NCJ Number
200509
Date Published
2002
Length
93 pages
Annotation
This chapter explains the five stages of juvenile court called intake, detention, waiver, adjudicatory, and disposition.
Abstract
This chapter presents a series of flow charts illustrating the juvenile justice system and the processing of delinquency cases. Intake is the first stage in processing a juvenile in the juvenile justice system, and its main purpose is to decide whether a child’s criminal act is serious enough to merit the filing of a legal petition. Detention is the stage in which a child awaits a procedural hearing called a detention hearing in order to determine whether the juvenile needs to appear for an adjudicatory hearing. The next stage in the juvenile court system, waiver, refers to the process by which the juvenile court sends a youth’s case to the adult court for the juvenile to be tried as an adult. After presenting the facts in the Supreme Court case Stanford V. Kentucky in order to illustrate the process of waiver, the author discusses the adjudicatory stage as a hearing which is equivalent to the trial stage in adult criminal court. Disposition is the final stage where the disposition hearing determines what can be done to treat juveniles in order to reduce future criminal behaviors. Focusing on delinquency in the computer age, the author argues that situational offenders, chronic offenders, sex offenders, gangs, emotionally disturbed children, substance abusers, naïve or mentally retarded children, and learning disabled individuals may all be classified into separate categories in the future, signaling a needed change in the juvenile court system in the near future. References, appendix