Juvenile Criminal Justice System

The juvenile corrections have undergone considerable transformation as the criminal justice system started to change in the 20th century. Major changes affected fields such as diversion, decriminalization, deinstitutionalization, and due process. A contributing factor to the harsh penalties of juveniles is a failure to address any of the social problems that are closely related to the causes of the delinquency. Those social problems are poverty, underemployment, family disorganization, and substance abuse. Juvenile offenders differ from adult offenders, thus are treated differently, but the policies in the United States are changing about qualifications of when a young criminal is considered and treated as a juvenile. Thereafter, to understand the current juvenile criminal justice system, one must be familiar with legal developments and landmark decisions that have had the most impact on the system. The first landmark case is of Mary Ann Crouse, who was committed to the Philadelphia House of Refuge without any crime charges. In this case, when the decision was challenged in …show more content…
The patterns of violent youth crimes are that most of juvenile violence were juveniles and nearly all victims of juvenile crime knew their offender (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). A few factors that contribute to the negative behavior of the young population are family, school, peers, and neighborhood. Also, researchers have identified three pathways to chronic delinquency. It starts out with escalated aggression to fighting, followed by more extreme violence. Next, minor covert behavior becomes property damage. Lastly, stubborn behavior moves toward defiance, and later authority avoidance (Welch, 213). Some cases demonstrate that violent and minority juvenile offenders are more likely to be transferred to adult court system and treated as one, due to the rational that they are dangerous and poisonous to the rest of