American Juvenile Justice System Research Articles

The Criminalization of Young Children and Overrepresentation of Black Youth in the Juvenile Justice System

The American juvenile justice system is characterized by the overrepresentation of youth of color that is particularly acute for Black children even at young ages. Despite policy solutions targeting this problem, the Black-White gap in juvenile justice involvement continues to widen. Using mixed methods, this study examines rates of disproportionality among younger children (under age 12) in the state of California juvenile justice system alongside stakeholder views on the causes of and solutions for overrepresentation. We find that at each stage of the juvenile justice system the overrepresentation of Black youth increases relative to White youth. Consistent with the literature, stakeholders attribute this problem to early phases of the system (i.e., school discipline, arrests) where more discretion is applied. They also suggest that alternatives to formal systems involvement would help to remedy overrepresentation. These findings lend support to minimum age laws that uniformly exclude younger children from the juvenile justice system altogether.

Exploring the Impacts of Racial Disparity Within the American Juvenile Justice System

AbstractThe racial disparity in the American juvenile justice system impacts the lives of many youth of color. Youth of color constitute 34% of the U.S. population, however, they make up 62% of the youth charged in the juvenile justice system. The cycle of racial inequality and imprisonment are factors influenced by residential segregation and policing practices. Juvenile justice involvement leads to poorer physical and mental health in youth, stymied social outcomes, poorer familial relationships, decreased graduation and employment rates, increased rates in violence, and long‐term negative future outcomes. The article advocates for mental health treatment and family services to be incorporated within incarcerated settings. Clinical strategies and future direction are discussed to begin to combat these various adverse impacts.

Preparing teachers for students in juvenile justice settings

ABSTRACT In the United States, there is an urgent need to ensure that youth held in correctional facilities are provided with high-quality teachers while in the juvenile justice system. Drawing upon the scholarship of educational practices in correctional settings and teacher education, this review presents what is known and what still needs to be learned in order to ensure that youth in the American juvenile justice system receive the free and public education to which they are entitled. Findings from this review indicate that while specialized knowledge, skills, and credentialing in special education, mental health, and cultural competence appear to be essential for teachers in these settings, there is currently very little research on teacher preparation for such populations, and the field would benefit from a sustained program of research on the preparation of teachers for students in juvenile justice settings.

How Contemporary Rehabilitation Fails Youth and Sabotages the American Juvenile Justice System: A Critique and Call for Change

Long a cornerstone of the American juvenile justice system, the idea that youth can change, and merit chances to do so, has enjoyed new life after decades of punitive erosion. Unfortunately, the rehabilitation offered to youth is largely shortsighted and inadequate. In this article, I argue that the juvenile justice system embraces a “myopic model” of rehabilitation that loses touch with the social roots of youth problems and focuses too heavily on improving internal thoughts and behaviors through short-term “pills and programs” (Goshe 2019). By losing sight of the societal harms at the root of delinquent behaviors, the myopic model advances a limited and ultimately unsustainable model of change. In contrast, this article contends that robust rehabilitation treats the social and the personal as crucial to the rehabilitative equation and offers a pathway to meaningful change for youth and the juvenile justice system.

The influence of parents and schools on developmental trajectories of antisocial behaviors in Caucasian and African American youths.

African American youths are overrepresented in the American juvenile justice system relative to Caucasians. Yet, research on antisocial behaviors (ASB) has focused on predominantly Caucasian populations. Furthermore, relatively little is known about how environmental factors, such as supportive parenting (e.g., how close adolescents feel to their parent) and school connectedness (e.g., how supported adolescents feel at school), affect trajectories of ASB in Caucasians versus African Americans. This study mapped developmental trajectories of ASB in Caucasians (n = 10,764) and African Americans (n = 4,091) separately, using four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We then examined supportive parenting and school connectedness on the trajectories of ASB. Four trajectories of ASB were identified for both Caucasians and African Americans: negligible, adolescence-peaked, low-persistence, and high-persistence ASB, although prevalence rates differed by racial-ethnic status. Supportive parenting reduced the risk of membership into the adolescence-peaked trajectory for both Caucasians and African Americans. However, school connectedness was less protective for African Americans than for Caucasians because it only predicted a lower risk of adolescence-peaked membership for African Americans. Findings may reflect the complex social dynamics between race and schools in the development of ASB.

The Kids are Alright: Making a Case for Abolition of the Juvenile Justice System

When considering abolition of the criminal justice system, there is no greater or more impactful relevance than for juveniles that find themselves inextricably linked to the juvenile justice system. From its inception, the philosophical foundation of juvenile care was to provide individualized, compassionate assistance to young men and women perceived to be in need of emotional care and/or social control. With the establishment of the Cook County Juvenile Court in 1899, the American juvenile justice system has endured a 118-year odyssey that has produced progressively rational, largely unsympathetic, and increasingly punitive practices. With happenings such as the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’, ‘juvenile life without the possibility of parole’, ‘teen courts’, and ‘deferred prosecution probation’, current juveniles that make unassuming mistakes and errors in judgment are adjoined to a system that sustains and reinforces itself through these mistakes and errors. The charge of this article is to recommend the abolition of the contemporary juvenile justice system, with safeguards for the protection from serious offenders and a return to the compassionate care that is warranted for the majority of juveniles that currently bolster the system.

미국소년사법제도의 선의권 (이송제도(Transfer System))의 변화 -엄벌화 정책에서 보호주의로의 회귀-

미국소년사법제도의 선의권 (이송제도(Transfer System))의 변화 -엄벌화 정책에서 보호주의로의 회귀-

Examining the prevalence of a ‘youth discount’ in the juvenile justice system

Predicated on the notions of rehabilitation and protection, the American juvenile justice system is intended to aid adolescents in reforming their delinquent behavior. This assistance often manifests itself in the form of leniency and rehabilitative care. Such reformative assistance, however, is not always applied equally across race/ethnicity and ages. Using a focal concerns framework, this study examines data from one southwestern city in the USA to test the independent and moderating effects of age among various race/ethnicity and age combinations. The results not only provide insight into the existence of an age-related sliding scale of culpability (i.e., a ‘youth discount’), but also the extent to which age mitigates, or negates, the effect of race/ethnicity at four decision-making stages in the juvenile justice system. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

American juvenile justice system: history in the making

The original theory behind separating juvenile offenders from adult offenders was to provide care and direction for youngsters instead of isolation and punishment. This idea took hold in the 19th century and became mainstream by the early 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, public concern grew because of a perceived lack of effectiveness and lack of rights. The Supreme Court made a series of rulings solidifying juvenile rights including the right to receive notice of charges, the right to have an attorney and the right to have charges proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In the 1980s, the public view was that the juvenile court system was too lenient and that juvenile crimes were on the rise. In the 1990s, many states passed punitive laws, including mandatory sentencing and blanket transfers to adult courts for certain crimes. As a result, the pendulum is now swinging back toward the middle from rehabilitation toward punishment.

Criminalizing Normal Adolescent Behavior in Communities of Color: The Role of Prosecutors in Juvenile Justice Reform

There is little dispute that racial disparities pervade the contemporary American juvenile justice system. The persistent over representation of youth of color in the system suggests that scientifically supported notions of diminished culpability of youth are not applied consistently across races. Drawing from recent studies on implicit bias and the impact of race on perceptions of adolescent culpability, Professor Henning contends that contemporary narratives portraying black and Hispanic youth as dangerous and irredeemable lead prosecutors to disproportionately reject youth as a mitigating factor for their behavior. Although racial disparities begin at arrest and persist through every stage of the juvenile justice process, this Article focuses specifically on the unique opportunity and obligation that prosecutors have to address those disparities at the charging phase of the juvenile case.Professor Henning implores juvenile prosecutors to resist external pressures to respond punitively and symbolically to exaggerated perceptions of threat by youth of color and envisions a path toward structured decision making at the charging phase that is informed by research in adolescent development, challenges distorted notions of race and maturity, and holds prosecutors accountable for equitable decision making across race. While fully embracing legitimate prosecutorial concerns about victims’ rights and public safety, Professor Henning frames the charging decision as one requiring fairness, equity, and efficacy. Fairness requires that prosecutors evaluate juvenile culpability in light of the now well-documented features of adolescent offending. Equity demands an impartial application of the developmental research to all youth, regardless of race and socioeconomic status. Efficacy asks prosecutors to rely on scientifically validated best practices for ensuring positive youth development and achieving public safety. Thus, even when neighborhood effects and social structures produce opportunities for more serious and more frequent crime among youth of color, prosecutors have a duty to evaluate that behavior in light of the current developmental research and respond to that conduct with the same developmentally appropriate options that are so often available to white youth.As the gatekeepers of juvenile court jurisdiction, prosecutors should work with developmental experts, school officials, and other community representatives to develop and publish juvenile charging standards that reflect these goals. To increase transparency and encourage buy-in from the public, Professor Henning recommends that prosecutors track charging decisions according to race and geographic neighborhood and provide community representatives and other stakeholders with an opportunity to review those decisions for disparate impact. Finally, to ensure that communities of color are able to respond to adolescent offending without state intervention, Professor Henning contemplates a more expansive role for prosecutors who will engage and encourage school officials and community representatives to identify and develop adequate community-based, adolescent-appropriate alternatives to prosecution.

Who gets a childhood?: race and juvenile justice in twentieth-century Texas

Using Texas as a case study for understanding change in American juvenile justice system over past century, William S. Bush tells story of three cycles of scandal, reform, and retrenchment, each of which played out in ways that tended to extend privileges of a protected childhood to white middle- and upper-class youth, while denying those protections to blacks, Latinos, and poor whites.On forefront of both progressive and get tough reform campaigns, Texas has led national policy shifts in treatment of delinquent youth to a surprising degree. Changes in legal system have included development of courts devoted exclusively to young offenders, expanded legal application of psychological expertise, and rise of children's rights movement. At same time, broader cultural ideas about adolescence have also changed. Yet Bush demonstrates that as notion of teenager gained currency after World War II, white, middle-class teen criminals were increasingly depicted as suffering from curable emotional disorders even as rate of incarceration rose sharply for black, Latino, and poor teens. Bush argues that despite struggles of reformers, child advocates, parents, and youths themselves to make juvenile justice live up to its ideal of offering young people a second chance, story of twentieth-century juvenile justice in large part boils down to the exclusion of poor and nonwhite youth from modern categories of childhood and adolescence.

Disproportionate Minority Contact in the American Juvenile Justice System: Where are We after 20 Years, a Philosophy Shift, and Three Amendments?

For the past 20 years, youth of color have been over represented in the American juvenile justice system. Over that same period, the philosophy of the juvenile court has changed from a more informal and rehabilitative model to a more formal and punitive model, and minority youth have experienced disparate and more severe outcomes than their majority counterparts. Starting in 1988, 3 significant policy changes were made via amendments to the JuvenileJustice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 mandating that states address disproportionate minority contact (DMC). The author examined the philosophy shifts in juvenile justice, as well as systemic and DMC policy changes, and their effects on the current status ofminority over representation. Recommendations are presented for social workers to address disproportionate minority contact.

Juveniles in Court

Nineteenth-century American reformers were concerned about the influence of immaturity and development in juvenile offenses. They responded to their delinquent youths through the creation of juvenile courts. This early American juvenile justice system sought to treat children as different from adults and to rehabilitate wayward youths through the state's assumption of a parental role. Although these rehabilitative goals were never fully realized, the field of American child psychiatry was spawned from these efforts on behalf of delinquent youths. Early child psychiatrists began by caring for juvenile offenders. The function of a child psychiatrist with juvenile delinquents expanded beyond strictly rehabilitation, however, as juvenile courts evolved to resemble criminal adult courts-due to landmark Supreme Court decisions and also juvenile legislation between 1966 and 1975. In response to dramatically increased juvenile violence and delinquency rates in the 1980s, juvenile justice became more retributional, and society was forced to confront issues such as capital punishment for juveniles, their transfer to adult courts, and their competency to stand trial. In the modern juvenile court, child psychiatrists are often asked to participate in the consideration of such issues because of their expertise in development. In that context we review the role of psychiatrists in assisting juvenile courts.

Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice

Although justice system policy and practice cannot, and should not, be dictated solely by studies of adolescent development, the ways in which we respond to juvenile offending should be informed by the lessons of developmental science. This review begins with a brief overview of the history, rationale, and workings of the American juvenile justice system. Following this, I summarize findings from studies of brain, cognitive, and psychosocial development in adolescence that have implications for the treatment of juveniles in the justice system. The utility of developmental science in this context is illustrated by the application of these research findings to three fundamental issues in contemporary justice policy: the criminal culpability of adolescents, adolescents' competence to stand trial, and the impact of punitive sanctions on adolescents' development and behavior. Taken together, the lessons of developmental science offer strong support for the maintenance of a separate juvenile justice system in which adolescents are judged, tried, and sanctioned in developmentally appropriate ways.

The Child Savers Reconsidered

The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency was first published in 1969, later re-conceptualised and published in a second edition in 1977. It quickly entered the canon and has become part of the common sense narrative of the American juvenile justice system. A new 40th anniversary edition will be published in 2009 by Rutgers University Press. Drawing upon various critiques of The Child Savers and recent historiography on its subject matter, I revisit the following issues: the significance of the Progressive Era as the starting point of juvenile justice history; limitations of the ‘social control’ perspective; the inter-relationship of class, race, gender, and juvenile justice; the need for comparative and global perspectives on juvenile justice; and a reconsideration of the legacies of neo-liberalism. The article calls for a new round of revisionist scholarship on juvenile justice.

Juvenile Justice

An increasing public focus on the effects of juvenile crime on society has dramatically impacted juvenile justice policy decisions in recent years. Historically, juvenile justice policy makers have attempted to address juvenile crime by promoting policies that address the rehabilitative needs of the offender. However, throughout the last 20 years of the 20th century, policy makers have advocated more punitive offense-based policies to address juvenile crime. This article examines the differences between these two approaches and the implications associated with the continued emergence of a more offense-based approach compared to the offender-based approach, which historically has been the foundation of the American juvenile justice system. The authors hope to stimulate discussion among stakeholders in the juvenile justice system to promote sound policy decisions based on scientific evidence.

Pathways to Death Row for America's Disabled Youth: Three Case Studies Driving Reform

This article uses the case study method to examine the lives of three youths with disabilities living in the southern part of the United States who have followed a pathway to death row. An empirically established developmental and theoretical framework is used to examine issues related to the influence of disabilities and race on children and youths, and their pathway to delinquency and crime. Through criminological life‐history research methods, the study demonstrates the path taken by three youths with disabilities and showcases how the analysis of information gleaned from these life stories creates new narratives about pathways to death row. Moreover, the presentation of these narratives to legislators and policy‐makers has influenced reform in the American juvenile justice system. The combined use of life‐history research and social work advocacy provides a more effective and successful method by which to request and secure the resources necessary for intervening in the youth pathway to death row. Finally, this collaborative research effort has resulted in the passage of legislative acts that have created early intervention truancy prevention centers—centers based on the stories about these three young men in their elementary school years.

American Juvenile Justice: Recent Trends and Issues in Youth Offending

Trends in juvenile offending in the United States since the 1970s are reviewed. Serious youth violence, co‐occurring mental health and substance abuse problems among offenders, female delinquency, and other issues currently confronting the American juvenile justice system are examined. Policy considerations associated with recent trends in juvenile offending among American youth are identified.

Thoughts on Juvenile Justice Systems and Research

This article updates comments published in this journal in 1994 about the nature of the American juvenile justice system, which laid out reasons that it might not serve as a useful model for other nations. Since that time, the US system has moved further right towards the justice model and away from the welfare model. Individualistic philosophies and political conservatism have combined to produce a more adult-like and punitive juvenile system, applied to increasing numbers of minors and to increasingly younger minors. Successful demonstrations of community absorption or treatment have been too few to balance the rightward direction. European scholars are urged to undertake increased studies in two critical areas: (1) the nature, functions, and comparative differences in their juvenile justice systems, and (2) the nature of local communities and their contributions to patterns of delinquency.

Net-Widening of the Juvenile Justice System in Japan

The phenomenon of net-widening was identified by American scholars carrying out research for the evaluation of diversion programs in the American juvenile justice system. The phenomenon, however, can occur independent of diversion programs. This paper emphasizes that, when assessing the net-widening or the net-narrowing of the juvenile justice system, researchers should compare the boundaries of the juvenile justice system with those of other components of the justice system. By identifying the boundaries, one can attempt to explain how the net-widening of the juvenile justice system has occurred in Japan.