Determinate Sanctions, Juvenile Court

Abstract

The average viewer of recent media trends would certainly believe that there has been a massive increase in juvenile crime. As a result, there is an apparently large demand from the public and its legislators to institute legal reform to repair the perceived juvenile crime problem. However, concern for how we approach juvenile delinquency is a recent trend. In keeping with the ideal of rehabilitation, the spirit of parens patriae , Latin for “parent of the country,” was developed. As a response to an apparent crime spike, Texas implemented the Determinate Sentencing Act of 1987. This act allowed Texas courts to sentence a juvenile who commits a serious offense to serve time beyond the age of 21 years for up to 40 years. In keeping with the spirit of parens patriae and rehabilitation, this sentence can be served in a mixture of ways, either incarceration, probation, or parole, allowing a juvenile potentially to be rehabilitated. This determinate sentencing structure is not a mandatory punishment, it simply allows the court to hand down a sentence that speaks to the severity of the crime. Critique of the determinate sentencing system includes its arbitrariness, as there is no guarantee that a violent offender may receive a determinate sentence or be placed in a situation where they might receive one, and it raises the question of whether waiver to an adult correctional facility is in line with the ideal of rehabilitation.