Juvenile Justice

Juvenile Justice, a concept that originated at the end of the nineteenth century when Chicago established a separate juvenile court and Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Indiana began to employ the common‐law doctrine of parens patriae to authorize their legislatures to protect children from themselves and their parents. Prior to this time, children under the state‐mandated age of majority had been subject exclusively to the authority of their parents. The resulting system was paternalistic and reflected the middle‐class biases of its reformist proponents. Safeguards accorded persons accused of crime and the taint of a criminal record were replaced by “child‐saving” judges who supposedly tailored their decisions to the needs of neglected as well as delinquent minors.

Not until the Supreme Court's decision in Kent v. United States (1966) was the system constitutionalized. The Court ruled that juvenile courts may not waive their jurisdiction and authorize adult criminal prosecution without a hearing at which the minor has access to the records on which the juvenile court waived jurisdiction. Absent these safeguards, “the child”—here a sixteen‐year‐old confessed rapist and robber—may receive “the worst of both worlds: that he gets neither the protections accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children” (p. 556).

One year later, in the landmark case of In re Gault (1967), the Court held that juvenile courts must provide the basic procedural protections that the Bill of Rights guarantees to adults, including timely advance notice of the charges, the right to either retained or appointed counsel, confrontation and cross‐examination of adverse witnesses, self‐incrimination, and the right to remain silent. The opinion also rejected the basic premise of juvenile court actions: that the proceedings are civil in nature and that minors' rights are adequately protected by the judges acting as substitute parents.

Subsequent decisions held that when juveniles are charged with an act that would constitute a crime if committed by an adult, the charges must meet the adult standard of proof, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and not the less protective civil standard, “preponderance of the evidence” (In re Winship, 1970); that the right to a trial by jury does not apply to juvenile delinquency proceedings (McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 1971); and that statutes authorizing pretrial detention up to seventeen days do not violate due process when it is found that there is a “serious risk” that the juvenile may commit additional crimes (Schall v. Martin, 1984).

In Santosky v. Kramer (1982), the Court ruled that parental rights may be terminated only on a showing of “clear and convincing” evidence. The traditional standard, preponderance of the evidence, insufficiently protects parents' fundamental rights to the care, custody, and management of their children.

In decisions antithetical to children's rights, the Court held that parents may commit their children to mental hospitals, thus depriving them of their liberty, without a formal, trial‐type hearing beforehand (Parham v. J.R., 1979). The law, the majority explained, has historically “recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children” (p. 602). Absent such “bonds of affection,” the failure of county social service agencies to protect children from parental abuse—in this case, severe brain damage that left a child retarded and institutionalized—does not violate their constitutional rights (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 1989). Although government may not deprive persons of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, the Constitution does not “impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means” (p. 259). The most that can be said of the social service officials in this case “is that they stood by and did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more active role for them” (p. 263).

Gault and its progeny have produced a legalistically constitutionalized system that has largely replaced the paternalistic authoritarianism that prevailed during the first eight decades of the twentieth century. Adversarial proceedings respectful of constitutionally mandated procedures and evidentiary standards have supplanted the informal conferences in which juvenile court judges did what they thought was in the best interest of the child. Such individualized treatment came to be viewed as unconfined discretion in which similarly situated children were treated vastly differently.

The post‐Gault system differs from its predecessor by focusing more on punishment and prevention than on the treatment of errant children. Older, violence‐prone juveniles are waived to the criminal courts, while status offenses—truancy, inappropriate deportment, and disobedience—are handled by community child specialists. Between these extremes, the juvenile courts still process delinquents in a manner more paternal and diagnostic than that afforded their adult criminal counterparts.

See also Due Process, Procedural.

Harold J. Spaeth