Decisions Affecting Juvenile Courts

Are children, who commit adult crimes, deserving of adult punishments? According to the United Nations, not if it harms their well-being. Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopted by the United Nations in November 1989, states that 1) the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration of all state actions involving children, 2) governments must allot children the protection and care necessary for their well-being, and 3) governmental institutions, services, and facilities that deal with children must uphold adequate standards for the safety, health, and supervision of children. The CRC is the U.N.’s primary treaty on the rights of children, making it a valuable point of reference for the basic human rights children are entitled to. However, one sole U.N. member state, out of 196, has not ratified the CRC: the United States. This lack of ratification is reflected in the United States’ juvenile incarceration practices. Since the 1990s, the United States’s juvenile justice system has received widespread criticism for harshly punishing juvenile offenders to deter youth crime, particularly by sentencing and incarcerating youths in the adult criminal justice system. In contrast, fellow U.N. member state Canada’s juvenile criminal justice system is largely focused on the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, and limits harsher sentencing practices. In this article, I will conduct a comparative analysis between established laws in Canada and the United States affecting juvenile sentencing and incarceration to determine whether the countries’ juvenile justice systems’ outcomes comply with Article 3 of the CRC. The analysis will show how various policy differences between the two countries impact the well-being of juvenile offenders, within the framework of CRC Article 3 compliance.

In guilty plea hearings, judges must determine whether defendants' plea decisions were made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. Little is known, however, about how plea hearings unfold, especially in juvenile court, where hearings are generally closed to the public. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to systematically observe plea hearings in juvenile and criminal court. We predicted that plea hearings would be brief and that defendant participation, especially among juveniles, would be minimal. We also explored how often judges addressed the plea validity components of knowingness, intelligence, and voluntariness and whether addressing these components differed by the type of court (juvenile, criminal), pretrial custody status, and pled-to charge severity. Trained coders in California (n = 104, juvenile court) and Virginia (n = 140, juvenile court; n = 593, criminal court) systematically observed more than 800 guilty plea hearings. Coders reliably documented hearing length, whether the defendant was in pretrial custody, whether the evidence was reviewed, details on defendant participation, and judicial attention to plea validity. On average, juvenile plea hearings lasted about 7 min and criminal plea hearings lasted 13 min. Prosecutors rarely reviewed evidence against the defendants in the juvenile courts, and in one juvenile court, judges paid virtually no attention to plea validity. In the other two courts, certain waived rights (e.g., to trial, to silence) were reviewed consistently. Depending on the court, hearing length and plea validity elements addressed varied by defendants' prehearing custody status and the pled-to charge severity. These findings provide novel insight into how components necessary for plea admissibility-knowingness, voluntariness, and intelligence-are discussed with defendants and, in doing so, raise concerns about the degree to which plea validity is actively assessed in plea hearings. Plea hearings are formal, minutes-long events in which defendant engagement is low. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Dual system youth: Subsequent system re-entry after receiving mental health services

Juvenile and Family Court JournalVolume 30, Issue 2 p. 17-23 The Role of the District Attorney in Juvenile Court: Is the Juvenile Court Becoming Just Like Adult Court? Inger J. Sagatun Ph.D., Corresponding Author Inger J. Sagatun Ph.D. Inger J. Sagatun Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of California Riverside Riverside, California 92521 Law Firm of Edwards and Aguillar San Jose, CaliforniaSearch for more papers by this authorLeonard P. Edwards Esq., Corresponding Author Leonard P. Edwards Esq. Inger J. Sagatun Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of California Riverside Riverside, California 92521 Law Firm of Edwards and Aguillar San Jose, CaliforniaSearch for more papers by this author Inger J. Sagatun Ph.D., Corresponding Author Inger J. Sagatun Ph.D. Inger J. Sagatun Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of California Riverside Riverside, California 92521 Law Firm of Edwards and Aguillar San Jose, CaliforniaSearch for more papers by this authorLeonard P. Edwards Esq., Corresponding Author Leonard P. Edwards Esq. Inger J. Sagatun Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of California Riverside Riverside, California 92521 Law Firm of Edwards and Aguillar San Jose, CaliforniaSearch for more papers by this author First published: May 1979 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-6988.1979.tb00842.xCitations: 3Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume30, Issue2May 1979Pages 17-23 RelatedInformation

The William H. Rehnquist Award is one of the most celebrated judicial honors in the country.11 The biography of Judge Austin and all endnotes were written by Kevin Gick, a Managing Editor of Articles for the Family Court Review. It is given each year to a state court judge who demonstrates the “highest level of judicial excellence, integrity, fairness, and professional ethics.”22 Santa Clara County Judge Named William H. Rehnquist Award Recipient, National Center for State Courts News Release, August 26, 2004, available at http://www.ncsconline.org/D_Comm/PressRelease/2004/Turrone04.HTML. The 2004 recipient, Judge Leonard Edwards, is the Supervising Judge of the Santa Clara County, California juvenile dependency court.33 Id. He is the first juvenile court judge to receive this prestigious award. During the 24 years he has held his position, Judge Edwards has worked extremely hard to improve how the juvenile court system serves troubled families. He has founded two organizations to achieve this end, the Juvenile Court Judges of California and the Santa Clara County Domestic Violence Council.44 Id. Judge Edwards serves as a lead judge in San Jose's Model Court, which is one of twenty-five jurisdictions in the country which utilizes new ideas and techniques to improve adoption rates for children in foster care.55 Model Courts: Improving Outcomes For Abused And Neglected Children And Their Families, The Judge's Page, available at http://www.nationalcasa.org/JudgesPage/Article_ModelCourts_7-04.htm (last visited April 19, 2005). Moreover, he has worked as president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.66 Santa Clara, supra note 2. Below is the speech he gave after accepting the award from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The speech notes the importance of the award to everyone working in America's juvenile courts.

The use of a juvenile court for youth crime is almost universal throughout the developed nations. However, every American jurisdiction has provided for exceptions—circumstances and procedures that transfer those within the age boundaries of juvenile court to criminal court instead. This chapter is organized as follows. The first section argues that the necessity of transfers must be understood in the context of the functions and limits of juvenile courts. The second section examines three different structural accommodations to the need for serious punishment for a few youths: wholesale transfer of jurisdiction to criminal courts; the expansion of punishment powers available within the juvenile court so that even the most terrible crimes can meet their just deserts in a juvenile court; and the selective transfer of cases. The third section contrasts three different mechanisms for transfer: legislative standards that define both the necessary and sufficient causes for transfer; a legal framework that delegates power to judges to decide whether a particular case requires transfer; and a system that delegates total power to prosecutors. The concluding section describes a few of the minimum conditions necessary to justice at the interface between juvenile and criminal court.

Dual system youth and their pathways in Los Angeles County: A replication of the OJJDP Dual System Youth Study

Editorial: Applying the basics

The purpose of this research is to critically analyze the issue of unclear boundaries between the two concepts and to formulate a normative foundation that can serve as the basis for reconstructing a more proportionate and just juvenile criminal justice system. Employing a normative legal research approach with prescriptive analysis, the study reviews statutory regulations, doctrines of juvenile criminal law, and systematically selected academic literature. The findings reveal that the conflation of developmental misconduct with criminal behavior contributes to excessive criminalization of children, weakens the rehabilitative orientation of juvenile justice, and generates legal uncertainty in law-enforcement practices. The discussion situates these findings within theories of child development, the principle of the best interests of the child, and modern criminal-law paradigms that position punishment as an ultimum remedium. The article argues that juvenile justice reform cannot rely solely on procedural mechanisms such as diversion and restorative justice, but must begin with a conceptual reconstruction of the boundaries of juvenile criminal responsibility. The study’s contribution lies in strengthening a normative framework that distinguishes juvenile delinquency from criminal conduct in order to promote a more proportional, humane, and child-centered juvenile justice system. This framework is expected to inform policymakers, law-enforcement authorities, and scholars in developing consistent and rights-based juvenile justice policies aligned with international child-protection standards and restorative justice principles within democratic rule-of-law systems that respond to contemporary social change and long-term child-development challenges both globally and nationally.

Procedure and substance intertwine inextricably in juvenile courts. Progressives envisioned an informal court that made decisions in the child’s “best interests.” The Supreme Court in Gault emphasized the disjunctions between rehabilitative rhetoric and punitive reality and required greater procedural safeguards in juvenile courts (In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 [1967]). Although Gault provided impetus for the procedural convergence between juvenile and criminal courts, a substantial gulf remains between theory and reality, between the “law on the books” and the “law in action.” Theoretically, the Constitution and state laws entitle delinquents to formal trials and assistance of counsel. In reality, juvenile courts try youths using procedures to which few adults would consent. More than three decades ago, the Supreme Court in Kent v. United States observed that “the child receives the worst of both worlds: he gets neither the protections accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children” (383 U.S. 541,556 [1966], emphasis added). In the “worst of both worlds” of contemporary juvenile justice youths continue to receive neither therapy nor justice, but instead experience punishment without the criminal procedural safeguards provided to adults.

PurposeRecent research finds that youth who identify as transgender or gender-expansive are disproportionately incarcerated in juvenile justice systems and are treated differently from their non-trans peers (Himmelstein and Brückner, 2011; Hunt and Moodie-Mills, 2012; Irvine, 2010; Mitchum and Moodie-Mills, 2014). Juvenile justice systems have paid little attention to this group of young people in terms of their unique service needs and risk factors. Using qualitative methods, the researchers analyze in-depth interviews and focus group findings from formerly incarcerated trans youth in juvenile justice settings to better understand their experiences. This paper aims to examine the challenges for young people, and, as well as considered recommendations for juvenile justice professionals to study toward making changes in policies, practices and programs that are needed to support young people who are transgender or gender expansive.Design/methodology/approachUsing qualitative, case examples and descriptive analysis, this paper describes the experiences of trans youth in juvenile justice settings and studies toward developing models of promoting trans-affirming approaches to enhance juvenile justice institutions for trans and gender-expansive youth placed in them. The paper describes the evolution of an approach used by the authors, in New York state juvenile justice settings to increase a trans-affirming perspective as a central role in the organization’s strategy and design, and the methods it is using to institutionalize this critical change. Findings culled from the focus groups and in-depth interviews with 15 former residents of juvenile justice settings and several (3) key staff members from the juvenile justice system, focusing on policies, practices and training models are useful tools for assessing progress and recommending actions to increase the affirming nature of such systems. At its conclusion, this chapter will provide clear outcomes and implications for the development of policies, practices and programs with trans and gender expansive youth in juvenile justice systems.FindingsFinding are conceptualized in six thematic categories, namely, privacy, access to health and mental health care, the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, name and pronoun use, clothing, appearance and mannerism, and housing issues.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited as it focuses on formerly incarcerated youth in the New York City area.Practical implicationsThe following implications for practice stemming from this study are as follows: juvenile justice professionals (including judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, probation officers and detention staff) must treat – and ensure others treat – all trans and gender-expansive youth with fairness, dignity and respect, including prohibiting any attempts to ridicule or change a youth’s gender identity or expression. Having written nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy is also essential. These policies can address issues such as prohibiting harassment of youth or staff who are trans or gender expansive, requiring the use of respectful and inclusive language and determining how gender rules (e.g. usage of “male or “female” bathrooms, gender-based room assignments) will be addressed for transgender and gender-nonconforming youth. Programs should also provide clients and staff with training and helpful written materials. Juvenile justice professionals must promote the well-being of transgender youth by allowing them to express their gender identity through choice of clothing, name, hair-style and other means of expression and by ensuring that they have access to appropriate medical care if necessary. Juvenile justice professionals must receive training and resources regarding the unique societal, familial and developmental challenges confronting trans youth and the relevance of these issues to court proceedings. Training must be designed to address the specific professional responsibilities of the audience (i.e. judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, probation officers and detention staff). Juvenile justice professionals must develop individualized, developmentally appropriate responses to the behavior of each trans youth, tailored to address the specific circumstances of his or her or their life.Social implicationsProviding trans-affirming services to youth in juvenile justice settings is a matter of equity and should be the goal strived for by all systems that care for these young people. Helping trans and gender-expansive youth reenter and reintegrate into society should be a primary goal. There are many organizations and systems that stand ready to assist juvenile justice systems and facilities in supporting trans and gender expansive youth in their custody and helping them to rehabilitate, heal and reenter a society that welcomes their participation and where they can thrive and not just survive.Originality/valueThe paper is original in that it examines the lived experiences of trans and gender-expansive youth in juvenile justice systems. An area, which has not been fully explored in the professional literature.

ABSTRACTThe prevalence of domestic violence in juvenile court cases justifies modifying our interventions to reflect this unfortunate reality. This article focuses primarily on juvenile victimization of parents and the model programs emerging in juvenile courts to address it. Part I examines family violence's prevalence in the juvenile court caseloads, despite its lack of consideration in most dispositions. Part II begins with a comparative analysis of the drug court trend and discusses the trend's applicability for specialized family violence applications in the Juvenile Court. The King County (Wash.) Juvenile Court's Step‐Up Program is introduced, which directly addresses family violence with intervention programs for youth perpetrators and abused parents, followed by the Santa Clara County (Calif.) Juvenile Court's Family Violence program, shown as a model worthy of replication. Part III details the process by which the Travis County (Texas) Juvenile Court is implementing a program similar to these models. Part IV concludes that juvenile courts must address family violence as an overt or underlying issue in many cases and must identify and address the danger to our troubled youths, whether offender or victim. I argue that the domestic violence community's treatment expertise must inform our juvenile courts' interventions with violent, often insular, families. In Travis County, we are committed to learning as much as possible about youth resilience–to identify and treat battered and battering teens to prevent the inter‐generational cycle from repeating itself while making our homes, communities, and schools safe.

The aim of this paper was to acquire a deeper understanding of the processes during which a construction of criminological knowledge is taking place and to analyse the complex relationships between experts and other agents in the formation of a particular task, that of juvenile criminal justice reform. Juvenile justice is regarded as one of the components of the Lithuanian criminal justice policy. Juvenile justice as a public policy is closely linked to various groups of experts such as lawyers, criminologists, police administrators, social workers, etc. My intention was to examine ways by which criminological knowledge has been mobilised by the Lithuanian political authorities when tasks are allocated to experts. An analytical theoretical model of public policy that included analysis at three levels (state, professionals and individual) illustrates a process during which the state mobilises criminological knowledge and certain professional groups monopolise spheres of influence. Qualitative methods (semi-structured interviews with experts), document analysis and secondary data served as major sources for the analysis of this case study. Knowledge-power discourse as a Foucaultian truism about criminology's utility to power sheds light on the mutual relationship and interaction between academics and policy makers. This relationship has yet to become a research agenda in post-soviet societies. A case-study of the Lithuanian juvenile justice reform demonstrates that criminology as a discipline is being institutionalised and is achieving an advisory role in the decision making process. On the one hand, the close connection to power creates favourable conditions for applications of legitimised academic knowledge, which consequently can encourage social change and reform. On the other hand, the adaptation of academic knowledge to that of powerful groups strengthens the historical tendency in criminology, that is, to become merely administrative and utilitarian to power.

1. Introduction: Juvenile Delinquency and Justice in the EU 2. Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice in Italy 3. Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice in Cyprus 4. Risk Assessment in Juvenile Offenders 5. The EARN project 6. The EARN Project in Italy 7. The EARN Project in Cyprus 8. Conclusions

A juvenile court is a type of specialized court or a court docket devoted to one or more specific categories of legal matter. Today, there are many specialized courts. This article addresses the growing use of specialized, problem solving courts for delinquent juveniles. It introduces the specialized nature of the juvenile court and describes three of the most popular forms of specialized courts for youths, which are, teen courts, juvenile drug courts, and juvenile or family mental health courts. It examines several key policy and practice issues related to their operation. It also discusses the origin of each type of specialized court, giving data such as their numbers, types of legal matters handled by them, procedures of processing the case, and what is known about their effectiveness.