Reforming Juvenile Justice A Developmental Approach (2013) / Chapter Skim
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5 A Framework for Reform
5 A Framework for Reform
Pages 119-138
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From page 119... ...
First, psychosocial factors, characteristic of adolescence as a developmental stage, are likely to contribute in important ways to the involvement of adolescents in criminal activity. Major influences on adolescent decision making include susceptibility to peer influence, impulsivity, reward seeking, and a tendency to focus on immediate consequences of decisions and to discount the future consequences (Scott and Steinberg, 2003)
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From page 120... ...
This etiological difference makes the criminal choices of adolescents less culpable than those of adults and bears directly on the justice system's response to adolescent offending. Second, if the influences on much teenage criminal activity are developmental in nature, most youth are likely to mature out of their tendency to become involved in crime unless justice system interventions themselves impede or prevent a successful transition to a law-abiding adult life.
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From page 121... ...
The justice system should therefore make special efforts to adhere to fair procedures and to avoid practices and outcomes that appear biased or discriminatory, particularly in cases involving minority youth. ADOLESCENTS IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM Advancing knowledge of adolescent development solidifies and strengthens the normative foundations of the juvenile court.
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From page 122... ...
During the 1980s and 1990s, lawmakers assumed that incapacitation was the only effective means of preventing juvenile crime. Modern policy makers, guided by the scientific knowledge of adolescence, seek to prevent juvenile offenders from reoffending not only through specific rehabilitative programs, but also by fostering a healthy social environment.
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From page 123... ...
. To be clear, secure institutional confinement sometimes has a place in juvenile justice policy, but it should be used only for youth who pose a serious and immediate threat to public safety.
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From page 124... ...
For most young offenders, the ultimate goal of preventing future offending may be best served through interventions that do not compromise public safety in the short term and most importantly that prepare them for conventional adult roles as workers, intimate partners, and citizens. At least in its rhetoric, the traditional juvenile court signaled that juvenile offenders bore no responsibility for their crimes.
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From page 125... ...
The research suggests that supportive adult authority figures; prosocial peer affiliations; and educational, employment, and other activities that promote autonomous decision making and critical thinking are important in providing opportunity structures that facilitate normative development. Moreover, young offenders need to acquire the tools to deal with the challenges they face in their families, peer groups, and neighborhoods -- the social context of their future lives.
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From page 126... ...
Chapter 4 also makes clear that another important element of adolescents' social context is peer affiliations; peer relationships can have a positive or negative impact on psychological development and on the inclination of juveniles to get involved in criminal activity. Not surprisingly, many young offenders have antisocial peer affiliates who may reinforce their delinquent tendencies.
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From page 127... ...
. Except in extraordinary circumstances involving a compelling need to protect public safety, official records of a juvenile's encounters with the justice system should be strictly confidential so as to fully preserve the youth's opportunities for successful integration into adult life.
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From page 128... ...
for the juvenile court's delinquency jurisdiction, reflecting the judgment that children younger than the jurisdictional age, as a class, are not sufficiently blameworthy to be subject to delinquency adjudication and that their misconduct should be dealt with in the child welfare or education systems rather than the delinquency system. Historically, delinquency jurisdiction has served as an alternative to criminal court jurisdiction for adolescents; it aims to hold adolescents accountable for their offending while undertaking interventions designed to reduce reoffending.
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From page 129... ...
According to the Supreme Court, to satisfy this constitutional requirement, the defendant must be capable of assisting his or her attorney with his defense and must have a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against him or her.2 The competence requirement has typically been applied to protect mentally ill and disabled adults; it has also been applied in juvenile delinquency proceedings involving youth with mental disabilities. However, as greater numbers of youth have become eligible for prosecution in adult criminal court under law reforms in recent decades, courts and legislatures have recognized the concept of developmental incompetence (Scott and Grisso, 2005)
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From page 130... ...
These perceptions, which begin to form even before initial contact with the justice system, impede efforts to encourage minority youth to accept responsibility for their criminal acts and to internalize prosocial values. As important aim of juvenile justice reform is to heighten the awareness of all participants of the ways in which their conduct can affect and influence the legal socialization of minority youth.
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From page 131... ...
Developmental knowledge will not, and should not, be the only factor that determines the jurisdictional boundaries between the adult and juvenile courts. But as the Supreme Court and policy makers across the country have recognized in recent years, developmental knowledge should inform legal policies that govern adult punishment of juveniles in important ways.
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From page 132... ...
In short, developmental knowledge challenges the fairness of subjecting juvenile offenders to the same punishment as their adult counterparts. Mitigated Punishment The U.S.
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From page 133... ...
However, even after traditional juvenile court was established, some youth were prosecuted in criminal court and punished in the adult system. How the boundary is drawn between the two systems has always been controversial, and the laws governing transfer of jurisdiction from juvenile to adult courts (as well as the sentences available for punishment of youthful offenders in the adult system)
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From page 134... ...
Although supporters of the punitive reforms of the 1990s argued that getting tough on juvenile offenders was necessary to protect the public, developmental knowledge indicates that punishing juveniles as adults is not likely to reduce recidivism and is likely to increase the social cost of juvenile crime. Prisons have been characterized as developmentally toxic settings for adolescents (Task Force on Community Preventive Services, 2007; Redding, 2008)
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From page 135... ...
The harmful effects of the prison experience and of a criminal record are likely to have a lasting negative effect on psychosocial development and to make the transition to noncriminal adult life extremely difficult if not impossible. As noted earlier, however, older juveniles who have committed serious violent offenses may be deemed to pose too great a risk to public safety to be dealt with in the juvenile system, and they may be sufficiently mature that adult punishment is less unfair than with younger teens.
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From page 136... ...
Public safety is a legitimate and important goal of justice policy, but there is good reason to believe that this goal was not being effectively served by this harsh approach. Although some juvenile offenders pose such a grave threat to public safety that trial as adults and lengthy incarceration may be regarded as necessary, the policies introduced in the 1980s and 1990s have resulted in the confinement of many youth whose lives and developmental trajectories have probably been harmed, with little compensating public safety benefit.
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From page 137... ...
This knowledge provides a foundation for a juvenile system that takes proper account of the formative nature of adolescence, by both ensuring genuine accountability for the harms young offenders cause while responding to their criminal conduct through interventions that are likely to decrease its incidence and enhance their prospects for productive adult lives. Lawmakers around the country have shown an increasing interest in developmental knowledge and its potential to provide new understandings of juvenile crime and of effective dispositions.
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