From Children to Citizens Vol. 1: Volume I: the Mandate for Juvenile Justice

From the preface: "History has dealt the juvenile court (and, more broadly, the juvenile justice system) a cruel blow. What began as a promising social experiment has disappointed nearly everyone... Inevitably, disillusionment has weakened the mandate of the juvenile justice system. Conflicts in philosophy, once held at bay by general enthusiasm for the enterprise, have now surfaced with great urgency. What, in fact, is the purpose of the juvenile justice system? Is it to protect the community from youth crime, or to help children grow up? Is it primarily a court dominated by concerns for justice? Or, is it more fundamentally a social service agency concerned with structuring the environments of children? Is the court an independent institution that stands apart from the community and administers justice in a fair and impartial way? Or, is the court an agent of the community in the sense that it establishes norms of conduct and draws both public and private agencies to the tasks of socializing children?" The principal flaws of the traditional juvenile court are not in its basic purposes nor the scope of its jurisdiction but rather in the court's believing it can manage problem juveniles by itself, in the court's making the child the focus of legal power, and in failing to experiment with methods of supervision that draw more heavily on private and community resources. A review of the history of American society's treatment of children shows that public interventions have become broader and deeper, and they are implemented by institutions whose purposes have become more obscure and whose relationships with the involved families and children have become more impersonal. The future of the juvenile justice system will be determined by what tasks society will authorize the juvenile justice system to perform and the extent of the investment in the system's identification of problems and in effective intervention. Some alternative juvenile-justice futures are the traditional court, the individualized justice court, the austere justice court, the children's rights court, and the family court. Whatever system emerges, it should hold children and those who care for children accountable for their actions even as the system attmepts to provide the resources that will help juveniles become constructive citizens. Chapter notes and a subject index Front Matter....Pages i-xvi The Problem....Pages 1-24 The Historical Legacy....Pages 25-48 The Contemporary Mandate....Pages 49-95 The Current System: Structure and Operations....Pages 96-127 Emergent Problems....Pages 128-153 Alternative Futures....Pages 154-170 Toward Juvenile Justice....Pages 171-189 Back Matter....Pages 191-199 v. 1. The mandate for juvenile justice / Mark Harrison Moore with Thomas Bearrows ... [et al.] v. 2. The role of the juvenile court / Francis X. Hartmann, editor v. 3. Families, schools, and delinquency prevention / James Q. Wilson and Glenn C. Loury.