NCJ Number
93143
Date Published
1981
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Major trends in the juvenile court are greater specificity in rules and regulations, reduce official discretionary power, increased predictability and objectivity of outcomes, and reduced emphasis on the removal of children from their homes, combined with transfer of services and subsidies to the familes.
Abstract
Further trends are increased openness and public accountability in the operation of the court, the demand for justice and legality in place of undefined benevolence and treatment, limitation of coercive intervention in the lives of juveniles and their families, and reliance in decisionmaking on specific harmful or criminal actions rather than on predictions of future behavior. The recognition of the individual rights of juveniles within and outside the family is expanding. The process of drafting, analyzing, debating, and distributing the juvenile justice standards of the Joint Commission on Juvenile Standards of the Institute of Judicial Administration and the American Bar Association has influences the course of juvenile law in the 1970's and the beginning of the 1980's. However, the extent to which the design presented in the standards will be implemented remains to be seen. An annotated bibliography lists 15 references.