Juvenile Confinement - Who Is A Juvenile?, Changing Approaches To Juveniledelinquency, Trends In Juvenile Arrests, Juveniles In Jail And Prison
Since 1992, forty-five states have passed or amended legislation making it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults. The result is that the number of youths under eighteen confined in adult prisons has more than doubled in the past decade. This phenomenon is challenging the belief, enshrined in our justice system a century ago, that children and young adolescents should be adjudicated and confined in a separate system focused on their rehabilitation.
—Nancy E. Gist, Director, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2003
crimes, aggravated assault was the most common (61,490 arrests), followed by robbery (25,440 arrests). Substance abuse was the cause of many arrests: 197,100 were arrested on drug abuse violations, 136,900 for liquor law violations, 21,000 for driving under the influence, and 17,600 for drunkenness.
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In most states offenders age eighteen or younger are considered juveniles and fall under the jurisdiction of juvenile courts rather than adult criminal courts. However, all states will prosecute juveniles as adults under some circumstances. According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice (http://ncjj.servehttp.com/NCJJWebsite/main.htm) in 2005: As of March 2005, the OJJDP Statistical Briefin…
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 Juven…
During the period when the majority of states enacted tougher transfer, sentencing, and confidentiality statutes relating to juveniles, juveniles age ten to under eighteen declined as a proportion of total population from 13,482 per 100,000 in 1980 to 11,540 in 2000. Juvenile arrest and incarceration trends are thus not simply a reflection of a growing population of people in their teens—pu…
In 2003, 9,875 juveniles were in jail or prison, according to Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2003 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2004). Of these juveniles, 6,869 were in jail (5,484 held as adults) and 3,006 were in state prisons. (See Table 7.5 and Table 2.11 in Chapter 2.) Juvenile males (2,880) far outnumbered females (126) in state prisons. The number of incarcerated juveniles has drop…
The almost 10,000 juveniles in jail and prison in 2003 were but a fraction of all juveniles in confinement. They represented those youths transferred to the jurisdiction of adult courts, usually by waiver or under statutorily mandated rules. In 2002 Juvenile Residential Facility Census, 2000: Selected Findings was published by the
FIGURE 7.5 Juvenile arrest rates by offense and race, 1980…
Boot camps for juvenile offenders began around 1985, when such a program was established in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. By 1995, states operated thirty juvenile boot camps, while larger counties across the country operated another eighteen camps in local jails. Boot camps for juveniles are typically intended for "mid-range" offenders—those who have failed with lesser sanctions …
On March 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for juveniles. The ruling found that state laws authorizing capital punishment for those under eighteen years old who commit murder violate the Eighth Amendment's provision against cruel and unusual punishment and are therefore unconstitutional. Juveniles who commit serious crimes can now be sentenced to a maximum of lif…
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