Delinquency Court Research Articles

Correction: Contact with Foster Care and the Juvenile Delinquency Court: A Prospective Examination from Birth through Age 18

Correction: Contact with Foster Care and the Juvenile Delinquency Court: A Prospective Examination from Birth through Age 18

Contact with Foster Care and the Juvenile Delinquency Court: A Prospective Examination from Birth through Age 18

Abstract Purpose Research has demonstrated a link between out-of-home foster care and subsequent juvenile justice involvement. Understanding factors that may contribute to dual system involvement for young people who entered foster care is essential for disrupting this relationship. Method We used population-based linked administrative records to examine the prevalence of juvenile delinquency court petitions among individuals placed in out-of-home foster care in Los Angeles County from birth to age 18. By integrating records from child welfare and probation, this analysis of individuals born between 1998 and 2001 and who lived in the county’s out-of-home foster care system (N = 29,434) showed that 2,554 (8.7%) had encountered a juvenile delinquency court petition prior to turning 18. Results Regression results showed an increased rate of dual system involvement among young people in foster care who experienced unstable living conditions, periods of absence from care, commercial sexual exploitation, or group homes. Instability in living situations (staying in care for more than a year, with three or more homes or placements; RR = 1.31; CI = 1.16, 1.48) and history of group home care (RR = 1.43; CI = 1.25, 1.64) were significantly associated with a heightened rate of dual system involvement. As shown in the gender-stratified models, the magnitude of associations between dual system involvement and foster care experiences differed by gender. Discussion The current study aligns with prior studies showing a relationship between residential instability and group homes to subsequent delinquency court involvement. Findings set a baseline so future work can explore if policies aiming to reduce reliance on group care are associated with changes in the likelihood of dual system involvement.

Comparing Maltreatment Experiences for Young People with Child Protection or Dual System Involvement

This study examined how single and multiple types of maltreatment allegations differed for young people with child protective services (CPS) only and dual system (i.e., CPS and juvenile delinquency court petition) involvement by gender and race and ethnicity. Allegation types were documented for young people with CPS only or dual system involvement using linked CPS and Probation records for Los Angeles County for a cohort of children born between 1998 and 2001 with a history of at least one CPS maltreatment investigation between birth and age 18. The CPS only and dual system groups were compared using chi-square tests, and a generalized linear model was constructed to assess the relationship between key variables and dual system involvement. Two thirds of young people with dual system involvement (68.2%) experienced two or more allegation types, compared with less than half of young people with CPS involvement only (46.0%). More than three quarters of girls (77.1%) and Black young people (75.3%) with dual system involvement experienced multiple types of maltreatment. 11% of young people with only CPS involvement experienced sexual abuse with another maltreatment type, compared to 22.7% of young people with dual system involvement and 38.6% of girls with dual system involvement.The findings highlight the complex CPS histories of young people with dual system involvement, especially among girls and Black young people. These findings should facilitate discussion of gender-responsive services for young people with traumatic sexual experiences, given the frequency of sexual abuse allegations among girls with dual system involvement.

An evaluation framework for juvenile defense: A theory of change and logic model measurements

AbstractThis paper presents an evaluation framework for juvenile defense. The evaluation framework establishes a theory of change, logic model categories, and potential measurements for understanding the systemic variation in juvenile defense across the US. Grounded in the US Supreme Court case affirming the due process right to defense counsel, In re Gault, the evaluation framework offers a method of studying juvenile defense to assist youth in delinquency court, defenders, policymakers, and researchers. The methodological shift to an evaluation framework asserts a refocus on the legal objectives for provision of defense counsel in delinquency court.

"A Situation That Has Existed for Generations": Double Age, Race, and American Juvenile Justice

"A Situation That Has Existed for Generations":Double Age, Race, and American Juvenile Justice William S. Bush (bio) a 1939 murder case involving two African American adolescent girls garnered almost no attention outside San Antonio, Texas. The city's two daily newspapers barely reported on the facts surrounding the crime and they wrote nothing of the personal histories of the assailant or victim. Moreover, local media sometimes misreported the ages of fifteen-year-old Odessa Haywood and eighteen-year-old Carrie Lee Thompson while conspicuously highlighting their racial identity as "Negro." Some reports identified Haywood, the assailant, as sixteen; one article described Thompson, the victim, as a "woman," even though she was a high school student at the time.1 The only outlet to report in depth about them was the San Antonio Register, the city's Black-owned newspaper. The Register published detailed reports on the two girls, their families, and Haywood's May 1939 jury trial and conviction in the Bexar County Court. Their coverage of the case prompted the Register's editors to issue a dramatic call to action against "a situation that has existed for generations."2 The Register decried the court's inability to place Odessa Haywood in an age-appropriate facility, none of which admitted Black girls. The court's only available placement options were imprisonment in the county jail or unsupervised release—a recurring dilemma across the Jim Crow South and to some extent other regions in the United States.3 Neither option was acceptable to local Black leaders, who moved to protect Haywood from adult punishments while mobilizing to demand access for Black girls to juvenile detention facilities and training schools. More broadly, local Black leaders highlighted the "State's indifference" and "dereliction" in refusing to extend the ostensibly protective benefits of juvenile justice and child welfare to Black children and youth. The Haywood case revived a dormant campaign to build a statewide juvenile training school for [End Page 410] Black girls, who had been largely left out of a wave of juvenile justice reforms that had swept the state during the Progressive Era. By the time of the Haywood case, official neglect had become the defining experience of Black girls in American juvenile justice, and particularly in Texas, where a combination of law and custom invoked the application of "double age." The white "child-savers" who founded and administered juvenile justice typically excluded Black children and youth from their vision of protected childhood. Instead, Black children were viewed as too "insensate" to respond to nurture, as being fully formed "hard clay" and less amenable to rehabilitation.4 In practice, this thinking produced different results for Black boys and girls under the state's juvenile delinquency laws. In 1913, Texas adopted the sweeping Juvenile Delinquency Court Act that granted original jurisdiction to the juvenile courts over boys under age seventeen and girls under age eighteen. The law explicitly mandated racial segregation in juvenile justice.5 For Black boys from the state's urban areas, segregation meant heightened incarceration. Black boys were overrepresented in local juvenile detention facilities as well as the state's sprawling youth prison. They were confined to a racially segregated dormitory that was often overcrowded and poorly maintained. When the youth prison introduced academic and vocational schooling, it excluded Black boys altogether, subjecting them instead to agricultural labor. Texas abolished convict leasing in its adult prisons in 1912, but it continued for decades in the state's youth prisons. Much like their adult counterparts in the prisons, Black boys toiled on private farms, including some owned by state employees, in addition to farming state-owned land. White officials justified these practices by portraying Black boys as incipient adult criminals, while news reports described Black boys solely in terms of the threat they supposedly posed to public safety. For Black girls, state-mandated segregation meant they received comparatively little attention from juvenile justice authorities. Black girls charged with status or even criminal offenses typically were released back into their communities with no official supervision. Local governments in major cities such as Houston, Dallas, or Haywood's home city of San Antonio committed few resources in the form of juvenile probation...

The Conflicted Juvenile Delinquency Court after Gault: A Qualitative Examination of Actors and Processes in Two Contemporary Courts

ABSTRACTThe contemporary juvenile court aims to protect juveniles' due process rights and to address the social welfare of youth. The seminal case In re Gault (1967) requires juvenile court judges to make determinations of fact using standards resembling the adult criminal process. At the same time, the Supreme Court in Gault aimed to preserve a focus on the treatment and rehabilitation of adolescent offenders. Contemporary juvenile courts continue to have both adversarial and rehabilitative elements. While experts note the potential conflict between due process protections and social welfare objectives, little research has examined how, in practice, the balance is struck between these two goals in the contemporary juvenile court. This research examines the ability of two contemporary juvenile courts to provide constitutional protections while also responding effectively to youths' social welfare needs. By combining 106 observations of court hearings and attorney meetings with 86 interviews of parents and youth about their court experiences, this research finds substantial conflict between these two objectives. These two courts often fail to adequately address the individual needs of each child or to fully realize their due process function. Policy implications are discussed.

Socializing Distrust of the Justice System through the Family in Juvenile Delinquency Court

Juvenile delinquency courts in the United States generally require parents to attend all court hearings, but little is known about how parents' experiences in the court process affect their discussions of the justice system with their court-involved children. Using multiperspectival and longitudinal data combining observations with interviews of parents and youth in two courts, this research finds that many parents discuss the legal process in negative terms with their children when parents are outside the presence of legal authorities. This research adds to the literature on legal socialization by examining how parents' perceptions of law and their experiences with the court become part of the socializing content provided by parents to their court-involved children. Creating a more meaningful role for parents in the juvenile justice process may potentially lead to more positive discussions of the court process between parents and juvenile defendants.

A Proposal to Allow the Presentation of Mitigation in Juvenile Court so that Juvenile Charges May be Expunged in Appropriate Cases

Many people believe that juvenile adjudications of delinquency are automatically expunged upon the youth reaching the age of majority. In reality, a juvenile adjudication of delinquency—especially for a felony—can significantly limit a teenager’s future ability to obtain student loans and scholarships, join the military, participate in athletics, become a firefighter or a law enforcement officer or obtain one of many jobs. As discussed herein, the majority of youth facing charges in delinquency court are suffering from severe socio-economic deprivation, are victims of emotional, physical or sexual abuse, or have serious mental health issues. Many youth caught up in the delinquency system are impacted by more than one of these factors, each of which places a teenager at significantly greater risk of engaging in delinquent behavior. Society tells these young people to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” but at the same time significantly limits their ability to do just that by labeling them felons—often violent felons—for the rest of their lives. This article argues that effectively foreclosing a young person’s future based upon behavior that is linked to circumstances beyond their control violates the Eighth Amendment’s proscription on cruel and unusual punishment. This article proposes an alternative framework that allows young people to have their juvenile records expunged if they fulfill certain criteria. This would benefit society as well as the young defendants, as it would lower the levels of adult recidivism.

A Case Study Approach to Procedural Justice: Parents’ Views in Two Juvenile Delinquency Courts in the United States: Table A1

The juvenile delinquency court aims to modify children’s behaviour, but little is known about how parents’ experiences in juvenile delinquency courts may be affecting the court’s efforts. Whether parents believe the court system is fair and effective could have important implications for the juvenile justice system. This research uses two case studies of parents in two different courts in the Northeast United States to examine how parents’ views are created and reinforced through experiences in the juvenile court process. Integrating concepts from the sociolegal framework of legal consciousness, this research challenges some of the core concepts of procedural justice and brings to the surface new ideas about negative views of the law and disengagement from the justice system.

The journey of dually-involved youth: The description and prediction of rereporting and recidivism

Abstract Dually-involved youth refers to youth that are simultaneously receiving services from both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The current study focused on a sample of dually-involved youth (N = 1148). The study examined the characteristics of dually-involved youth and reported and predicted the incidence of subsequent maltreatment and re-offending. We found that 8% of dually-involved youth had at least one arrest before entering child welfare system, 32% experienced new reports of maltreatment referrals subsequent to arrest, and 56% were charged with a second offense (i.e., recidivated). The court outcomes received in delinquency court were associated with both rereporting and recidivism. These findings support the development of a shared services model for child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

And by the way, do you know he thinks he’s a girl? The failures of law, policy and legal representation for transgender youth in juvenile delinquency courts

Because of the persistence of bias and discrimination against transgender people generally, the societal lack of understanding of gender and sexuality, and a distrust of difference, transgender youth are at high risk for involvement in the juvenile justice system. For many of these youth, their gender identity is relevant both to why they were arrested and to their needs once they are brought into the courtroom. This article discusses how law, policy, and legal representation are regularly failing transgender youth in juvenile delinquency systems throughout the United States. The author concludes by posing policy and system recommendations that will address these failures.

ENSURING AUTHENTIC YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN DELINQUENCY CASES: CREATING A PARADIGM FOR SPECIALIZED JUVENILE DEFENSE PRACTICE

In delinquency courts, juvenile defense attorneys are essential for guaranteeing children's due process rights and encouraging their meaningful participation in the proceedings. Yet, indigent defense delivery systems are largely failing youth accused of committing crimes. This article highlights the importance of developing systems that support the highly specialized practice area of juvenile defense. To protect their clients’ rights and meet their ethical obligations, juvenile defense attorneys must zealously advocate for their clients’ expressed interests and must strategically address the biases and misunderstandings prevalent in delinquency courts. Specifically, defense attorneys must vigorously challenge systemic race, class, and gender injustices; incorporate expert knowledge of youth development into their advocacy; and protect clients’ mental health and educational interests. Such holistic representation promotes rehabilitation and reduces recidivism. Because of numerous obstacles that currently impede defense attorneys from engaging in such exemplary practice, systemic reforms are necessary to support high‐quality defense representation and, ultimately, ensure that youths’ rights are protected.

Reconceptualizing Due Process in Juvenile Justice: Contributions from Law and Social Science

This article challenges the accepted wisdom, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in Gault, that procedures in juvenile delinquency court should mimic the adult criminal process. The legal basis for this challenge is Gault itself, as well as the other Supreme Court cases that triggered the juvenile justice revolution of the past decades, for all of these cases relied on the due process clause, not the provisions of the Constitution that form the foundation for adult criminal procedure. That means that the central goal in juvenile justice is fundamental fairness, which does not have to be congruent with the adversarial tradition of adult criminal court. Instead, as the Court's administrative procedure cases illustrate, fundamental fairness theory aims at constructing the procedural framework that best promotes fairness, accuracy and efficiency in the setting in question. Social science, and in particular procedural justice research, can play an important role in fashioning this framework, because it can empirically examine various procedural mechanisms, in various settings, with these objectives in mind. To date, procedural justice research suggests that the procedures associated with the adult criminal process are not optimal even in that setting, much less in a regime focused on rehabilitating or punishing children. We propose a performance-based management system for implementing these legal and scientific insights in the juvenile justice context.

The zone between social acceptance and juvenile delinquency

DELINQUENCY is not a new term or a new phenomenon. Frequent use of the phrase and extensive publicity about it have brought to the situation in recent years a notoriety which would be impressive even if there were no increase in occurrence. There are good reasons for all citizens, and especially for children's physicians, to be interested in antisocial behavior of children, for it is an acknowledged problem of the day and appears to be more conspicuous as the years pass. The number of juvenile delinquency court cases tripled between 1940 and 1958 which is a far greater increase than that in child population in the same period. In any year a little more than 2 per cent of all children aged 10 through 17 years will be referred to juvenile courts. A better idea of the size of the problem is gained f rom an authoritative estimate that 12 per cent of all children will at some time during their years of 10 through 17 be referred to courts. Roughly 20 per cent of all boys will, during this age period, be referred to courts, for the ratio of male to female delinquents is 5:1.1 These statistics refer only to official or legal delinquency, the violation of laws or

Federal Interest in Juvenile Delinquency

M ANY American children grow up in a rough world. They come from homes broken by desertion, divorce, or separation, or are children of unwed mothers. These, generally, are youngsters, deprived of a father's support, who are dependent upon Federal-State aid to dependent children programs for bare necessities of life. Throughout Nation there are more than 2 million of these children. There are many pressures. Thousands of children under 12 years of age, whose mothers work full time away from home, have no, daytime afterschool supervision. There isi no telling how many children live in undesirable neighborhoods with substandard housing. Every year millions of children change schools, moving from State to State, from town to town, or into different neighborhoods. Many children, of course, grow up in combinations of these unfortunate situations, these pressures. And from their numbers come many of disturbed children, youngsters in conflict with law, members of what has been called the shookup generation. Police currently handle more than 1.7 million cases of juvenile misbehavior a year. About a quarter of these, or 428,000, are referred to juvenile courts by police; an additional 175,000 delinquency cases are referred to, juvenile courts by parents, teachers, or social agencies, making a total of more than 600,000 delinquency court cases every year. Their number grows. The delinquency cases handled by juvenile courts increased by 137 percent betwee.n 1948 and 1957, whereas child population from 10 to 17 years of age increased only 28 percent. By 1965 there will be an estimated 30 million children in United States in this highrisk, vulnerable age group, a, third more than in 1957. If incidence of juvenile delinquency continues to increase at same rate as it ha,s since 1948, then by 1965 juvenile courts will be handling delinquent children at an annual rate of about a million cases. And by then, police will be handling a much greater number, many of which will never reach courts. There isn't any simple solution, as we all know. But we know, too, that juvenile delinquency has reached perilous proportions. Two things urgently need doing: first, we must arouse ourselves and our communities to get on with job of doing those things that could and should be done now, and second, we must pursue with vigor search for better understanding of ba,sic conditions which lead to this fearsome complex of social behavior.