The rhetoric here is awkward and, if it is not simply obscure, at some variance with what I have been led to expect by previous reading. No mention is made of the differences in levels of responsibility for consequences assigned to children and adults. "Rehabilitation" is discussed as though the processes of change in children and adults were similar. Nothing is said about the importance of privacy and a full clearing of the record with respect to the offenses committed by children. Nor is anything said about the importance of protecting children from exposure to concentrations of adult criminality.

"Nipping it in the bud," which was merely a maladroit metaphor in the last paragraph, has now become an expression of policy, despite the fact that it has inappropriate connotations (we are not killing juvenile flowers in order to prevent infection of the whole plant, for example). Nor is recidivism an outcome that varies from expectation. Complete success in rehabilitation would be the shocking surprise.

Your primary criticisms are not directed at the paradigm of juvenile justice established in the 1960s, but against the remnants of an older system, which before In re Winship, for example. permitted conviction by preponderance of evidence; and against the "reforms" which legislators posturing on anti-crime platforms imposed in a deliberate attempt to bypass the system: trial of juveniles "as adults," and prosecutor-empowering rules preventing the clearance of records. If these are your concerns, you should be saying not that the juvenile justice system is failing, but that supposedly anti-crime legislators broke it, and we should return to the design "liberal" America began implementing in the era of the Warren Court.

It's a little difficult to see where this last conclusory proposition comes from. Your point's not covered elsewhere in the essay, and its substance is obscure: wouldn't we want and expect the negotiated disposition to be the predominant outcome of a juvenile justice system at work? Where the alternative is a bench trial, and where the docket does not contain a significant proportion of complex frauds or other offenses requiring the prosecution to mount significant evidentiary demonstrations based on non-police witnesses, a defendant who wants to go to trial will be uncommon, while the prosecutorial motives to insist on trial are equally likely to be absent. From a social point of view, individualization of treatment and conserving budgetary resources for rehabilitation efforts are always more important than holding a higher number of trials.

I'm not sure you've convincingly explained what's wrong with juvenile criminal justice for any class of reader. For those who believe the system needs to be as close to their imagination of adult incapacitation and general deterrence as possible, you've offered no arguments, not even the cliche ones, for reconsidering that opinion. And for those of us who believe in juvenile criminal justice as an alternative system of socialization for troubled children who have harmed others, you've primarily criticized changes inserted into the system by its enemies, without explaining the nature of that struggle, and without directly pointing to the primary cause of the emiseration you decry: a full generation of political power for those who prioritized the wealth of the rich at the expense of the children of the poor.

The best route to a stronger essay, it seems to me, is to decide what you think should be done to improve the juvenile justice system, and to analyze the political and other obstacles to making the desired improvements.