Juvenile Court: The Fallacies of a Hopeful System

-- By DavidGarfinkel - 25 Feb 2010

During one of my summers in college, I served as a volunteer law clerk for one of the District Attorney's Juvenile offices. This was my first true introduction to criminal justice, entering with an optimistic mindset about the potentials of this special branch, but ending cynical and pessimistic. As a result of my experience, I was able to compare the actual process and outcome to the ideals set forth by the system, and realize what has become its true purpose.

Ideals of Juvenile Justice

There are several overarching ideals or purposes of criminal justice. First is justice. The American adversarial system is expected to have a process by which the prosecution and defense in front of a jury vigorously fight for their respective side, with the hopeful outcome that those who did commit the crime are convicted and those who did not are found not guilty. The next is punishment, which is self-explanatory. The third ideal is removal, in which the justice system removes, generally through incarceration, those who are deemed too dangerous to live among normal society. Finally, criminal justice is supposed to help rehabilitate those who can learn the error of their ways, thereby preventing future crimes.

The Juvenile Court system is supposed to reflect these ideals, but adjusted for the younger age of the defendants. For justice, a similar process is supposed to be carried out but without the presence of the jury so as to shorten the length of the process and thereby take up less of the juvenile’s life. Punishment occurs, but taken a step down from the normal prison system on the belief that they don’t deserve as harsh or as severe of an environment as their adult counterparts. Juvenile delinquents are removed from society, but primarily to what are known as camps rather than prisons, with the Youth Authority being the last resort. Finally, rehabilitation. This ideal is meant to play the most prominent role, especially when looking at some of the mission statements of the various states, and is predicated on the beliefs that juveniles can be much more easily led down the right path and they are at the age where problems can hopefully be nipped at the bud.

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.

General Outcome

The outcomes that are expected unfortunately do not seem to match up with reality. Instead of reformed juveniles, we see a large recidivism rate in which many juvenile’s convicted of felony charges already have an arrest record. In addition, many adults who are later arrested for felonies or gang related activities will have been arrested at least once before as a juvenile. So instead of nipping the bud, we let the flowers of crime blossom.

"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.

The Reality

Why It Fails

The question that then arises is why does this particular system fail. One important explanation is that the actual process of Juvenile Courts results in disrespect for the system and prevents the attainment of the system’s goals.

Instead of the idealized form of justice we expect, juveniles get short changed. During a time when they are being taught about civics, they are brought into a courtroom with no jury, a supposedly fundamental right. The juvenile’s fate is not decided by his peers, but by a judge who most likely fits the stereotype, an older white male who may have not chosen to sit on that court or did so for reasons with no relevance to justice. Instead of an adversarial process, the juvenile is forced to go through what is best described as the DMV of law. Most of the defendants will not have a real trial, but will be processed through by a prosecutor that is doing her mandatory rotation and a public defender with numerous other cases to deal with. And the speed of the process is not shortened, but still takes considerable time, where the juvenile will continue to miss significant amount of school or training.

The Juvenile System is also selective about who is worth saving. Certain juveniles are deemed so lost that they are tried as adults. Trying such younth as adults has increasingly been shown to make things worse, resulting in a more violent individual. Even among those who are allowed to remain in Juvenile Court, they are still segregated. In addition, the older the juvenile, the harder it is for him to get past criminal offenses stricken, which makes his early adult years even harder. The most notable form this takes is the placing of a strike on the person’s record. So while saying we wish to rehabilitate these minors, we leave a huge scar in the process. And in the end, most will be returned to the elements that help contribute to deviant behavior.

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.

Its True Purpose Then

In light of the actual reality of the system, what purpose does it serve? It is very difficult to argue that it serves justice or rehabilitates those placed into it. Out of the original ideals, it mainly continues to serve as a means of punishment and incapacitation. But there are other purposes it has come to serve. First, it contributes to the mythology of American criminal justice and an easy bandage to society’s problems. As part of the mythos, it convinces the layman that we have a fair and just system that understands the need to treat juveniles differently from adults. As a bandage, it covers up the underlying tumor that represents the problems that serve as the actual causes of juvenile delinquency. It is politically easier to establish a Juvenile Court than deal with the underlying problems of a poor public education system and the causal factors behind the strong correlation between race/class and crime rate. Finally, Juvenile Courts serve as a means of creating a bureaucracy that helps expedites the process of sending juveniles to separate facilities. In reality, the system is designed to legitimize essentially what is a built in version of plea bargaining.

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.