“Kid Thugs Are Spreading Terror Through the Streets”: Youth, Crime, and the Expansion of the Juvenile Justice System in Los Angeles, 1973-1980

Abstract

Over the course of the 1970s, liberal and conservative officials in Los Angeles worked to reform a juvenile justice system they believed to be too lenient on children and teenagers who committed crimes. They intended for diversion programs, vocational training, and rehabilitation measures to complement punitive approaches of surveillance, arrest, and incarceration. By posing rehabilitation as complementary to imprisonment, liberal officials contributed to the development of a dual system of juvenile justice. As a result, the carceral state extended beyond the formal criminal justice system and into a range of other institutions, such as schools and social welfare agencies. The two-tiered system, however, also drove the criminalization of black and Latino youth by focusing punishment on them. In contrast to white suburbanites, who were treated as status offenders, black and Latino kids and teenagers received juvenile criminal and court records and increasingly came into contact with an expanded juvenile justice system over the course of the 1970s.