Juvenile Justice History

The Juvenile Justice System has been around for quite a while. There were even forms of a justice system before the actual system was set in place. A juvenile is a male or female that is under the age of eighteen years old. The history of the system has great importance to how the system has become today. There have been many changes made and new acts and programs introduced to better support the juveniles well-being. Without this system in place the youth of the world that have been committed for a crime would be in the same facilities as adults and would be serving the same sentences. This would create danger for the youth and less likely for them to learn from their mistake and be properly rehabilitated to ensure that it will not happen …show more content…
One of them being the Roper vs. Simmons case in 2005. Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death for the murder of young girl and also his neighbor in 1993. He was only seventeen years old at the time he committed the murder. There were many appeals that lasted for more than ten years and kept getting rejected. That was until the Supreme Court compared his case to the Atkins vs. Virginia case which went against the eighth and fourteenth amendment. After many cases throughout the country going back and forth on if the death penalty for minors was constitutional of unconstitutional it was decided by the state of Missouri that the death penalty was considered unconstitutional. The next significant case was the case of Graham vs. Florida in 2010. Terrance Graham was convicted of armed burglary and attempted armed robbery when he was sixteen years old. He was imprisoned for one year. When he was released, only six months later he was caught committing a home armed robbery. He was convicted by the state and the state gave him a life in prison sentence without parole. When he got to appeal his case, his main argument was that his conviction went against the eighth amendment. The court voted against him saying his sentence did not go against the eighth amendment and his conviction was to be carried out. The final case that had significant influence on the …show more content…
It started in 1988 and has been around for over one hundred years. It is a non-profit organization that strives to help juveniles ages six through eighteen reach their full potential by giving them an older figure to look up to and learn from. Their vision is all children achieve success in life. Their mission is to provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships that change their lives for the better. Their accountability by partnering with parents and guardians, volunteers and others in the community we are accountable for each child in the program by achieving: greater confidence, better relationships and higher aspirations and more educational success. (Big Brother Big Sisters of America,