Reforming Juvenile Justice A Developmental Approach (2013) / Chapter Skim
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7 Accountability and Fairness
7 Accountability and Fairness
Pages 183-210
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From page 183... ...
, the Supreme Court observed that rehabilitative ambitions for juvenile offenders were often unrealized and that delinquent youth were being "punished" in fact, if not in name. In so doing, the Court left the guiding precepts of the juvenile court in confusion.
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From page 184... ...
Although most of the interventions addressed in Chapter 6 can serve both purposes, a key objective of this chapter is to highlight the potentially useful role of official actions other than juvenile court dispositions as instruments of accountability, particularly those associated with the process of adjudication itself. It is helpful in this respect to have in mind the entire process of involvement in the juvenile justice system, including all official interactions with law
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From page 185... ...
Making conduct illegal, disapproving its occurrence, apprehending suspected offenders, holding adjudicatory hearings, and administering sanctions communicate messages to the public, including adolescents, about the importance of adhering to a particular norm or to the law in general.1 Cumulatively as well as in specific cases, these events and actions may affect the adolescents' beliefs about, and attitudes toward, personal responsibility for wrongdoing, obedience to law, obligations to victims, and fairness in the administration of justice A key message of this chapter is that accountability practices in juvenile justice should be designed specifically for juvenile justice rather than being carried over from the criminal courts and should be designed to promote healthy social learning, moral development, and legal socialization during adolescence. If designed and implemented in a developmentally informed way, procedures for holding adolescents accountable for their offending can promote positive legal socialization, reinforce a prosocial identity, and facilitate compliance with the law.
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From page 186... ...
The literature summarized below suggests that, if implemented in a developmentally informed way, procedures for holding adolescents accountable for their offending by the juvenile justice system and by other disciplinary authorities can promote moral development and "legal socialization" -- described by Fagan and Tyler (2005, p.
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From page 187... ...
This section addresses how socializing and disciplinary practices can be effective in promoting the development of accountability of adolescents, who, as described above, are striving to develop social identities, are interested in moral questions, and are sensitive to unfairness and impingements on their autonomy. Given these characteristics, procedures for holding adolescents accountable for their actions should be designed to
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From page 188... ...
demonstrates how parenting practices associated with permissive and authoritarian styles are ineffective at promoting accountability in children, as they either fail to instill any controls or instill only fear of punishment. Thus, the question underlying modern parenting research is not whether parents should exercise authority, but rather how parental control can best be exercised so as to support children's developing capacity for self-regulation.
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From page 189... ...
These studies have a direct bearing on the challenge of implementing developmentally and culturally sensitive instruments of accountability in the juvenile justice system. For example, school principals who assume responsibility for managing their students' behavior and changing the attitudes, opinions, and behaviors of the teaching staff seem well positioned to offer wisdom and experiential learning opportunities to law enforcement and justice personnel that address the unique challenges of effectively interacting with oppositional adolescents (Rausch and Skiba, 2006)
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From page 190... ...
Instead, its students are informed at the outset that some behaviors, such as possession of weapons or drugs or seri ous threat or assault, will not be tolerated. The school has a planned continuum of effective alternatives and works closely with parents, law enforcement, juvenile justice, and mental health professionals in order to develop an array of alternatives for those students whose behaviors threaten school safety or order.
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From page 191... ...
, is a crucial time for legal socialization, which has been described as a developmental process that results in the internalization of legal rules and norms that regulate social and antisocial behaviors and create a set of obligations and social commitments that restrain motivations for law violation (Fagan and Piquero, 2007)
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From page 192... ...
Levels of satisfaction with the fairness of the juvenile justice process among youth and their families in juvenile courts are often higher than those in criminal and civil courts, but the perceptions of participants in juvenile court may be diminished by overt bias and even excessive informality. In a recent survey of participants in North Dakota courts, the National Center for State Courts found that juvenile court participants had one of the highest satisfaction rates of any court type, with more than 80 percent of juvenile court participants reporting high levels of satisfaction on several dimensions of fairness and access.
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From page 193... ...
. In juvenile court, however, perceptions of procedural justice can be fragile.
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From page 194... ...
The importance of this developmental task suggests juveniles' interactions with justice system personnel, including police, judges, probation officers, and correctional agents, should in part be an exercise in moral education and positive legal socialization, designed to maximize the positive developmental impact of the intervention. Police Contact and Arrest Police interactions often provide youth with the earliest exposure to legal authorities.
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From page 195... ...
Another approach has been undertaken by the Philadelphia Police Department to build trust and reduce street-level conflict between police and youth, especially youth of color. Over the last decade, a multiagency working group of police leaders, public defenders, district attorneys, juvenile probation officers, and faith leaders have launched two significant initiatives: youth-focused training for new cadets in the Philadelphia Police Academy and Youth-Police Forums to facilitate dialogue between youth and local police officers.2 The training curriculum for cadets focuses on 2 Drawn from "Philadelphia Minority Youth-Law Enforcement Forums and Training Curriculum Case Study" (2012)
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From page 196... ...
These interactive exchanges lay the foundation for more productive police-community relationships by helping youth and police understand each other's motives and behaviors, altering negative perceptions, improving officers' responses to youth, and youth's reactions to police intervention. Efforts to improve adolescents' perceptions of law, justice, and legal actors would be further enhanced by strategies that give youth a voice in reforming police practices and require police departments to model accountability for their own illegal or inappropriate behavior.
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From page 197... ...
core claim that children develop values and beliefs about the law and legal actors early in life and that these beliefs shape their behavior toward authority from adolescence through adulthood, it is likely that early youth–police interactions set the stage for how youth will perceive and interact with other actors in the juvenile justice system. After arrest, youth are often referred to the juvenile court for an intake assessment by the probation department and an arraignment and detention hearing before a judicial officer.
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From page 198... ...
As a result, access to counsel and the quality of legal representation for accused youth merit special attention. In the complex landscape of American juvenile courts, children need the assistance of a diligent and loyal advocate who will insist on substantive and procedural regularities and ensure that the child's voice is heard and validated at every stage of the juvenile justice process (see In re Gault)
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From page 199... ...
. In some states, judges neglect to inform families that an attorney may be appointed at no cost to the youth and fail to advise the youth that a waiver must be voluntary (see, e.g., American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center and Mid-Atlantic Juvenile Defender Center, 2002)
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From page 200... ...
19-20; American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center, 2002, p. 28; National Juvenile Defender Center, 2006, p.
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From page 201... ...
For example, observers in Montana noted that zealous advocacy was met with hostility from judges, probation officers, and prosecutors, whereas other defenders who did not "rock the boat" were greeted positively (American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center, 2003)
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From page 202... ...
Too often, lawyers for juveniles see themselves as advocates for the youth's best interests instead of the youth's stated or expressed wishes or interests (e.g., American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center, 2003)
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From page 203... ...
According to some reports, lawyers defer heavily to the views of juvenile probation officers and do little to bring the youth's voice and perspective to the court's attention (Mlyniec, 2008; see, e.g., American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center and Mid-Atlantic Juvenile Defender Center, 2003)
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From page 204... ...
It is particularly important to draw on the evidence summarized in Chapter 6 in designing and implementing developmentally oriented processes and dispositions in the juvenile justice system. For example, juvenile courts should involve families of youth at the disposition phase as constructively as possible to assist youth accept responsibility and to carry out whatever obligations are imposed by the court's dispositional order.
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From page 205... ...
Although initiatives by individual judges and attorneys were mentioned, the only two programmatic innovations that have been systematically implemented and evaluated are restorative justice programs and teen courts. We describe these activities below as promising illustrations of developmentally informed innovations, although it is premature to recommend either of them based on the current evidence.
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From page 206... ...
In many states, the principles of balanced and restorative justice have been adopted to guide program development, probation practice, and court dispositions (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1997a)
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From page 207... ...
A summary of 36 direct comparisons (including six studies involving juvenile offenders) of restorative justice practices to conventional criminal justice practices indicates that restorative justice reduces repeat offending for some offenders, but not all (Sherman and Strang, 2007)
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From page 208... ...
Additional research on the impact of these programs on legal socialization is warranted. Teen Courts Teen courts offer a dispositional alternative to the traditional juvenile justice system in which the juvenile offenders' teenage peers hear facts surrounding the incident, deliberate, and determine a disposition, which often includes community service or alcohol or drug treatment.
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From page 209... ...
SUMMARY Contemporary law reforms emphasize the importance of holding juveniles accountable for their criminal offenses. This is not a new theme -- advocates for punitive reforms criticized the traditional juvenile court for its failure to hold youth accountable and aimed to correct this supposed deficiency.
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From page 210... ...
Throughout the process, juvenile justice professionals affect the youth's legal socialization and moral development through their demeanor, their framing of the legal situation, and their interactions with the youth and the family. The formal process of adjudicating wrongdoing and holding adolescents accountable for their wrongful choices can, if carried out properly, foster and reinforce the achievement of key developmental tasks, thereby nurturing healthy legal socialization and reduce the likelihood of future offending.
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