Juvenile Justice

Juvenile delinquency is an issue that impacts every person in our society. It seems like every day you hear more and more about how children are engaging in criminal activities, some of these criminal acts are so severe that it shakes whole communities to their core. We are constantly reminded on a daily basis just how severe the issue of juvenile violence has become. These increasing levels of juvenile violence have shown up in the form of shooting in communities and schools, drug related crimes, robbery, and even murder. This paper will focus on the history of juvenile delinquency in our nation, the different strategies and programs that are available to help prevent more juvenile crime, the pros and cons of these strategies and programs and how effective they are, and ways that we can improve on these strategies and programs. Up until the late nineteenth century, most young criminal offenders in our nation were treated and punished the same as adult offenders. Children as young as seven years old faced criminal trials and real jail sentences. It wasn’t until 1909 that Judge Julian Mack proposed in a Harvard Law Review article that a juvenile offender should be treated differently as an adult offender and that the juvenile justice system “should treat a child as a wise and merciful father handles his own child”. (Mack. 1909) The criminal justice system reformed the way that juveniles were treated in criminal cases and decided that youths involved in criminal activities should first and foremost be viewed as children who are in need of help. “The early reformers envisioned a regime in which young offenders would receive treatment that would cure them of their antisocial ways- a system in which criminal responsibility and punishment had no place. Because of the juvenile court’s rehabilitative purpose, procedures were informal and dispositions were indeterminate.” (Scott & Steinberg. 2008) This new rehabilitative model of juvenile justice seemed to

References: Boys and Girls Club of America. 2012. Mission Statement. Retrieved from bgca.org on May 7, 2012. Mack, Julian. 1909. The Juvenile Court. Harvard Law Review 23, no. 104. Retrieved from ncjrs.gov on May 6, 2012. Mercy J, Butchart A, Farrington D, Cerdá M. Youth violence. In: Krug E, Dahlberg LL, Mercy JA, Zwi AB, Lozano R, editors. World report on violence and health. Geneva (Switzerland): World Health Organization; 2002. Retrieved from cdc.gov/violenceprevention on May 7, 2012. Scott, Elizabeth & Steinberg, Lawerence. 2008. The Future of Children. Journal Issue: Juvenile Justice. Volume 18 no. 2. Retrieved from Princeton.edu/futureofchildren on May 6, 2012. Wickliffe, Joseph. 2000. Why Juveniles Commit Crimes. Retrieved from yale.edu on May 7, 2012.