Juvenile Labeling Theory

Register to read the introduction… This labeling is the cause for higher recidivism rates among these youthful offenders. Due to the lack of opportunities available to them, since they have little to no chance of going to college or getting a job, they will continue with there crime. This labeling theory creates a social problem. These children who are labeled convicts become repressed through prejudice. Colleges do not want convicts attending their schools and employers do not want convicts working for them. Also children that are trying to be delinquent to get more attention are getting exactly what they are looking for by being waived into adult criminal court. These children need help as the child that they are not the adult that they are trying to be (Kornblum & Julian, …show more content…
300 different jurisdictions are experimenting with this idea. Teen court is a helpful alternative to juvenile court. This court also helps keeps the labeling stigma of convict off of a juvenile offender. These courts typically handle juvenile offenders between the ages of ten and fifteen who are being charges with minor violations such as disorderly conduct, shoplifting, and other types of criminal mischief. Most of these juvenile offenders have no prior arrest record and have never done anything wrong before in their lives. These juveniles offenders are typically asked to waive themselves into the teen court where the disposition of the case will be set by other young people. It almost plays out to be a sort of mock court setting where adults act as judges and teens are represented by other teens and teens make up the jury. Adults also take part in the administration of the program and community service programs to fulfill the disposition of the case (Siegel, …show more content…
The idea of the juvenile courts is to keep the juvenile offender out of jail or prison and rehabilitate them by some other means. Juvenile court does want juvenile offenders to have some type of retribution for their crime so that they know that it is not right to commit crime and that there are consequences that must be paid for committing crime. In theory knowing that there are retributions that must be paid for committing crime should be a type of general deterrence for juvenile delinquents. Many victimless crimes, such as drug offenses, in the juvenile justice system require the juvenile offender to perform community service work. Many of these community service retributions are performed in schools, hospital, and nursing home. These types of programs are normally overseen be a social worker in the community. In this situation a social worker acts sort of like a probation officer for the juvenile offender. If the juvenile offender for victimless crimes were waived into adult criminal court some states require a mandatory jail sentence (Siegel & Welsh,