Juvenile (In)Justice and the Criminal Court Alternative

Abstract

The juvenile court has been transformed from an informal, welfare agency into a scaled-down, second-class criminal court as a result of a series of reforms that divert status offenders, waive serious offenders to adult criminal courts, punish delinquent offenders, and provide more formal procedures. There are three plausible policy responses to juvenile courts that punish in the name of treatment and deny elementary procedural justice: (a) restructure juvenile courts to fit their original therapeutic purpose; (b) accept punishment as the purpose of delinquency proceedings, but coupled with criminal procedural safeguards; or (c) abolish juvenile courts and try young offenders in criminal courts with certain substantive and procedural modifications.