Juvenile Confinement - Changing Approaches To Juveniledelinquency

Juvenile courts date to the late nineteenth century when Cook County, Illinois, established the first juvenile court under the Juvenile Court Act of 1899 passed by the state. The underlying concept was that if parents failed to TABLE 7.1
Oldest age for original juvenile court jurisdiction in delinquency matters, 1999
SOURCE: Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickmund, "Oldest Age for Juvenile Court Jurisdiction in Delinquency Matters," in Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, September 1999, http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/structure_process/qa04101.asp?qaDate=20020425 (accessed April 3, 2005)

Age	State
15	Connecticut, New York, North Carolina
16	Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin
17	Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming

provide children with proper care and supervision, the state had the right to intervene benevolently. Other states followed Illinois's initiative. Juvenile courts were in operation in most states by 1925. Juvenile courts favored a rehabilitative rather than a punitive approach and evolved less formal approaches than those in place in adult courts. They had exclusive jurisdiction over juveniles. Adult courts could try a juvenile only if the juvenile court waived its jurisdiction.

This approach began to change in the 1950s and 1960s because rehabilitation techniques were judged to be ineffective. A growing number of juveniles were being institutionalized until they reached adulthood because "treatment" did not seem to modify their behavior. Under the impetus of a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, juvenile courts became more formal to protect juveniles' rights in waiver situations or if they were to be confined. Congress passed the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act in 1968. The act suggested that so-called "status offenders" (noncriminal offenders such as runaways) no longer be handled inside the court system. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 mandated that juvenile offenders be separated from adult offenders. The act was amended in 1980; part of the amendment required that juveniles be removed from adult jails. In the 1970s the national policy became community-based management of juvenile delinquents.

Public perception changed again during the 1980s. Juvenile crime was growing, and the systems in place were perceived as being too lenient in dealing with delinquents. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report) public opinion was based on a "substantial misperception regarding increases in juvenile crime." Nonetheless, according to Juvenile Offenders and Victims, state legislatures responded in various ways:

Some laws removed certain classes of offenders from the juvenile justice system and handled them as adult criminals in criminal court. Others required the juvenile justice system to be more like the criminal justice system and to treat certain classes of juvenile offenders as criminals but in juvenile court.

As a result, offenders charged with certain offenses are excluded from juvenile court jurisdiction or face mandatory or automatic waiver to criminal court. In some states, concurrent jurisdiction provisions give prosecutors the discretion to file certain juvenile cases directly in criminal court.… In some states, some adjudicated juvenile offenders face mandatory sentences.

—Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report, Chapter 4, p. 86.

From 1992 to 1997, forty-seven states and the District of Columbia changed their laws. Between 1998 and 2002, thirty-one states made further revisions, according to the National Center for Juvenile Justice. Nearly all states took significant steps to toughen up their laws by making it easier to transfer juveniles to criminal court. These legislative changes ushered in an era of incarcerating juvenile offenders at historically high rates.