Juvenile Court System - Term Paper Example

Juvenile Court System The increasing juvenile delinquency characterized almost every decade of the twenties century. Within the past three decades,the judicial decisions and administrative changes have transformed the juvenile court from rehabilitative social welfare agency into the second-class criminal court for the young people. These changes have decreased the effectiveness of the juvenile courts as the social welfare institutions and converted the whole system into penal institution providing young individuals with neither therapy nor justice. The coalition for Juvenile Justice has reported in January that of the 300,000 to 600,000 juveniles who cycle through detention facilities after arrest awaiting legal action, half are under 16 years of age (Garfinkel 2004). Most of them have mental health and substance abuse problems and have not committed violent offenses. Historically, the key function of the juvenile court system was to act in the best interests of the child. In particular, young offenders were entitled to counsel, to be silent in interrogations and to face their accusers. However, the recent research indicates that the effectiveness of the juvenile court system has significantly decreased due to its continual transformation into adult court system. The juvenile court is more than a court. In addition to judges, probation officers, social workers, mental health professionals, parents and educators are involved into process. The process of maturity is not easy for children and they should be provides with intervention and protections from society. The mission of the juvenile courts is to become the center of rehabilitation and protection for young offenders (Jacob 2003). Most of the young offenders do not commit the serious crimes, but they still violate the state of federal law which if committed by the adult would constitute the crime (Rubin 1996). For many years, the society is struggling to decrease the level of juvenile criminal activities and is trying to identify what motivates the youth to commit crimes. The juvenile court system was intended to address the underlining causes of criminal activity and take the corrective actions. Advantages of Juvenile Court System The effective intervention strategies have developed and integrated into Juvenile Court System despite of the significant problems presented by the young offenders. From the personal perspective, young offenders experience numerous educational and psychological problems. The emotional and economic factors have the significant impact on their criminal involvement. From the epidemiological perspective, young offenders have high percentage of arrests for serious crimes (especially boys). From social perspective, antisocial juveniles as the participants of the child mental and education programs cause enormous governmental resources. In overall, the existing corrective programs for young individuals are effective. Traditional approaches of Juvenile Court System include psychodynamic, humanistic and behavioral (Borduin 1994). In some judicial districts, antisocial young people are referred to the mental health centers for individual psychotherapy where they can receive the individual counseling from the juvenile court representatives. In the middle 1990s, juvenile courts referred an increasing number of delinquent youth for outpatient family therapy as the part of their probation and this tendency has remained today. Peer and family interventions have proved to be high effective in reducing delinquent behavior as well. The so-called multisystemic therapy is the home-based treatment approach including the commitment to maintaining children at home, time-limiting and goal-orienting treatment plans. Unlike pure family intervention approach of juvenile courts, multisystemic therapy is more effective in addressing and reducing the causal models of delinquent behavior (Borduin 1994). The therapy's purpose is to understand the relation between the identified problems and broader systemic context. Intervention should be present focused and action oriented, targeting the specific and well-defined problems. The choice of the corrective program by juvenile court depends on the offender's mental health, seriousness of the crime and other personal factors. The wide range of the existing therapies makes it possible to select the most suitable and effective therapy for each offender. Japan - Effective Juvenile Court System If the 14-year-old individual commits the murder in United States, he will be tried as an adult and the press would immediate possess all information about him. In Japan, the situation is very different - the law forbids any disclosure of information about juvenile offenders. The purpose of this law is that the rehabilitation of the juvenile is not hindered and no one in public recognizes him when he returned into society. In addition, the victim's family is not entitled to have any information about the offender. The prosecutor is not the part of the juvenile's court and the juveniles cannot be tried as adults in Japanese courts (Tyson 2000). These regulations protect young individuals under age of twenty and has proved to be the most effective current juvenile court system. The Japanese Juvenile Law, Shonenho, is based on the ideas of protection, love, and tolerance towards young offenders (Tyson 2000). The purpose of the Japanese Juvenile Court System is to protect the offender from the stigma of the crime he has committed as well as from the environment in which the crime was committed. Punishment is not the key purpose, as in the United States, and the Japanese society struggles to rehabilitate the offender and help him return to the society as a fully functional member within the short period of time (Tyson 2000). Shonenho was introduced in 1949 and since that time the juvenile criminal rates has much decreased and remains lower than in other industrial nations. Even though Shonenho is much debated in the Japanese society, the Juvenile Court System focused exclusively on offender's protection and rehabilitation. Disadvantages of Juvenile Courts Unfortunately, the number of juvenile offenders entering criminal system in United States is much higher than in Japan indicating the ineffectiveness of existing rehabilitation therapies. "According to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, law enforcement agencies in the United States made 2.8 million arrests of individuals younger than 18 in 1997" (Gondles 2002, p. 6). Nearly two percent of these adults have been sent to the adult prison systems. Gondles believes that Juvenile Court System in United States does not work because the system does not take into account that most of the juvenile criminals are drug and alcohol abusers. He traced the correlation between drug abuse and arrests and concluded that increased drug abuse is closely related to increased arrests. Thus, if the government wants to improve the Juvenile Court System in the root and accomplish its mission of decreasing crime level, the illegal drug distribution and alcohol abuses by youth should be cracked down (Gondles 2002). Unfortunately, the current Juvenile Justice System does not ensure that young offenders have access to the resources which might help to prevent them from repeated crimes after they are released from correctional institutions. More attention must be paid to the quality of rehabilitation, job training, and employment and re-entry initiatives. It is impossible to legislate morality and the youth crime cannot be totally eliminated, however, the greater involvement of the community might reduce the criminal activity among youth. The role of community Several factors have been identifies which contribute to the juvenile crime: age, gender, family background, parenting qualities, economic opportunities and severity of punishment. School and surrounding community plays the central role in preventing juveniles from conducting criminal activities. Such initiatives as lengthening the school day or providing extra activities have proved to be not very effective. There are three ways in which school impacts juvenile crime (Jacob 2003): it keeps children busy and out of street, school increases geographic concentration of juveniles and, as the result, increases the number of potentially volatile interactions, school might facilitate the coordination of crime among juveniles. If the first factor has positive impact on juvenile crime, the second and the third factors provide for more criminal opportunities. In particular, school decreases the property thefts, but increases the violent crimes. Mazzotti noted that school activities cannot stop delinquency, but without it children are more open for criminal involvement (2006). Education should be offered to all young people both at school and in juvenile detention facilities. School, communities and court representative are helping young offenders to rehabilitate and to transition into adulthood. It is important to note that as children make their transition into school after detention, they face numerous obstacles: peer pressure, family issues, poor academic performance and bad behavior). Thus, involvement of school is the cornerstone of the juvenile rehabilitation process (Mazzotti 2006). Children are usually not prepared for the life after detention and incarceration and school community as well as family can assist young offenders with rehabilitation. Many advocates believe that the juvenile justice system will become more effective is the involvement of parents into the system increases. Even though parents and others who are important in the life of the young offender have the opportunity to be involved into the court process and any other out-of-court correctional procedure, most of the parents neglect this opportunity. Children with emotional, behavioral and developmental disabilities are at high risk of being involved into criminal activity and in many cases they have no access to the consistent mental health and academic support either in the community or the school setting (Garfinkel 2004). Notably, young people with disabilities are more frequently referred to the court system by school rather by their parents. When parents are informed about the referral of their child to the juvenile court, they are frightened, frustrated and confused about how to proceed and in most cases they have no idea what will happen in the court and how they can deliver the information about their child's problems and needs. As the result, the causes of criminal activity by juvenile are not addresses. The poor level of education about juvenile court system is a big disadvantage of the whole corrective system for youth. Juvenile criminals and their parents lack knowledge about their rights and the court processes. For this reason, the special attention should be paid to education both at school and at detention facilities (Wolford 2000). Juveniles, while being under detention are usually provided with education opportunities; however, the delivery of education services to juvenile offenders is not uniform in the country. Juvenile detention education is the program involving school and community members. Juvenile offenders are taught how to behave when they leave the justice system and how to re-enter their communities. Psychology of Young Offenders It is the rule that young offenders are imposed on shorter sentences than adult offenders for the same crimes. In this way, the Juvenile Court System gives young people the opportunity to survive the mistakes with the semblance of life (Fled 1997). The key idea behind is the belief that youth bears less criminal responsibility and thus deserves less punishment than adults. Moreover, the Juvenile Court System recognizes that young people are different from adults in terms of physical, psychological and developmental characteristics. Young people go though the several psychological stages and their reasoning, legal expectations and ethical decision-making changes in the process of maturity. From this perspective, Juvenile Court System should be different from adult system and take all of the above factors into account. The Juvenile Justice System was established more than a hundred years ago with the aim to separate the adult criminal justice system from the juvenile system and to facilitate the rehabilitation of the young offenders. At that time, the need to protect youth from punishment placed by courts on adults was part of the philosophy. Before the treatment was decided for the child, the needs of the young offender were considered and social factors, such as income level and educational level, were taken into account. This philosophy has changed today and the focus of current Juvenile Justice System is no longer rehabilitation and re-integration into society, but rather the punishment. Japan has managed to developed the effective corrective system and decreased the criminal activity among young people. School and family involvement into court process can provide the emotional assistance to young offenders. American Juvenile Justice System has advantages as well as disadvantages and its effectiveness is relative, especially taking into account the increasing criminal activity among young offenders. Word Count: 2010 References Borduin, C. & Henggeler, S. (1994). Innovative Models of Treatment and Service Delivery in the Juvenile Justice System. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 23, 19+. Feld, B. (1997). Abolish the Juvenile Court: Youthfulness, Criminal Responsibility, and Sentencing Policy. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 88 (1), 68-136. Garfinkel, L. & Nelson, R. (2004). Promoting Better Interaction between Juvenile Court, Schools and Parents. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 13 (1), 26+. Gondles, J. (2002). A Changing Society: Our Responsibility for Youthful Offenders Cannot Begin Once a Juvenile Enters the Criminal Justice System. Corrections Today, 64 (6), 6+. Jacob, B & Lefrgen, L. (2003). Are Idle Hands the Devil's Workshop Incapacitation, Concentration and Juvenile Crime. The American Economic Review, 93 (5), 1560-1577. Mazzotti, V. & Higgins, K. (2006). Public Schools and the Juvenile Justice System: Facilitating Relationships. Intervention in School & Clinic, 41 (5), 295+. Rubin, T. (1996). The Nature of the Court Today. The Future of Children, 6 (3), 40-52. Tyson, M. (2000). Revising Shonenho: A Call to a Reform That Makes the Already Effective Japanese Juvenile System Even More Effective. Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 33 (3), 739+. Wolford, B. (2000). Youth Education in the Juvenile Justice System. Corrections Today, 62 (5), 1+. Read More