JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

A Comprehensive look at the Juvenile Justice System

A Comprehensive look at the Juvenile Justice System

Most states allow serious juvenile offenders to be charged as adults. Sometimes those decisions are made initially by prosecutors. At other times, prosecutors ask a juvenile or family court judge to allow them to try a juvenile as an adult in proceedings that are called transfer hearings or waiver-of-jurisdiction hearings.

In transfer hearings, prosecutors must convince the judge that the juvenile or society at large is best served by having the youth tried in the adult system(Anderson, 2006). Factors that are considered include the youth's past history with the juvenile justice system and whether he or she already had an opportunity to reform, the age and maturity of juveniles who may be too mature for most juvenile rehabilitation programs, the seriousness of the offense and whether public safety is best served by having the juvenile locked up for many years.

Juvenile Justice Strategy

In 1999, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) proposed a "Comprehensive Strategy" for addressing the problem of juvenile crime. Just as statistics were beginning to indicate a drop in juvenile crime (under the comprehensive strategy),(1) the House of Representatives voted 286 to 132 in favor of a bill that would establish a new program of "juvenile accountability block grants." The block grants, however, are only available to those "states that require juveniles charged with serious violent crimes to be charged as adults, make juvenile criminal records public, and otherwise impose tough[er] sanctions on serious juvenile offenders.” Next, mentor programs, a community intervention approach, are distinguished from the (more intrusive) governmental approaches of boot camps and waiver. Then, results from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Project (BB/BS) and the federal Juvenile Mentoring Programs (JUMP) are presented as showing the promise of mentoring as an effective means of delinquency prevention and reduction (Freedman 22).

Magnitude of the Juvenile Crime Problem

Juvenile courts in the United States processed an estimated 1.5 million delinquency cases in 1993. This number represented a 2% increase over the 1992 caseload and a 23% increase over the number of cases handled in 1989. More than half (53%) of the delinquency cases disposed by U.S. Courts with juvenile jurisdiction in 1993 were processed formally (that is, a petition was filed charging the youth with delinquency). Of the cases that were formally petitioned and scheduled for adjudicatory or waiver hearings in juvenile court, 58% were adjudicated delinquent, and slightly more than 1% were transferred to adult criminal court (Butts 1).

Additional statistics indicate that in 1994, 2.7 million juveniles were arrested. Within the juvenile justice populations, Black and Latino juveniles figure disproportionately as both victims and perpetrators. In June 1996, House Republicans proposed legislation that would end federal mandates requiring states to segregate juveniles from adults in jails and prisons.

Several points DiIulio makes dictate against mixing juvenile offenders and adult inmates in correctional facilities and favor greater support for community-based mentor programs, preferably early in a youth's delinquency ...