(Un)equal Justice: Juvenile Court Abolition and African Americans

Abstract

Many academics now call for the abolition of juvenile court jurisdiction over delinquency adjudications. This article examines Barry Feld's assumptions behind his call for juvenile court abolition and the potentially adverse impact of the criminal court alternative in the lives of young African Americans. Three assumptions are examined: (1) criminal courts can provide the same or greater substantive and procedural protections compared to the current juvenile court; (2) criminal courts can provide shorter sentences for reduced culpability, with fractional reductions of adult sentences in the form of an explicit youth discount; and (3) treatment strategies are of dubious efficacy, and the possibility of effective treatment is inadequate to justify an entirely separate justice system. This article finds that these assumptions are erroneous and that the juvenile court's abolition may very well be harmful to young African Americans due to false assumptions concerning both juvenile and criminal courts.