Term Paper on "Juvenile Sentencing"

Term Paper 8 pages (2091 words) Sources: 2 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Juvenile Sentencing

The issue of sentencing juveniles has been a topic of considerable debate in recent years. Due to the increase of school shootings and other serious crimes committed by adolescents that have grabbed national media attention, many believe that juveniles should be sentenced to adult correctional systems. However, solving this issue of juvenile sentencing is far from simple, as there are many variables to consider.

Shay Bilchik, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America, writes in the April 2003 issue of Correction Today, that the United States has taken a dramatic step toward prosecuting far too many juveniles in the adult correctional system (Bilchik). Laws in the United States recognize that juveniles are too young to consume alcohol, vote, engage in legal contracts and enter into marriage because they are not fully developed mentally and emotionally (Bilchik).

The juvenile justice system, created by legislators, is based on the belief that adolescents have much to learn, and that early interventions will alter their paths toward delinquent behavior (Bilchik). Yet today, many politicians are poised to abandon this approach.

Between 1984 and 1994, arrests for juveniles charged with violent offenses jumped 78%, according to the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. Some criminologists portray this generation of teens as predators invading America's neighborhoods, and many have predicted a flourish of juvenile crime (Bilchik). Thus, in response to such rhetoric, nearly every state has passed legislation making it easier to try juveniles as adults. But, as Bilchik notes, "the mayhem that was anticipated never arrives, and by the mid-1990's, teen crime rates had begun to plummet" (Bilchik). Although it is difficult to pinpoint evidence that explains the change, most leaders in the juvenile justice field attribute the decline in juvenile crime to a stronger economy, decline in drug use and related gang activity, and an increase in preventative and development youth programs.

However, the transfer laws have not been repealed, and the majority of decisions to transfer juvenile to criminal or adult court today are left in the hands of a prosecutor or the legislature's mandatory guidelines, rather than a judge (Bilchik).

Each year, approximately 200,000 adolescents are sent directly to adult courts, and the majority of the offenses are property crimes and drug-related (Bilchik).

As the leader of a youth advocacy organization, Bilchik finds these developments troubling for American youths, but as a former district attorney who was dedicated to keeping the streets safe, he finds these outcomes equally troubling for communities throughout the United States (Bilchik). According to Bilchik, rather than "lowering the likelihood of violent crime, this more severe approach increases the chances that youths will leave prison and continue to commit crimes" (Bilchik). What is needed is adequate funding and support to make the juvenile justice system work properly, for there are too few juvenile justice systems in the United States that have the capacity to hold juveniles accountable and provide the appropriate treatment they and their families need (Bilchik). For example, if a 16-year-old is arrested and found guilty of burglary, then spends months at home while awaiting placement in a crowded juvenile facility, he learns that there is no swift and appropriate consequence for his actions, yet if he is sentenced to an adult prison, he soon learns nothing more than how to become a more successful criminal (Bilchik).

When Bilchik worked as a prosecutor in Florida, he faced an under-funded juvenile justice system that often sent offenders home for months to await placement, but he worked with judges and defense attorneys to expand juvenile placements and alternative sentencing approaches in the adult court. Bilchik claims this made a difference.

In a 2002 Florida study for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, researchers used matched pairs of offenders in both the adult and juvenile systems age, current offense and criminal history), and found that 49% of youths tried as adults recidivated, compared with 35% of youths who remained in the juvenile justice system. The Miami Herald conducted similar study in 2001 and found that sending a juvenile to prison increased the odds by 35% that he or she would re-offend within one year of release. Recent studies in Georgia, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania reveal similar effects (Bilchik).

Evidence shows that well-researched, well-informed and well-funded juvenile justice systems work wonders (Bilchik). Studies conducted by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence has demonstrated that when working in tandem with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, programs such as Nurse Home Visiting, Multisystemic Therapy, Functional Family Therapy and Quantum Opportunities "reduce high-risk behaviors and arrest rates, and increase high school graduation rates among vulnerable and other high-risk youths," and while such programs are costly, the costs of incarcerating adolescents are far greater (Bilchik). Bilchik notes that too many communities are failing to provide programs that hold adolescents accountable in a timely manner and offer the guidance needed to turn them away from crime. By transferring them blindly to adult facilities, society is not only failing America's youth, but are failing the communities as well (Bilchik).

Barry C. Feld writes in the September 1997 issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology that over the past three decades, "judicial decision, legislative amendments, and administrative changes have transformed the juvenile court from a nominally rehabilitative social welfare agency into a scaled-down, second-class criminal court for young people" (Feld). The reforms have converted the historical ideal of the juvenile court as a social welfare institution into a penal system that provides adolescent offenders with neither therapy nor justice (Feld). The merging of the juvenile and criminal courts eliminates all of the operational differences in strategies of criminal social control for youths and adults, thus "no compelling reasons exist to maintain separate from an adult criminal court, a punitive juvenile court whose only remaining distinctions are its persisting procedural deficiencies (Feld). Feld believes that states should abolish juvenile courts' delinquency jurisdiction and formally recognize youthfulness as a mitigating factor in the sentencing of adolescent offenders. He believes such a policy would provide youth offenders with substantive protection comparable to those of juvenile courts, "assure greater procedural regularity in the determination of guilt, and avoid the disjunctions in social control caused by maintaining two duplicative and inconsistent criminal justice systems" (Feld).

In the September 1997 issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Thomas Grisso explains that the traditional juvenile court, which has been grounded in optimism concerning the potential for rehabilitation of youth offenders, has long been the target of criticism (Grisso). Even its defenders and advocates have been forced to admit that the system has failed to meet its objectives. Beginning in the late 1960's, the Supreme Court introduced procedural regularity to delinquency proceeding, and since that time courts and legislature have been slowing chipping away at the foundations of the juvenile justice system (Grisso). As public fear and anger at what is perceived to be an epidemic of youth violence, including an alarming increase in juvenile homicide, both federal and state policymakers have accelerated and intensified the process (Grisso). Critics of the traditional juvenile justice system argue that adolescent offenders should be receive the same punishment as adults, and many are poised to abolish the separate juvenile justice system completely (Grisso). Grisso notes that the traditional juvenile court was shaped in important ways by a "conception of errant youth as childlike, psychologically troubled, and malleable," thus the court's job was not to punish but to rehabilitate and protect the youths (Grisso). During the reform movement of the 1970's and 1980's, a less idealized view of adolescence emerged and a growing skepticism about the potential for rehabilitation. Adolescents were viewed as less culpable than adults, but not as blameless children, therefore because they lacked experience and judgment, youth offenders needed lessons in accountability (Grisso).

In March 1999, Honorable Mike Lawlor of the Judiciary Committee of Connecticut testified before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning juvenile justice reform. Lawlor explained that since the mid-1990's, every state had made great progress in reforming a juvenile justice system that had become out-dated. Most states implemented a range of sanctions that allowed intervention at younger ages, in an attempt to divert a child who showed early signs of problem behavior from progressing to serious offenses (Lawlor).

Connecticut established several programs, each of which consisted of a combination of sanctions and treatment options that had proven successful elsewhere. Connecticut adopted many of the strategies for serious, violent, and chronic offenders developed by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Federal funding has allowed Connecticut and other states to develop many of these graduated sanctions programs (Lawlor).

Lawlor believes that the one-size-fits-all mandate could undermine the progress made in many states. In Connecticut, "graduated sanctions in juvenile justice is not simply a matrix of specific penalties applied to specific offenders with specific records," but is a menu that offers judges, prosecutors, police officers, teachers, and others choices to use at their discretion, depending on the circumstance of each case… READ MORE

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