Joseph A. Wickliffe
The juvenile courts still hold broad powers over children. These powers include the right to depart from legal procedures established for criminal courts and to deny to children and their parents privileges normally accorded defendants in civil courts. The juvenile court may, for example, consider evidence that would be inadmissible in both criminal and civil courts. The justification offered for this vast delegation of power over children is that it is essential if the court is to determine how best to rehabilitate the child and how to provide adequate care for him. According to the standards suggested by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, if a juvenile court is to become fully effective, it must have the following:9
-
1) a judge and a staff identified with and capable of carrying out a non-punitive and individualized service.
-
2) Sufficient facilities must be available in the court and the community to ensure:
-
____
a) that the dispositions of the court are based on the best available knowledge of the needs of the child,
-
____
b) that the child, if he needs care and treatment, receives these through facilities adapted to his/her needs and from persons properly qualified and empowered to give them,
-
____
c) That the community receives adequate protection.
-
3) Procedures designed to ensure:
-
____
a) that each child and his situation are considered individually,
-
____
b) that the legal and constitutional rights of both parents and child and those of the community are duly considered and protected.
Biological Approach of Juvenile Crimes
The biological approach to delinquent behavior has focused more on brain dysfunction and impairment in learning capabilities. Other research has shown abnormal electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings of the brain activity in criminals and delinquents, relating this to violent and aggressive behavior, destructiveness, limited impulse control, and poor social adaptation.
____
Dysfunctions of the brain have also been linked to such learning disabilities as dyslexia, aphasia and hyperactivity, which researchers contend turn persons toward deviant behavior, rejection and poor educational achievement. Further study has established a relationship between violent criminal behavior and brain tumors, although there is little evidence of a direct causal relationship to know what role, if any, brain disorders play in adolescent delinquency. How can we then understand why adolescents behave the way they do?
____
Biologically, teenagers go through different development stages. Knowing that to be true, can we assume that the teenage brain is also in a working progress while the rest of the body is developing? And just as a teenager is all legs one day and nose and ears the next, different areas of the brain are still undergoing development of different schedules. This imbalance could tell us why a smart 15 or 16 year old, who does not think twice before stealing a car or vandalizing a house with a friend, can be hugging others one minute and then flying off the handle the next. Therefore, if the analysis and assessment is right, the brain inside a teenager’s skull is, in some ways, closer to a child’s brain than to an adult’s. It is, perhaps, being connected between neurons that affect not only emotional skills but also physical and mental abilities that process. That means that it might be unreasonable of us to expect young teenagers to organize multiple tasks or grasp the concept of abstract ideas since there are developing neural lines that leave a teenager vulnerable to many things.
____
____
____
These changes are not all for the worse. The brain’s capacity for growth in adolescence may indicate that troubled teenagers can still learn restraint, judgment, and empathy. Adolescence is a time of tumultuous change in the brain. An adolescent’s tendency to leap before looking is added to the fact that teenage is a time for seeking out new experiences, including situations that are dangerous.
____
There are differing opinions on psychological and biological theories of delinquency that seek to explain delinquent behavior in terms of individual abnormalities. The sociological perspective of delinquency generally regards it as a “normal” response and holds that all persons have the potential and the opportunity to commit delinquent or criminal acts. Travis Hirschi, in his book Causes of Delinquency, offers a social control theory with a bonding proposition. This social bond consists of four components: attachment, commitment, involvement and belief. Hirschi states that when individuals do not believe that they should conform to social convention, they are more likely to break the law, and that teenagers are not exceptions to social conventions. Hirschi believes that attachment to others can help prevent delinquent behavior.10
____
Other theorists attribute lower class delinquency, particularly in black adolescents, to thinking that they lack educational opportunities and motivation for learning and, therefore, that they can turn to delinquent behavior. This, however, is an unfounded hypothesis. The educational variables in delinquency formation should not be placed in the context of other determinant factors such as opportunity and learned behavior. Overall, the probability of an adolescent being arrested is much greater when we consider other factors such as lack of parental affection, broken homes, child abuse, sexual abuse and gangs.
____
The issue of juvenile rights within the juvenile justice system made its impact during the 1960s and 1970s when a series of landmark decisions by the United States courts led to a shift in the juvenile court system from a philosophy based on the doctrine of parens patriae to a new approach in court procedures. This approach is based on a philosophy allowing equal consideration to guaranteeing juveniles their constitutional rights, responding to their need for treatment, guidance, rehabilitation, punishment, and acting in the best interest of the child and the community.
____
In 1967, the Supreme Court recognized the juvenile’s constitutional rights and granted due process that juveniles are entitled to:
-
the right to counsel,
-
the right to early written notification of the charge,
-
the right to confront and cross-examine one’s accuser,
-
the right to remain silent,
-
protection from self-incrimination.
____
We might look into how delinquent acts are committed with companions. It is possible that juvenile delinquents have delinquent friends. The indirect evidence regarding the extent to which delinquency and delinquent friends go together could provide proof that relationships between a delinquent child and those with whom he/she associates are significant factors in juvenile delinquency. In some forms of differential association theory, a child may not have had propensities to delinquency prior to his association with delinquents. But it is possible that after a child acquires delinquent friends, he/she learns the values, attitudes and skills conducive to delinquency and, as a result, becomes delinquent him/herself.
____
One may argue that relationships with peers, especially among delinquents, are sufficiently strong to produce change in attitude and behavioral changes. We need to realize that, in our society, although teenagers strive to fulfill their parents’ desires, they also look very often to their peers for approval as well. Consequently, our society still has in its midst a set of teenage societies which focus teenage interests and attitudes on things far removed from adult responsibilities, societies which may develop standards that lead teens away from those goals established by the larger society.
@2H(after1H):Vocabulary
The words “child,” “youth,” and “Youngster are used synonymously and denote a person of juvenile court age. Juvenile court laws define a “child” as any person under the specified age, no matter how mature or sophisticated he may seem. Juvenile jurisdictions in at least two-thirds of the state include children under 18; the others also include youngsters between the ages of 18 and 21.
|
1.
|
Adjudication: decision by the judge that the
|
|
Conviction of guilt
|
____
child has committed delinquent acts.
1. Adjudicatory hearing: a hearing to determine
|
|
|
Trial
|
|
whether the allegations of a petition are
|
|
supported by the evidence beyond a reasonable
|
|
doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence.
|
2. Adjustment: the term refers to matters which are
|
|
Plea bargaining
|
-
____
settled or brought to a satisfactory state so that
-
____
parties are agreed without official intervention of
-
____
the court.
3. After-care: the supervision given to a child
|
|
|
Parole
|
|
for a limited period of time after he is released
|
|
from the training school but still under the
|
|
control of the school or of the juvenile court.
|
4. Commitment: a decision by the judge that the
|
|
Sentence to imprisonment
|
____
child should be sent to a training school.
5. Court: the court having jurisdiction over
|
|
|
Court of record
|
|
children who are alleged to be or found to be
|
|
delinquent. Juvenile delinquency procedures
|
|
should not be used for neglected children or
|
|
those in need of supervision.
|
6. Delinquent act: an act that if committed by an
|
|
Crime
|
|
adult would be called a crime. The term
|
|
“delinquent acts” does not include such
|
|
ambiguities and noncrimes as “being
|
|
ungovernable, “truancy,” “incorrigibility,”
|
|
|
and disobedience.
|
-
7. Delinquent child: a child who is found
|
|
|
Criminal
|
|
to have committed an act that would be
|
|
considered a crime if committed by an adult.
|
8. Detention: temporary care of a child
|
|
|
|
Holding in jail
|
|
alleged to be delinquent who requires
|
|
secure custody in physically restricting
|
|
facilities pending court disposition or
|
|
execution of a court order.
|
9. Dispositional hearing: a hearing held
|
|
|
|
Sentencing hearing
|
|
subsequent to the adjudicatory hearing in
|
|
order to determine what order of disposition
|
|
should be made concerning a child
|
|
adjudicated as delinquent.
|
10. Hearing: the presentation of evidence to
|
|
|
Trial
|
|
the juvenile court judge, his consideration
|
|
of it, and his decision on disposition of the case.
|
11. Petition: an application for an order of court
|
|
|
Accusation or indictment
|
|
or for some other judicial action. Hence,
|
|
a “delinquency petition” is an application for
|
|
the court to act in the matter of a juvenile
|
|
apprehended for a delinquent act.
|
12. Probation: the supervision of a delinquent
|
|
|
Probation (with the same meaning
|
|
child after the court hearing but without
|
|
|
|
|
commitment to a training school.
|
13. Residential child care facility: a dwelling
|
|
|
Halfway house
|
|
other than a detention or shelter care facility,
|
|
which provides living accommodations, care,
|
|
treatment, and maintenance for children and
|
|
youth and is licensed to provide such care.
|
|
Such facilities include foster family homes,
|
|
group homes, and halfway houses.
|
14. Shelter: temporary care of a child in
|
|
|
|
Jail
|
|
physically unrestricting facilities pending court
|
-
disposition or execution of a court order for
-
placement. Shelter care is used for dependent
-
and neglected children and minors in need of
-
supervision. Separate shelter care facilities
-
are also used for children apprehended for
-
delinquency who need temporary shelter
-
but not secure detention.
15. Take into custody: the act of the police in
|
|
|
Arrest
|
|
securing the physical custody of a child
|
|
engaged in delinquency; avoids the stigma
|
|
of the word arrest.
|