JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

history of juvenile courts
William Wesley Patton

contemporary juvenile justice system and juvenile detention alternatives
William Wesley Patton

juvenile crime and violence
Dewey G. Cornell
Daniel C. Murrie

HISTORY OF JUVENILE COURTS

The juvenile court and its philosophy of treating minors who violate the criminal law differently than adults is barely a century old. Historically, juvenile criminals were treated the same as adult criminals.

The Law Prior to the Creation of the Juvenile Court

Punishment was the central criminal law philosophy in English common law. A conclusive presumption that children under seven could not form criminal intent eliminated the youngest from the criminal justice system. Children between the ages of seven and fourteen were presumed incompetent to form the requisite criminal intent; the prosecutor, however, could rebut that presumption by demonstrating that the child knew the difference between right and wrong. Children over age fourteen were presumed to have the capacity to form criminal intent. There were no special courts for children, and they were treated as adult criminals. Minors were arrested, held in custody, and tried and sentenced by a court that had discretion to order the child imprisoned in the same jail as adult criminals. Although children received the same punishment as adults, they were not provided with many of the due process protections accorded adult criminals. For instance, minors did not have a right to "bail, indictment by grand jury, [and] right to a public trial" (Conward, p. 41).

Although the early American colonies adopted the English common laws regarding child criminals, from 1825 until 1899 several reform movements initiated significant changes both in philosophy and in treatment of juvenile delinquents. Quaker reformers spurred the New York Legislature in 1824 to pass legislation creating a House of Refuge, which separated poor children and juvenile delinquents from adult criminals. The goal of the House of Refuge movement was both to prevent predelinquents from becoming criminals and to reform those who had already committed crimes. The judge had discretion to determine which juvenile delinquents might properly benefit from the House of Refuge; child criminals unlikely to reform were maintained in adult prisons.

The First Juvenile Court

Progressive reformers in Illinois persuaded the legislature to pass the 1899 Illinois Juvenile Court Act creating America's first juvenile court. The act adopted the early English common law parens patriae philosophy in providing that "the care, custody and discipline of a child shall approximate as nearly as may be that which should be given by its parents." Several unique features characterized the early juvenile court. First, because reformation was the goal, the system focused more on the individual child rather than on the nature of the criminal offense. Second, because the time within which reformation could be accomplished varied with the child, indeterminate sentences often exceeded the determinate sentences that adult criminals received for committing the identical criminal act. Third, juvenile delinquents were separated from adult criminals because they were different in kind. Adult criminals were morally blameworthy; children were merely the products of their environment and therefore retributive punishment was not warranted. Fourth, because juvenile court proceedings were not criminal, children were not entitled to the full panoply of due process protections accorded adult criminals. Informality permitted the court to consider all facts relevant to determining the child's reformation plan. Petitions replaced criminal complaints, summons replaced warrants, custody replaced arrest, detention replaced confinement, initial hearings replaced arraignments, and delinquency replaced conviction. Fifth, juvenile courts had broad discretion to fashion innovative rehabilitation programs not always available in adult courts, such as release upon informal voluntary probation conditions. Sixth, technical evidentiary rules were inapplicable in juvenile court because they impeded the judge from determining all facts necessary to determine the individualized treatment necessary to rehabilitate the minor.

Although the goals of the juvenile court were laudable, many historians have bemoaned the system's realities. In 1970 the harshest critic, Sanford Fox, termed the reformers' legislation "a colossal failure" (p. 1224). It became apparent that the informal procedures and almost unbridled discretion of juvenile court judges often supplied minors with less-fair procedures and treatment than adults received. In a famous 1839 Pennsylvania case, Ex parte Crouse, the court expressed the general view of American courts that because the goal of juvenile justice is rehabilitation, not punishment, the due process protections afforded adult criminals need not be provided to juveniles: "The House of Refuge is not a prison, but a school. Where reformation, and not punishment is the end" the formalities of the criminal court are not required. In addition, the juvenile court's goal of individualized treatment often lacked objective criteria and conflicted with notions of justice. By the 1960s critics spoke of the demise of the juvenile court, and they "raised questions about the effect on juveniles of the lack of due process procedures and protection of individual rights" (Sarri, p. 5).

In re Gault and the Constitution

The assault on the reform movement began with a 1966 case in the U.S. Supreme Court, Kent v. United States, which held that under a District of Columbia statute the informal process of determining whether a juvenile should be tried in juvenile or in adult court failed to provide sufficient due process protection for children. The Court held that before a minor is transferred to adult court the child is entitled to an informal hearing where the trial court must articulate the reasons for the transfer so that the child can have an adequate record for appellate review. Additionally, in response to the state's position that juvenile cases were civil, not criminal, the Court responded, "There is evidence, in fact, that there may be grounds for concern that the child receives the worst of both worlds; that he gets neither the protections accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children." The Court thereby rejected the reform movement's justification for informality in juvenile delinquency cases. And a year later in In re Gault, the Court set the due process boundaries between adult criminal procedure and juvenile delinquency trials. First, the Court rejected the reformers' claims that the juvenile justice system accurately and fairly determined children's criminal responsibility: "Under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court." Second, although Gault rejected the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause requires identical due process procedures for adults and juveniles, the Court determined that juveniles must at least receive alternative equivalents. Thus, in a juvenile delinquency trial, children are entitled to: (1) notice of the charges, (2) a right to counsel, (3) a right to confrontation and cross-examination, and (4) a privilege against self-incrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly followed the Kent and Gault cases with the 1970 case In re Winship, which held that juvenile delinquency requires the "beyond a reasonable doubt" adult standard of proof, and the 1971 case McKiever v. Pennsylvania, which held that juveniles charged with a criminal law violation are not entitled to a jury trial because the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial applies only to criminal actions and because juries would substantially eviscerate the beneficial aspects of the juvenile court's "prospect of an intimate, informal protective proceeding."

The U.S. Supreme Court's juvenile delinquency due process cases ushered in a period of reform in state juvenile court systems that lasted almost a decade. In 1974 the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice was established to study the deficiencies in the juvenile delinquency system. The commission urged more nonjudicial service agency intervention for predelinquents and recommended limitations on the confinement of minors.

Increased and More Serious Juvenile Crime

From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s the national juvenile crime rate rose dramatically; "property crime by juveniles increased 11 percent nationally between 1983 and 1992, [and] violent crime increased by 57 percent" (Feld, pp. 976–977). During this same period, media coverage of juvenile crime dramatically increased. Even though the frequency and content of news coverage often exaggerated the rise in youth crime, the coverage had an enormous impact on the public's call for more protection for citizens and for harsher treatment of juveniles committing serious criminal acts. In reality, during the decade 1987–1997 only 6 percent of American juveniles were arrested and fewer than 0.5 percent were arrested for violent crimes. Nevertheless, state legislatures quickly responded to the public's fear of rising juvenile crime rates by substantially modifying the juvenile court process.

All fifty states modified their juvenile law codes to provide that, under certain circumstances, juveniles could be tried as adults in criminal court. These procedures fall into three distinct types: (1) judicial discretion to transfer a minor from juvenile court to adult court; (2) prosecutorial discretion to decide in which court the child will be tried; and (3) legislative mandates requiring juveniles who commit certain offenses to be tried in adult court. A second statutory change lowered the age at which children were eligible to be transferred to adult court. According to Elizabeth S. Scott, writing in 2000, "Between 1992 and 1995, eleven states lowered the age for transfer; twenty-four states added crimes to automatic/legislative waiver statutes, and ten states added crimes to judicial waiver statutes" (p. 585, fn. 145). A third major juvenile law modification was the development of blended sentences, which involve lengthy juvenile law confinements coupled with the transfer of the juvenile upon reaching the age of majority to serve the remainder of the sentence in adult prison. Finally, juvenile courts have opened their proceedings to the public in cases that involve certain specified serious crimes, and legislatures have substantially reduced minors' right to seal juvenile delinquency court records.

Both liberal and conservative experts and organizations have called for the elimination of the juvenile court either because it is a too lenient response to the perception of increasing serious juvenile crime or because it unfairly treats poor and minority children. It is uncertain whether the public's clamor for change will be quelled by the reduction in juvenile crime that began in the mid-1990s.

See also: Juvenile Justice System, subentries on Contemporary Juvenile Justice System and Juvenile Detention Alternatives, Juvenile Crime and Violence; Violence, Children's Exposure to.

bibliography

Conward, Cynthia. 1998. "The Juvenile Justice System: Not Necessarily in the Best Interests of Children." New England Law Review 33:39–80.

Coupet, Sacha M. 2000. "What to Do with the Sheep in Wolf's Clothing: The Role of Rhetoric and Reality about Youth Offenders in the Constructive Dismantling of the Juvenile Justice System." University of Pennsylvania Law Review 148:1303–1346.

Feld, Barry C. 1995. "Violent Youth and Public Policy: A Case Study of Juvenile Justice Law Reform." Minnesota Law Review 79:965–1022.

Fox, Sanford J. 1970. "Juvenile Justice Reform: An Historical Perspective." Stanford Law Review 22:1187–1239.

Mack, Julian W. 1909. "The Juvenile Court." Harvard Law Review 23:104–122.

Melli, Marygold S. 1996. "Juvenile Justice Reform in Context." Wisconsin Law Review 1996:375–398.

Rendleman, Douglas R. 1971. "Parens Patriae: From Chancery to the Juvenile Court." South Carolina Law Review 23:205–259.

Sarri, Rosemary, and Hasenfeld, Yeheskel. 1976. Brought to Justice? Juveniles, the Courts, and the Law. Ann Arbor: National Assessment of Juvenile Corrections, University of Michigan.

Schwartz, Ira M.; Weiner, Neil Alan; and Enosh, Guy. 1998. "Nine Lives and Then Some: Why the Juvenile Court Does Not Roll Over and Die." Wake Forest Law Review 33:533–552.

Scott, Elizabeth S. 2000. "The Legal Construction of Adolescence." Hofstra Law Review 29:547–598.

Shepherd, Robert E., Jr. 1999. "The 'Child' Grows Up: The Juvenile Justice System Enters Its Second Century." Family Law Quarterly 33:589–605.

Thomas, Mason P. 1972. "Child Abuse and Neglect, Part I: Historical Overview, Legal Matrix, and Social Perspectives." North Carolina Law Review 50:293–349.

U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 2000. "Annual Report." Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

William Wesley Patton

CONTEMPORARY JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM AND JUVENILE DETENTION ALTERNATIVES

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.

See also: Juvenile Justice System, subentries on History of Juvenile Courts, Juvenile Crime and Violence; Violence, Children's Exposure to.

bibliography

Austin, James; Johnson, Kelley Dedel; and Gregoriou, Maria. 2000. Juveniles in Adult Prisons and Jails: A National Assessment. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Baker, Myriam L.; Sigmon, Jane Nady; and Nugent, M. Elaine. 2001. Truancy Reduction: Keeping Students in School. Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Bellinger, M. E., and Aron, Wendy. 2000. Analysis and Interpretation of Proposition 21 and Its Impact on Delinquency Court Proceedings. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Superior Court.

Butts, Jeffrey, and Adams, William. 2001. Anticipating Space Needs in Juvenile Detention and Correctional Facilities. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Conward, Cynthia. 1998. "The Juvenile Justice System: Not Necessarily in the Best Interests of Children." New England Law Review 33 (1):39–80.

Cothern, Lynn. 2000. Juveniles and the Death Penalty. Washington, DC: Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Dorfman, Lori, and Schiraldi, Vincent. 2001. Off Balance: Youth, Race, and Crime in the News. Washington, DC: Berkeley Media Studies Group, Public Health Institute and Justice Policy Institute.

Finkelhor, David, and Ormrod, Richard. 2001. Homicides of Children and Youth. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

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Kelly, Kathleen. 2000. "The Education Crisis for Children in the California Juvenile Court System." Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 27:757–773.

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Small, Margaret, and Tetrick, Kellie Dressler. 2001. "School Violence: An Overview." Journal of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 8 (1):1–12.

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William Wesley Patton

JUVENILE CRIME AND VIOLENCE

Juvenile crime is a perennial public concern, although public perceptions of juvenile crime are often shaped by misconceptions and unwarranted fears rather than by objective facts. For example, in 1996 the cover of a national magazine (Newsweek, March 10) made the alarming claim that "Juvenile violence is soaring–and it's going to get worse." In contrast, a 1999 federal report by Howard Snyder and Melissa Sickmund cited national arrest statistics and other data showing that violent juvenile crime peaked in 1993 and began a steady decline. From 1995 to 1999, juvenile arrests for violent crime declined 23 percent, and homicides declined an astonishing 56 percent, despite an 8 percent increase in the population of juveniles. The murder rate for juveniles in 1999 was the lowest since 1966. Yet in 1999, public anxiety over a series of school shootings skyrocketed when two teenage boys murdered twelve classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado.

The Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence, released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2000, identified numerous public myths about youth violence. Among these misconceptions were: (1) the belief that the United States was threatened by a new, violent breed of young super-predators; (2) nothing works in treating or preventing juvenile violence; and (3) juvenile crime could be curbed by prosecuting juvenile offenders as adults. In fact, there was no evidence that young offenders in 2000 were more vicious or callous than previous generations, only that the availability of cheaper, more lethal firearms resulted in more homicides. Further, controlled scientific studies found that well-run prevention and intervention programs do reduce violent behavior and criminal recidivism among the young. And finally, studies found no crime reduction associated with transferring juveniles to adult court; in contrast, youths tried as adults were more likely to be physically and sexually victimized in adult institutions, and were more likely to commit additional offenses upon release to the community.

Scope and Prevalence of Juvenile Crime

Juvenile crime traditionally refers to criminal acts committed by persons under age eighteen. If one includes status offenses, such as consuming alcohol, smoking, being truant from school, running away, and violating curfews, that are crimes only because the person committing them is underage, then the majority of youth in the United States might at some point be classified as delinquent offenders! Nonstatus offenses are much less common. According to Snyder and Sickmund's 1999 report only about 5 percent of juveniles are ever arrested, and more than 90 percent of the arrests are for nonviolent crimes. Of course, arrest statistics undercount the true numbers of offenses, since an unknown number of offenses committed by juveniles go undetected. Self-report studies generally reveal higher prevalence rates; for example, among high school seniors, the annual prevalence of committing an assault with injury to the victim was 10 to 15 percent and the prevalence of robbery with a weapon was 5 percent.

Juveniles account for only about 16 percent of serious violent crimes, but nearly one-third (32%) of property crimes, according to FBI arrest statistics from the Uniform Crime Reports. Juveniles are involved in the majority (54%) of arson arrests and disproportionate numbers of vandalism (42%), motor vehicle theft (35%), and burglary (33%) arrests. Of the 2.5 million juvenile arrests in 1999, the most frequent charges were larceny-theft, simple assaults, drug abuse violations, curfew and loitering, disorderly conduct, and liquor law violations. Arrest statistics are difficult to interpret, because they do not correspond directly with the number of youth arrested or the number of crimes committed; several youths might be arrested for the same crime, a single youth might be arrested multiple times in the same year, or a youth might be arrested once, but charged with multiple offenses. Nevertheless, comparisons of adult and juvenile offenders, again as summarized by Snyder and Sickmund, indicate that juveniles are generally not predisposed to crime, and although they commit a disproportionate number of minor crimes, they are much less likely than adults, especially young adults, to commit serious violent crimes.

Crime in Schools

Highly publicized episodes of gun violence at schools raised national concern that schools were not safe environments. Homicides at school, though tragic, are fortunately quite rare. In a 2001 report, the National School Safety Center concluded that less than one percent of all juvenile homicides occur in school, and that the number of homicide deaths in schools declined from forty-two in the 1993–1994 school year to eleven in 1999–2000.

Schools are not crime-free sanctuaries, however, and crime rates in schools correlate with the crime rate of the surrounding community. A 1998 study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that approximately 21 percent of high schools, 19 percent of middle schools, and 4 percent of elementary schools experienced at least one serious violent crime (primarily aggravated assaults) per year, including crimes committed by nonstudents. Nevertheless, most juvenile crime takes place in the hours immediately after school, when students are less likely to be supervised.

Property crimes are three times more prevalent than violent crimes at school (including travel to and from school). According to the National Center for Education Statistics's 1998 report on school crime and safety, approximately 12 percent of students reported thefts of their personal property in a six-month period, whereas only 4 percent reported violent crimes, defined as physical attacks or robbery with threat of violence. The annual rate of serious violent crimes (sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault) at school is less than half the rate away from school.

According to noted Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus, as well as reports by the U.S. National School Safety Center, bullying is increasingly recognized as a serious and pervasive problem in schools, although it is often overlooked or disregarded by parents and teachers. Common bullying behaviors, such as pushing and shoving, verbal harassment, and threats of violence, would be regarded as crimes if they took place in an adult workplace, but often go undetected or unpunished in schools. Studies indicate that most students have been bullied at some time and that bullying is most common in the middle school grades, where more than 10 percent of students may be victims of chronic bullying.

Juvenile Offenders

There is no single profile or adequate characterization of the diverse group of youth who come to be identified as juvenile offenders. Most youths who commit crimes as juveniles desist in early adulthood, and most who come to juvenile court never return on a new referral. However, a small group of juveniles is prone to continued offending. Marvin Wolf-gang's classic 1972 study of a Philadelphia birth cohort of 10,000 boys found that about 6 percent of the boys were responsible for more than fifty percent of the crimes committed by the entire sample. Subsequent studies, summarized by Snyder and Sickmund in 1995, found that 5 to 16 percent of all referrals to juvenile court are youths with five or more arrests, and these youths account for 50 to 80 percent of all juvenile offenses.

Why do youth commit acts of violence and other crimes? Theories abound, but there is general agreement that there are multiple developmental pathways associated with different contributory factors. Youth whose onset of problem behavior begins before puberty commit more frequent and more violent crimes in adolescence, and are more likely to persist in violent offending in adulthood, than youth with later onset.

Family factors. Many factors increase the risk that a juvenile will engage in criminal or violent behavior, but no single factor is necessary or sufficient. For example, poverty and single parent family status are widely recognized risk factors, but most poor children raised by single parents in low-income homes do not become criminals. Global factors such as poverty and parent marital status are too broad to specify the precise problems in the child's family environment. A single mother working long hours for low wages may not be able to provide supervision for her children, she may be under too much stress to maintain a warm, supportive relationship with her children, and she may be inconsistent in disciplining them. In contrast, there are many examples of poor, single parents who nevertheless manage to provide excellent care for their children. Risk factors might be buffered by protective factors such as a mentoring relationship, religious convictions, special talents, or strong motivation to achieve.

More intensive studies reveal patterns of inconsistent or inappropriate parental discipline, as well as poor monitoring and supervision, in families of children who develop conduct problems. In one common pattern, parents fail to respond to their child's misbehavior, or when they do respond, it is often with excessive force or harsh emotion. Such parents tend to threaten, hit, grab, or yell to coerce children into compliance. Not surprisingly, their children then respond similarly (e.g. yelling, stomping, or hitting) when parents try to limit their behavior. The parents intermittently overlook or acquiesce to their children's misbehavior, thereby reinforcing it and rendering it even more resistive to discipline. Other important family risk factors include child abuse, exposure to domestic violence, and parental substance abuse.

Social factors. Parental influences diminish markedly in adolescence and are often superceded by peer influences. Youths who associate with delinquent peers adopt more antisocial attitudes and engage in more delinquent behavior. Youths who are unpopular with conventional peers are especially likely to seek friendships with less conventional, more antisocial youths.

As youths spend increasing amounts of time unsupervised outside the home, they become more vulnerable to the negative influence of communities characterized by a high level of social disorganization–high residential turnover, high unemployment and few job opportunities, frequent crime, drug trafficking, gang activities, and a relative lack of recreational opportunities. Youths who feel endangered in the community are more likely to carry weapons and seek protection from gang affiliation, which ironically increases the risk of involvement in violent or criminal activities. Access to handguns is particularly problematic and was linked to a threefold increase in juvenile homicide arrests from 1984 to 1993.

Adolescents are highly influenced by the entertainment industry. As noted by the 2001 Surgeon General's Report and many other authorities, more than forty years of research demonstrates that even brief exposure to film violence causes short-term increases in aggressive behavior, including physical aggression, in youth. Longitudinal studies show small but consistent correlations between childhood television viewing and young adult aggression, even after controlling for other factors such as socioeconomic status and parental discipline. The impact of violent music and video games has not been extensively studied, but early studies show similar effects. Advocates for the entertainment industry point out that many other factors influence the development of aggressive behavior, and that the link to serious violent crime is less clear.

Individual factors. Social toxins like poverty, neighborhood crime, and entertainment violence do not have the same impact on all children; individual differences in personality, temperament, and aptitude play an important role in ways not fully understood. Children with attention problems, impulsivity, and low verbal intelligence are more likely to engage in violent and criminal behavior in adolescence and adulthood. A 2001 study by Linda Teplin found that as many as two-thirds of youth involved in the juvenile justice system have one or more diagnosable mental or substance abuse disorders.

Violence and crime can be regarded fundamentally as learned behaviors, and youth involvement in such behaviors may reflect a multitude of different learning experiences. Nevertheless, children can learn alternatives to crime and violence as well. Controlled outcome studies, described in the Surgeon General's report and by Rolf Loeber and David Farrington, demonstrate that many prevention efforts–preschool family services, social competence training and structured recreational programs for at-risk children, and multisystemic family therapy or multidimensional treatment foster care for juvenile offenders–are successful and cost-effective.

See also: Aggressive Behavior; Juvenile Justice System, subentries on Contemporary Juvenile Justice System and Juvenile Detention Alternatives, History of Juvenile Courts; Violence, Children's Exposure to.

bibliography

Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2000. Crime in the United States: 1999 Uniform Crime Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Loeber, Rolf, and Farrington, David P., eds. 1998. Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

National Center for Education Statistics. 1998. Indicators of School Crime and Safety. Washington, DC: U.S. Departments of Education and Justice.

National School Safety Center. 1999. School Safety Update: Bullying: Peer Abuse in Schools. Westlake Village, CA: National School Safety Center.

National School Safety Center. 2001. School Associated Violent Deaths. Westlake Village, CA: National School Safety Center.

Olweus, Dan. 1993. Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. New York: Blackwell.

Snyder, Howard N., and Sickmund, Melissa. 1995. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1995 National Report. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Snyder, Howard N., and Sickmund, Melissa. 1999. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Teplin, Linda. 2001. Assessing Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Disorders in Juvenile Detainees. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2001. Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Wolfgang, Marvin E.; Figlio, Robert M.; and Sellin, Johan T. 1972. Delinquency in a Birth Cohort. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dewey G. Cornell

Daniel C. Murrie

Juvenile Justice System

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