Juvenile Courts

Introduction

Throughout the history of mankind society tries to discover the right method to pact with juvenile crime and children's issues, which are abandoned, left without parental care or abused. In the 19th century, the US began to progress in the direction of important social reforms that ultimately led to big modifies in the behaviors of solving these troubles. A variety of states have passed laws on child labor that protect children from abusive working conditions, laws on social assistance to children who were working when the parents abused the children and did not care about them, the laws on education, which guarantees the right of every child to receive of education. However, there was a separate and unified system of juvenile courts to address the problems of children in the US.

Discussion

Adolescents accused of illegal conduct, were tried and sent to serve time as adults and sentencing them to be imposed as an adult. In those days there was no judicial procedures for minors, and children were tried in ordinary criminal trials. For example, in 1828 in New Jersey tried a 12-year-old boy, James Guild for the murder of Catherine Bix. Adjudicators found him culpable of murder and verdicted to death by hanging (Fabricant, Pp. 669-698).

The early stages of juvenile courts

The first American reformers were shocked by the fact that the actions and punishments for adults apply to children, as well as from the truth that numerous children received long jail sentences and been to jail together with hardened adult criminals. The reformers were deeply convinced that the duty of society towards children should not be defined pre-existing conceptions of justice that have been established with respect to crime of adults. It was only in April 1899 in Illinois was the first in the United States, a juvenile court. This innovative system of courts served as a model, which, ultimately, was to some extent accepted in all U.S. states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Initially, many states - instead of crude, based on the punishment the criminal justice system - have adopted a more humane and flexible civil system for children. Instead, the child must be "trusted" and provide him with the "rehabilitation" and the legal process - from catching the criminal before sending it to a correctional institution - had to be guided rather by clinical rather than punitive reasons (Sanborn, Pp. 599-615).

To the ...