Transformation of Juvenile Justice Philosophy and Practice

1
Transformation of Juvenile Justice Philosophy and
Practice

• Presented by Jim Burfeind, Ph.D.
• Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology
• Criminology Program
• The University of Montana

2
The Social and Legal Concept of Juvenile
Delinquency

• Three historical developments that led to the
  concept of juvenile delinquency
• The discovery of childhood and adolescence as
  developmental stages in the life cycle during the
  Enlightenment Period (1600s late 1700s).
• The development of parens patriae as a legal
  concept in English Equity Law, beginning in the
  14th century (1300s).
• The emergence of positivist criminology in the
  late 1800s.

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The Social and Legal Concept of Juvenile
Delinquency

• As a result of these historical developments
• Adolescence began to be viewed as a distinct and
  crucial developmental stage an age of
  dependency and risk. Juvenile delinquency is
  seen as a manifestation of problematic adolescent
  development.
• The scientific method was used to identify key
  causes of delinquent behavior, allowing for
  prevention, assessment, and reform.
• While the family was viewed as centrally
  important, the state has a vested interest in the
  welfare of children and must assume parental
  authority if the parents are unable or unwilling
  to handle their parental duties and
  responsibilities.

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The Invention of the Juvenile Court

• The creation of the first juvenile court in
  Chicago in 1899 was a culmination of a series of
  changes throughout the 1800s, but most
  significantly the child-saving movement of the
  late 1800s.
• An Act to Regulate the Treatment and Control of
  Dependent, Neglected, and Delinquent Children
  (1899).
• The new juvenile court established a separate
  legal system that is noteworthy in three primary
  ways
• Separate structure and broad jurisdiction.
• Legal authority under parens patriae.
• Legal philosophy and process the rehabilitative
  ideal.

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Separate Structure and Broad Jurisdiction

• A separate court with its own personnel.
• Broad jurisdiction The Illinois Juvenile Court
  Act (1899) specifically allocated the first
  juvenile court authority to deal with
• Dependent and neglected youth
• Status offenders
• Delinquent youth

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Legal Authority Parens Patriae

• Robert Mennel observes that the creation of the
  juvenile court represented both a restatement and
  an expansion of the parens patriae doctrine.
• Commonwealth v. Fisher (1905, Pennsylvania
  Supreme Court) To save a child from becoming a
  criminal, or from continuing in a career of
  crime, to end in maturer years in public
  punishment and disgrace, the legislatures surely
  may provide for the salvation of such a child, if
  its parents or guardians be unable or unwilling
  to do so, by bringing it into one of the courts
  of the state without any process at all, for the
  purpose of subjecting it to the states
  guardianship and protection.
• The Illinois Juvenile Court Act provided a
  variety of dispositions of commitment for
  dependency neglect, status offenders, and
  delinquent youth.

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Legal Philosophy and Process The Rehabilitative
Ideal

• Diminished criminal responsibility.
• A child welfare approach the child-savers
  envisioned the juvenile court as a welfare
  system, more than a judicial system.
• Protect, nurture, discipline, and reform.
• Casework involving rational, scientific
  assessment to determine an individualized
  treatment.
• A focus on the offender, not the offense.
• Informal, family-like procedures, promoting the
  rehabilitative ideal
• An informal setting
• Nonadversarial process civil, not criminal
• Limited due process

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The Second Revolution inJuvenile Justice

• In the second revolution, significant change was
  imposed on the juvenile justice system through
  changes in law, both case law and statutory law.
• The due process revolution in juvenile justice
  (roughly 1966 1975).
• Enactment of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
  Prevention Act of 1974.
• A get tough approach Initiatives for
  punishment and accountability, beginning in the
  1980s.

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The Due Process Revolution in Juvenile Justice

• Due process of law procedures of justice that
  are stipulated by law and applied through
  appellate court decisions. These procedures
  extend individual freedoms and limit governmental
  powers as established in constitutions.
• Kent v. United States (1966)
• in re Gault (1967)
• in re Winship (1970)
• McKeiver v. Pennsylvania (1971)
• Breed v. Jones (1975)

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The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Act of 1974

• Redefine juvenile delinquency as distinct from
  status offenses.
• Diversion and deinstitutionalization of status
  offenders encourage use of community-based
  programs.
• Reform the use of detention jail removal sight
  and sound separation and disproportionate
  minority confinement.
• Delinquency prevention through the identification
  of cause-based risk factors and effective
  prevention programming.

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Getting Tough Initiatives for Punishment and
Accountability

• Transfer provisions judicial waiver concurrent
  jurisdiction and statutory exclusion.
• Sentencing authority offense-based dispositions,
  retribution and deterrence replaced
  rehabilitation.
• Confidentiality statutory law change allowing
  for the release of juvenile court records.
• Balanced and restorative justice offender
  accountability, public safety, and offender
  competency development. Balanced Juvenile Justice
  and Crime Prevention Act (1996)

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Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants
Program (1997)

• Serious violent juvenile offenders, age 15 years
  or over, must be criminally prosecuted in adult
  court
• Graduated sanctions should be imposed for every
  delinquency act, including probation violations,
  and sanctions must escalate for each subsequent,
  more serious offense or probation violation
• Records of juvenile felony offenders, who have a
  prior delinquency adjudication, are to be treated
  in a manner equivalent to adult records,
  including submission of such records to the FBI
  and
• Parental responsibility state law must not
  prohibit juvenile court judges from issuing court
  orders that require parental supervision of
  juvenile offenders.

13
Montana Code Annotated 2007

• 41-5-102. Declaration of purpose. The Montana
  Youth Court Act must be interpreted and construed
  to effectuate the following express legislative
  purposes (1) to preserve the unity and welfare
  of the family whenever possible and to provide
  for the care, protection, and wholesome mental
  and physical development of a youth coming within
  the provisions of the Montana Youth Court Act
  (2) to prevent and reduce youth delinquency
  through a system that does not seek retribution
  but that provides      (a) immediate,
  consistent, enforceable, and avoidable
  consequences of youths' actions      (b) a
  program of supervision, care, rehabilitation,
  detention, competency development, and community
  protection for youth before they become adult
  offenders and      (c) in appropriate cases,
  restitution as ordered by the youth court
• (d) that, whenever removal from the home is
  necessary, the youth is entitled to maintain
  ethnic, cultural, religious heritage whenever
  appropriate(3) to achieve the purposes of
  subsections (1) and (2) in a family environment
  whenever possible, separating the youth from the
  parents only when necessary for the welfare of
  the youth or for the safety and protection of the
  community (4) to provide judicial procedures in
  which the parties are ensured a fair, accurate
  hearing and recognition and enforcement of their
  constitutional and statutory rights.