Before the modern era, youth who committed crimes in the Western world received no preferential treatment because of their age. These children were adjudicated, punished, and confined alongside adult offenders. In more recent years the juvenile justice system has maintained different priorities than those that exist in the adult criminal justice system. However, there are still many get tough advocates of law and order, many of whom are fed up with violent juvenile crime, that are increasingly questioning the philosophy that underlies the juvenile justice system in America.Many people call for harsher punishments while others call for better rehabilitation programs for youth offenders.
This paper will focus on the differences between the adult and juvenile justice systems, and whether rehabilitation or incarceration is the best method to assist in reducing the juvenile crime rate and help today’s youth become contributing members of society. Rehabilitation is known as the attempt to reform a criminal offender by the restoration of his or her former condition of usefulness to society.Generally speaking, rehabilitation is the primary objective of the juvenile court system, however, there are those that are sentenced to incarceration as punishment for his or her criminal act. Punishment as opposed to rehabilitation seeks to instill fear in to an individual so that, he or she is deterred from committing future criminal acts. The juvenile justice system maintains different priorities than exist in the adult criminal justice system.
For example, a juvenile is not found guilty of a crime but rather is adjudicated an offender. Although punishment is an element of the juvenile justice system, the primary focus is on rehabilitation. The question is, which is a more efficient means of helping juvenile offenders? To answer this question, it is important to understand the differences between the adult and juvenile justice court systems. The criminal justice court systems for adults and juveniles differ in many significant ways.The majority of states today define a child subject to juvenile court jurisdiction as a person who has not yet turned 18, but a few states have set the age at 16 or 17 years old. The adult criminal justice court system and the juvenile justice court system may appear to be quite similar, but there are many differences between the two.
One of the main differences between the juvenile justice court system and the adult criminal justice court system is that the juvenile justice system is focused more on rehabilitation than punishment.However, punishment or incarceration is still a concept with the juvenile just system, but is primarily used as a last resort for juveniles. This is known as the least restrictive alternative. This means that the juvenile offender is to be committed to a sentence that provides the least restriction on his or her person and his or her access to family. Punishment as opposed to rehabilitation seeks to instill fear in an individual so that, he or she is deterred from committing future criminal acts.
Rehabilitation is known as the attempt to reform a criminal offender by the restoration of his or her former condition of usefulness to society. A second difference between the two systems is the fact that juveniles do not attend a trial, but rather what is known as an adjudicatory hearing. An adjudicatory hearing is the “fact-finding process by which the juvenile court determines whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain the allegations in a petition” (Schmalleger, 2009). These adjudicatory hearings for juveniles are similar to adult trials, but have a few exceptions.A very important difference between an adult trial and a juvenile adjudicatory hearing is that the adjudicatory hearing is not as “open” as the adult system and maintains an emphasis on privacy.
Juvenile hearings may be held in secret, the names of offenders not published, and records of juvenile proceedings may be later destroyed. “Limitations are placed on public access to juvenile records because of the belief that juvenile offenders can be successfully rehabilitated, and doing so may help juveniles avoid any unnecessary stigmatization or shame in the future” ("Juvenile vs adult," 1999).Court proceedings in an adjudicatory hearing are confidential to protect privacy, whereas, in the adult criminal justice system open public access to criminal records is required, and all court proceedings are open to the public. Along with an emphasis on privacy, there is a more informal and speedy approach in the juvenile courts.
The adult criminal trial is more highly structured than the more informal and less adversarial adjudicatory hearings for juveniles. Informality, the lack of a jury, and the absence of adversarial environment promote speed in the juvenile justice courts.An adjudicatory hearing may be completed in a matter of hours, whereas, an adult trial may be ongoing for weeks or months. During an adjudicatory hearing most states do not afford juveniles to have a right to a jury trial, while all defendants in the adult criminal courts have a constitutional right to a jury. However, there have been some jurisdictions that allow juveniles to be tried by their peers. In 1980, Columbus County, Georgia began experimenting with peer juries, in which the peer juries are compromised of youth under the age of 17 and who receive special training by the court.
These peer juries must be successful in school and may not be under the supervision of the court or have juvenile petitions pending against them. The peer juries are only used in during the sentencing stage of the court process, and only when adjudicated youths volunteer to go before the jury (Schmalleger, 2009). “Once a trial is complete, a juvenile is labeled as delinquent rather than guilty. A defendant is found innocent or guilty in adult criminal courts”. Once a juvenile is found to be delinquent, the judge will then set a dispositional hearing.
This is the final stage in the processing of adjudicated juveniles in which a decision is made on the form of treatment or penalty that should be imposed on the child. The disposition is based on the individual's offense history and the severity of the offense, and includes a significant rehabilitation component. The juvenile justice gives the judge a much wider range of sentencing alternatives than what can be found in the adult system. It is important that juvenile court system is separated from the adult system, because the juvenile justice system is focused primarily on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
The juvenile court system has a mission and that is to serve in the “best interest of the child” (Week 6 Lecture, JADM100). Because children have not fully matured, I believe it is reasonable to believe that children should not be held to the same standards of accountability as adults, except in the case of violent or numerous offenses. Also, changing the social environment in which juveniles live is a more effective way to reduce juvenile violence than punishing juvenile offenders in adult courts.The juvenile mind is less rational and more vulnerable to environmental influences then the adult mind, making youth not only more susceptible to crime and negative influences, but also to rehabilitation.
References Introduction to Criminal Justice, Week 6 Lecture, Juvenile Justice. Juvenile vs adult justice. (1999). Retrieved December 1, 2011, from http://www.
pbs. org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/stats/juvvsadult. ht ml Schmalleger, F. (2009). Criminal justice today: An introductory text for the 21st century. (10th ed.
). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
