NCJ Number
182827
Editor(s)
Barry C. Feld
Date Published
1999
Length
381 pages
Annotation
This collection of articles on juvenile justice administration analyzes judicial, legal, and correctional agencies that respond to juvenile offenders; the articles reveal the diversity and the complexity of juvenile courts and examine current policy debates about juvenile justice.
Abstract
The articles reflect the historical origin and the recent transformation of the juvenile justice system as it has moved from a nominally rehabilitative social welfare agency to a more scaled-down system for juvenile offenders. The first chapter features a discussion of the origins of the juvenile court system. The second chapter examines juvenile justice administration, focusing on various stages of the juvenile justice process and sources of organizational diversity. Articles in the third chapter look at the quality of procedural justice in juvenile courts and discuss conflicts between procedural rights of juvenile offenders, the traditional conception of the juvenile court as a rehabilitative agency, and the increased severity of sentencing policy in response to recent efforts to "get tough" and "crack down" on youth crime. The fourth chapter focuses on alternative strategies that transfer serious young offenders to criminal courts for prosecution as adults, demonstrating conceptual and administrative tensions in defining the boundaries between delinquents and criminals, between children and adults, and between treatment and punishment. Articles in the fifth chapter analyze several aspects of sentencing in juvenile courts and reveal shifts in juvenile justice jurisprudence, policy, administration, and practice from rehabilitation to retribution and from offender to offense. The final chapter highlights some of the current policy debates about the future of the juvenile court as an institution and explores the need to maintain a separate juvenile justice system for young offenders. Tables