferred to the adult wing upon reaching a defined age. In "segregated incarceration" models, juveniles are sentenced as adults but are housed in special young offender units that have many of the rehabilitative services available to delinquents in juvenile correctional facilities.

In order to reduce cost and recidivism, some states are experimenting with community-based programs in which the child's family can participate in necessary therapy to cure or control the conditions that led to the child's delinquency. Another innovation involves community-based aftercare programs that provide juveniles released from secure confinement facilities intensive supervision upon release. Ironically, these aftercare programs are based upon the rehabilitation model rejected by the contemporary retributive juvenile delinquency model. In exchange for intensive monitoring by a probation officer, mandatory drug testing, and the imposition of a curfew, the juvenile receives individualized analyses of the conditions that initially led to delinquency, including assessments of the juvenile's relationships with family, peers, and the community. The goal is to reduce recidivism by mixing intensive services and surveillance. Whether this new juvenile model of "punishment first/rehabilitation second" will be effective is yet to be determined.