NCJ Number
173351
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 88 Issue: 1 Dated: Fall 1997 Pages: 68-136
Date Published
1997
Length
69 pages
Annotation
This paper proposes that States abolish juvenile courts' delinquency jurisdiction and formally recognize youthfulness as a mitigating factor in the sentencing of younger criminal offenders.
Abstract
Such a policy would provide younger offenders with substantive protections comparable to those afforded by juvenile courts, ensure 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. This proposal focuses only on the criminal delinquency jurisdiction of juvenile courts, because youth crime and violence provide the impetus for most of the current public anxiety and political responses. First, this article describes the transformation of the juvenile court from a social welfare agency into a deficient criminal court. Second, it analyzes the inherent and irreconcilable contradictions between attempting to combine social welfare and penal social control in the juvenile court. Finally, once a State separates social welfare from criminal social control, no role remains for a separate juvenile court for delinquency matters. Rather, a State could try all offenders in one integrated criminal court, albeit with modifications to respond to the youthfulness of younger defendants. Adolescent developmental psychology, criminal law jurisprudence, and sentencing policy provide rationale to formally recognize youthfulness as a mitigating factor when sentencing younger offenders. 175 footnotes