This chapter discusses several proposals for reforming or replacing the juvenile justice system. These include reemphasizing rehabilitation, transforming juvenile court into a scaled-down criminal court, abolishing juvenile court, creating separate courts for children and adolescents, and adopting a restorative justice model. Broader issues that could impact juvenile offending like race, family decline, and lack of community are also examined.

1. Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, 7th ed.
Chapter 14
FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN
JUVENILE JUSTICE

2. Chapter 14
What You Need to Know
• Reform proposals for juvenile court include reemphasizing
and reinvigorating the rehabilitative orientation of juvenile
court, changing juvenile court into a scaled-down version of
criminal court, and abolishing juvenile court.
• Another model is to adopt a restorative justice model for
juvenile court.
• Social issues that affect juveniles include race
(disproportionate minority confinement and contacts), the
need to rebuild community, the role of the family, character
education, and the political economy.
• In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
that the death penalty is unconstitutional for juveniles. Like
the dissenting Justice Scalia, some would argue that the
death penalty is appropriate for juveniles.

3. Chapter 14
What You Need to Know (cont.)
• A recent estimate is that there are more than 2,500 juveniles
serving Life Without Parole sentences. Critics argue that the
same reasoning used by the majority of the Supreme Court
in Roper applies to Life Without Parole: incomplete
adolescent psychological development and impulsiveness
argue that juveniles are not fully responsible.
• There is some confusion over the proper role of juvenile
court concerning status offenders. Petitioned cases are
increasing while many call for ending jurisdiction.
• Although many would like an easy solution, that is not
possible. The answer is to address the problems of youths
who break the law.

4. Chapter 14
Introduction
• The juvenile court is in trouble. Critics point out
numerous problems and suggest either change or
elimination. State legislators and prosecutors have
taken away many of the clients of juvenile court.
• This chapter will examine several proposals about
the future of juvenile court. One drastic proposal is
to abolish juvenile court. Other proposals call for
new types of courts. We will outline these proposals
and assess them.
• This chapter will also look at some broader issues
affecting the treatment of juvenile offenders.

5. Chapter 14
Proposals For Reforming Juvenile Court
• Rehabilitating the Rehabilitative- One approach to the problems
of the juvenile court is try to return to the rehabilitative and
parens patriae roots of the court.
• Reformers who support this option think that the failures of
juvenile court are failures of implementation: the juvenile court
has not delivered the rehabilitation that it initially promised.
• A major factor behind this failure of implementation is lack of
funding. Legislators have not provided the money needed to help
youths obtain education, individual counseling, family counseling,
and vocational training.
• A slight variation of this focus on the return to rehabilitation is the
concept of positive youth development. Proponents of this
concept argue that most youths can grow up properly and stay
out of trouble if they can be attached to the proper social
resources, especially prosocial, caring adults.

6. Chapter 14
A Critic of the Rehabilitative Juvenile Court
• Barry Feld argues that juvenile court failure is not simply a
failure of implementation and that all that is needed is a
rededication to the original rehabilitative ideals of juvenile
court.
• Feld argues that there is “pervasive public antipathy” to
helping the poor, disadvantaged, disproportionately
minority youths who are the clients of juvenile court.
• Another problem is that because committing a crime is the
condition for receiving “help” from juvenile court, there is a
built-in punishment focus.
• Critics argue that providing for children is a societal
responsibility, not just a responsibility of juvenile court.

7. Chapter 14
A Criminalized Juvenile Court
• A second solution to the problems of juvenile court is to
“criminalize” juvenile court: to attempt to make it a
scaled-down version of adult criminal court.
• A criminalized juvenile court would entail providing
juveniles with all the procedural protections of criminal
court. Thus, children would have the right to a jury trial
and would have fully adversarial defense attorneys, not
attorneys who often slip into the role of a concerned
parent trading off zealous advocacy for promises of
treatment.
• A second action that needs to be taken to transform
juvenile court into a criminal court for youths would be
to scale down penalties out of concern for the reduced
culpability of children.

8. Chapter 14
Abolishing Juvenile Court
• Some argue that the problems of juvenile court are
too extensive and too fundamental to try to reform
it. Because juvenile court provides neither help nor
crime control, now is the time to abolish it.
• By abolishing juvenile court, juveniles would receive
adult procedural protections. Juveniles would have
the right to a jury trial, and defense attorneys would
act as zealous adversaries.
• Juveniles would still get shorter sentences because
shorter sentences have been a saving feature of
juvenile court and they “enable most young
offenders to survive the mistakes of adolescence
with a semblance of their life chances intact.”

9. Chapter 14
Creating a New Juvenile Court
• Others suggests that we create a new juvenile court
that has two branches: one for children and one for
adolescents.
• The children’s court would be rehabilitative and
would presume that children are not culpable, that
is, they do not have criminal responsibility.
• The adolescent court would presume partial
culpability and would be more punitive than the
children’s court.
• There would be no prosecutorial or legislative
waiver, and waiver would be only to the next step.
Thus, children could only be waived to adolescent
court, and only adolescents could be waived to adult
court.

10. Chapter 14
A “Youth Justice System” within
Adult Criminal Court
• Presumptive waiver provisions, mandatory waiver, blended sentencing,
mandatory minimums and other sentencing guidelines, open hearings,
and the use of juvenile records in adult court are all nails in the coffin of
the traditional juvenile court.
• Some suggest we transfer all delinquency matters to adult court but to
create a separate arm of adult court to deal with criminal acts allegedly
committed by juveniles.
• Much like Adult Criminal Courts, specialized juvenile courts could offer
drug courts and mental health courts hat specialize in intake and
treatment.
• This approach is considered an extension of the movement called
therapeutic jurisprudence: “an interdisciplinary perspective that urges
us to consider the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic consequences of
legal rules, of legal procedures, and of the roles of lawyers, judges, and
others acting within the legal arena.”

11. Chapter 14
A Restorative Justice Juvenile Court
• This approach is focused less on achieving public
safety by incarcerating individual offenders and
more on reducing fear, building youth-adult
relationships, and increasing the capacity of
community groups and institutions to prevent crime
and safely monitor offenders in the community.
• The role of the restorative justice juvenile court
would be to build community so that
neighborhoods can better respond to—but also
prevent—delinquency.
• Communities would return to their role of being
responsible for youths.
• There would be attention on the victim and the
offender and also the community.

12. Chapter 14
Broader Issues
• Race and juvenile court - Some argue that juvenile justice must
fight the influence of racism. The federal government, for example,
has made the elimination of disproportionate minority confinement
in juvenile correctional facilities a priority.
• The need to rebuild the community - Civic participation and other
measures of community involvement are declining.
– One measure of the decline of community is religious
participation. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, church
membership declined by approximately 10 percent.
– Most studies estimate that the average American now watches
television roughly four hours per day, very nearly the highest
viewership anywhere in the world.
– If we want citizens to participate in restorative justice
conferencing, victim–offender mediation programs, sentencing
circles, and other restorative justice programs, we need a solid
community base as the foundation for those efforts.

13. Chapter 14
Broader Issues (cont.)
• The Role of the Family - Some argue that the
American family is in rapid decline, there are
alarming levels of divorce, births of out-of-wedlock
children, single-parent families, and cohabiting
couples.
• The media has given much impetus to this decline,
for example, “indecent exposure is celebrated as a
virtue, perversions are made to seem
commonplace, and modesty and discretion are
frowned upon”
• One solution is to return to family values and to
resist the erosion of values.

14. Chapter 14
Broader Issues (cont.)
• Character education - Some argue that faulty
character education is a major cause of delinquency
and other problems.
– Parents and schools need to discipline children to
get them to behave well.
– The Rousseauian approach, on the other hand,
thinks that children are naturally good, and no
external code should be imposed on the child.
Teachers, therefore, should not preach to
students but should allow their natural goodness
to shine forth.

15. Chapter 14
Broader Issues (cont.)
• Social support for families - The problem is not that
parents are abandoning family values, but that
there are social, economic, and political forces at
work that weaken the ability of families to do their
job.
– 13 percent of American children live in conditions that
are considered to make them “high-risk” children.
– “All the political rhetoric about preventing youth
violence, any reference to these fatalities, or the
conditions that may increase their likelihood, is
conspicuously absent.”
– The answer is to provide more assistance to families.

16. Chapter 14
Reintroducing the Spiritual Dimension into
Corrections
• Some argue that the basic problem facing today’s
youths is apocalyptic nihilism.
• Therefore American youths face a gnawing gap in
their lives and seek “a community that satisfies
their longing for worth-proving ritual, meaningful
action in the service of a cause, and psychological
intimacy.”
• One suggestion is to re-introduce the spiritual
dimension in corrections. This would entail efforts
of corrections workers, whether prison counselors,
chaplains, or probation officers, to help offenders
find greater meaning in their lives. This does not
have to focus on religion.

17. Chapter 14
Capital Punishment for Juveniles
• In 2009, there were 15,760 homicides in the United
States; 923 of these were committed by juveniles.
• The Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is
unconstitutional for juveniles. In Roper v. Simmons
(2005), writing for the majority, Justice Arthur
Kennedy wrote that “the Eighth and Fourteenth
Amendments forbid imposition of the death
penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18
when their crimes were committed.”