Child Imprisonment Research Articles

The Increased Prosecution of Adolescents in the Adult Criminal Justice System

ABSTRACT This paper explores the implications of the increased prosecution of adolescents in the adult criminal justice system. Public misperceptions about juvenile crime have contributed to the use of harsh criminal sanctions toward youth offenders, most of whom are convicted of nonviolent crimes. Consequences of these policies, and the resultant over-reliance on incarceration, include harms to youth housed in adult facilities, stress and marginalization of family members, and weakened communities. A life history approach highlights the dangers of incarceration for youth and the difficulties a child's imprisonment poses for families. Recommendations for reform are presented as well as an example of a new initiative to protect minority youth in the justice system and promote effective juvenile justice policies.

Unge lovbrytere

Are juvenile delinquents to be regarded as neglected children or as criminals? Should they be taken care of by child welfare, or should they go to court and be punished for their acts? In post-war Norway, there have been several ideological shifts on this topic. ln the forties and early fifties, the climate was optimistic. There was a strong belief in treatment, care, and education. With rising juvenile delinquency in the late fifties and sixties, the optimism waned. The solution to the problem was increasingly sought in criminal justice. The seventies saw a new turn of the ideological tides. The imprisonment of children was now seen as a moral outrage. After a while, this issue crystallized into a debate on whether the age of criminal liability should be raised from fourteen to fifteen years. This debate marked the starting point for transferring the responsibility for youth delinquency from the criminal justice system back into the hands of child welfare and health - and social services.
 Some lasting dilemmas have accompanied these shifts: Is it possible to smoothly combine measures "in the best interest of the child" with effective crime control? When individual preventive considerations in criminal justice gain such force that they conflict strongly with the demand for proportionality between offence and punishment, they become indefensible. And when treatment has to be administered through extensive use of coercion, doubts arise. These dilemmas remain unsolved.

Reformatory and industrial schools and the decline of child imprisonment in mid‐Victorian England and Wales

(1994). Reformatory and industrial schools and the decline of child imprisonment in mid‐Victorian England and Wales. History of Education: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 59-73.

Health and social conditions of street children in Honduras.

The United Nations' Year of the Child and its Declaration on the Rights of Children have focused the attention of the pediatric community on the situation of homeless street children in less developed countries throughout the world. Recent investigations 1-4 document widespread family disorganization, exploitation, abandonment, violence, police brutality, frequent imprisonment of street children in Latin America and elsewhere, and, in at least one case, killing of gaminismos (street children) informally sanctioned and abetted by officials and the media. 5 This article presents descriptive data on health and social conditions of street children in Honduras who are receiving services through Proyecto Alternativos , a health education and social services program located in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. THE HONDURAN CONTEXT

The Politics of Juvenile Crime.

Juvenile crime is a highly contentious area of public policy. In Britain over the past thirty years governments have used their responses to juvenile crime to demonstrate either their reforming zeal or their political toughness. This has resulted in a struggle between an optimistic welfare' lobby, which strives to alleviate the ultimate causes of juvenile crime, and a pessimistic justice' lobby, which endeavours only to manage deviants more effectively by reasserting the link between crime and punishment. John Pitts outlines the consequences of this conflict for the juvenile justice system, focusing particularly on the attempts by social welfare professionals and penal reformers to create alternatives to imprisonment for children and young people. The emphasis on retribution that is current in social policy and professional practice today, he argues, arises from a transformation of the economic crisis into a moral crusade. This ideological shift has set the paradigm for criminological research, the boundaries for public policy and the limits of professional practice. Tracing the impact of this shift on the beleaguered residents of the unemployed ghetto of the inner city, he reveals the failure of current policies to address the harsh realities of crime and victimisation. Finally he suggests directions for new initiatives and considers alliances which could be constructed to effect change.