Future of Juvenile Justice

As the punishment pendulum swings for adult crimes, the same is true for juveniles. In the past ten years, juvenile crime has gone down but society’s response to media reports of juvenile crimes would suggest something different. Responses have been full of desire for the harshest possible punishment including transfer to adult court, and charges of life without the possibility of parole. The policies regarding sentencing juvenile offenders reflected society’s belief with most states giving an allowance to the prosecutor to push for specific juvenile arrestees to be tried in adult court. Usually these are juveniles around 15 years or older involved in a serious violent felony. These policies were based on the idea of incapacitation, punishment and deterrence suggesting that violent juvenile offenders need to be kept away from society for the remainder of their lives. Because of the newer research regarding brain development and understanding consequences, which studies have found much of that happens around the early twenties, the policy of regarding an 18 year old as an adult in the criminal context has been looked at differently very recently.

Just recently, the United States Supreme Court changed the law regarding mandatory life without the possibility of parole sentences and deemed it unconstitutional by the 8^th amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment. This policy decision was based off prior court rulings involving murders by different aged juvenile defendants. The court said mandatory sentencing did not take into account whether the juvenile had specific mitigating circumstances, or the exact age. So, a 14 year old and a 17 year old could both be mandatorily sentenced for life without the possibility of parole for murder, but have different life circumstances (e.g. abusive home life) affecting their mental state in regards to understanding what it means to take a person’s life.

Also, PBS Frontline has done interviews with convicted adolescent murderers, and violent offenders sentenced to life without parole through the adult court. Andy Medina, a 15 year old, was convicted of a shooting that he was involved in. But it wasn’t clear on whether he actually fired the shot that killed another youth. He has been in prison for approximately ten years, and the reality of the crime was not apparent to his 15 year old self, and that reality will present itself with maturity. A 15 year old and a 25 year old are very different because so much changes in how we understand and perceive situations and consequences.

Because of human rights groups and documentaries, the message is starting to be pushed to the general society. The change in mandatory life sentencing is just the start for the appropriate justice and sentencing to happen in the first place. Rehabilitative and restorative justice measures are being looked at as plausible solutions to crime more than ever with studies returning positive results. Society is the biggest influence on public policy, so the next step would be to inform the public of these programs, prove that it has worked, has saved money, and will keep recidivism levels down and then policy can reflect ideas that are successful.

Liptak, Adam, and Ethan Bronner. "Justices Bar Mandatory Life Terms for Juveniles." New York Times. 25 2012: n. page. Print. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/justices-bar-

mandatory-life-sentences-for-juveniles.html>.

Maguire, Mary, and Dan Okada. Critical Issues in Crime and Justice: Thought, Policy, and Practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2011. 245-50. Print.

Medina, Andy. "Profile Andrew Medina." Frontline: When Kids Get Life. 2004. pbs. . Web. 21 Nov 2012.

Turpin, James. "New Legislation Sets Tone For Future Debate." Corrections Today 58.5 (1996): 160. Criminal Justice Abstracts. Web. 21 Nov. 2012

Female Deviance and Criminality

The 1970s were a decade when studies done within juvenile and criminal justice system were beginning to include women (Cernkovich, Lanctot, and Giordano 3-4). Until this point, many were of the opinion that women weren’t criminal and arrest rates for females, juvenile or adult, were low. The attitude was women were meant to follow the male in the household, a paternalistic view that still exists in some parts of the U.S. today. This view is why women weren’t thought of as criminals because with the paternalistic environment, women were taught to behave, stay quiet, and take care of the household. As we have progressed since the 70s, women’s role in society has morphed. Women now work full-time jobs rather than staying home with the kids, either because of financial or reasons otherwise, so the household is not paternalistic like it once was. Married couples have lives outside their marriages, and with women working and supporting the family in a financial way, independence exists much more because of that.

Independence allows women to express emotions when before it wasn’t looked upon as important. Women’s strains and reactions to those strains are different then men’s. Women tend to express anger through self-hurt, while men express anger through physical violence against others(Baron 278). To be more specific, women from different ethnic and socioeconomic status would also have different reactions to the same stimuli because of their background (Katz 633-660). So, it would make sense that female deviance is different from males, as white female deviance is different from minority female deviance. Because female deviance has now been researched separately from male deviance, we can understand how females perceive their environment and react to strain. Policies have not reflected this new research, so while female deviance exists, it does not overlap as frequently into the male deviance model of crime inadvertently used by the justice system. For that reason, we can begin to understand the statistical inaccuracy between male and female delinquency and crime.

Starting in infancy, girls respond differently than boys. A study called “Gender Differences in Emotional Expression” studied 7-13 month old infant’s reactions to facial expressions. The girls tended to have a quicker reaction to the different social stimuli presented, which means girls are more attentive in social situations. The boys were more into the toys and less responsive to the social stimuli. This responsiveness can help understand why females place a great value on how they are perceived by others and in intimate relationships; its a biological trait of the general female population (Losonczy-Marshall 267-274).

Because females tend to place value on different social aspects more than males do, the strain that comes with that is different. For Example, there is an expectation to be in shape and pretty. Girls who don’t feel as though they are, can use “socially deemed” deviant methods of obtaining those goals. For example, bulimia and the act of purging are deviant acts within society but being overweight is also a negative within society and this creates a strain and the reaction from that strain is to harm yourself, purging, to obtain the goal of being thin (Sharp, Terling-Watt, and et al 171-188).

The idea of the general strain theory from Agnew is, more sources of strain are likely to create a more deviant attitude. However, statistics tell us that female crime is still less than males. What statistics doesn’t account for is the differences between gender and the expression emitted because of the strain. The statistical information we receive is about criminal sanctions, which is based off of male behavior because that’s all was studied when policies were implemented. Socially deviant behavior would include male and female behavior, and would be more accurate. Female deviance is not viewed as criminal within our society because of the policies based off of outward male deviant acts, and because most of the female deviant acts are self inflicted.  So female deviance is continually overlooked because according to statistics females aren’t as criminal but our definition of criminal has to change with the times just as the role of women has if we plan to incorporate accurate statistics of female deviance.

Baron, Stephen. "Deviant Behavior." Deviant Behavior. 28.3 (2007): 273-302. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.

Cernkovich, Stephen, Nadine Lanctot, and Peggy Giordano. "Crime and Delinquency." Crime and Delinquency. 54.1 (2008): 3-33. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.

Katz, Rebecca. "Violence Against Women." Violence Against Women. 6.6 (2000): 633-660. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.

Losonczy-Marshall, Marta. "Social Behavior and Personality." Social Behavior and Personality. 36.2 (2008): 267-274. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.

Sharp, Susan, Toni Terling-Watt, et al. "Deviant Behavior." Deviant Behavior. 22.2 (2001): 171-188. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.

History of the Juvenile Delinquency System in the United States

The history of juvenile delinquency and treatment in America goes back to the 1800s, with reform schools for delinquent boys. Courts systems existed and treated juvenile and adult offenders alike. Juveniles were treated the same until 1899 in Chicago, when the first juvenile court was created under the assumption that juveniles need to be rehabilitated rather than incarcerated. This notion of the state acting as a parent to the delinquent youth is important because it shows empathy and desire to help the offender rather than label and punish him/her (small 119-120).

From then on and in the early 1900s, different groups have existed to help push for better juvenile justice standards in detention and treatment. The United States Children’s Bureau and the National Probation Association were one of the first to publish information on court standards and detention standards.. After a 1945 study on juvenile delinquency, the National Probation Association published two works regarding detention standards that would lead for way for a third, “Standards and Guides for the Detention of Children and Youth” in1958 and another edition three years later. The latter publication gave information on an array of subjects within juvenile detention, court room practices and administration. “Standards,” sold out quickly, implying many professionals were adopting the standards to correctly run a juvenile detention center. But, by the late 1970s, there was no single accreditation process (a way to measure compliance with standards) for juvenile institutions and standards. The Child Welfare League of America and the Family Service Association decided to create one called, “National Counsel on Accreditation for Families and Children.” This allowed for a more simplistic process for standardizing practices within this newly acknowledged and researched field of juvenile justice (Livers, Mary, and Charles J. Kehoe 36).

The eighties were a period where policy regarding juvenile delinquency was heading towards harsher punishment, longer sentences; away from rehabilitation and restorative justice techniques. This attitude was the same towards adult crime during this decade because the war on drugs and the unsuccessful approach taken with the rise in drug crimes throughout the United States. 

In the early nineties, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency (OJJDP) awarded a grant to improve conditions in juvenile detention and correctional facilities by using launching the performance-based standards program to study conditions in accredited and non-accredited facilities. This allowed facilities to monitor and improve conditions and treatment by collecting and analyzing data from those facilities to measure areas that need improvement. This was a big step for juvenile justice systems because it helped specific facilities pinpoint where, and why areas were less effective; found that accreditation didn’t improve conditions; and since then has helped facilities align with sound, and researched approaches, and started the shift back towards an interest in rehabilitative approaches (Livers, Mary, and Charles J. Kehoe 36)( Loughran 12).

The 2000s were a time for refining the standards of practices as well as their implementation. As we can see from the timeline, our standards for juvenile detention and treatment are new when compared to European countries. Implementations of methods that work are more recent especially following the OJJDP study and the performance-based standards program.

With the changing of standards, the federal and state laws have gone through multiple cycles of reform, similar to the adult system, with attitudes of leniency ending around the sixties and seventies changing to “tough on crime” measures starting around late seventies and currently there is a shift back to leniency but without losing the effective and proven practices learned throughout these cycles. Using intervention programs for juvenile offenders, rather than incarceration, by using an alternative form of punishment are effective in reducing recidivism and are more widely used as of late. Also, instituting proven prevention programs to prevent youth from becoming an offender will be another widely accepted and implemented idea, especially when the public can see the effectiveness of such programs. 

Although we are in the process of a shift, that doesn’t mean that it cannot come to a halt if juvenile crime is interpreted as getting worse. Often times history is repeated; it can take many cycles of reform policies, then tough on crime policies before America can identify and make use of the effective policies and leave the ineffective ones behind. Policies from both stances must be used because the issue of juvenile crime is multifaceted, with a range of theories to explain why juveniles commit crimes, and a range of treatments helpful to specific offenders (Cohn 42).

Cohn, Alvin W. "Planning for the Future of Juvenile Justice." Federal Probation, 68.3 (2004): 39-43.Criminal Justice Periodicals Index. Web. 24 October 2012.

Livers, Mary, and Charles J. Kehoe. "Juvneile Detention And Corrections Standards: Looking Back And Ahead." Corrections Today 74.1 (2012): 35-38. Criminal Justice Abstracts. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

Loughran, Edward J. "The Cycle of Reform and Retrenchment in Juvenile Justice." Corrections Today Feb. 2011: 6+. Criminal Justice Abstracts. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

Small, Mark. "Introduction to this Issue.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law. 15.2 (1997): 119-124. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

Cyberbullying as a Form of Traditional Bullying?

With computers becoming a household necessity in the past 12 years, the availability and access to information is endless. Computers and the internet have changed the way we learn and socialize with our peers starting with Google, AOL Instant Messenger and now with Facebook. In the same way we see criminals change with the times, like the gas pump card scams, we have seen kids and bullies evolve as well. The internet is now a tool used by children to insult, threaten, and hurt their peers unrelentingly through instant messengers, blogs, and social networking sites. Cyberbullying is not the same as traditional bullying and treatment cannot be the same for both, but cyberbullying can incorporate aspects of treatment used in traditional bullying situations.

Traditional bullying involves intention to harm, repetition, and a power difference between the bully and victim (law 664). With traditional bullying, a larger physical presence exists which takes the role of the bully against a small physical presence, the victim. Generally, males exhibit either the bully or victim in traditional bullying(Hinduja, and Patchin 142). The bully is aggressiveto gain something-a physical item or not, like respect. Because the act is in person, identifying the bully and victim is simple and addressing the problem through interventions and/or punishment is likely.

With the internet, bullying is taken to a different level as it’s possible to be a bully or a victim-kids can be both online, without face-to-face interaction(Hinduja, and Patchin 142). Because of anonymity, aggression escalates more easily and kids are likely to retaliate online because they know punishment is unlikely because there is a low chance of being caught. Cyberbullying is also indiscriminate of gender, with males and females having equal participation, possibly because girls bully through indirect forms: rumors, or mean looks, rather than physical intimidation.

If a kid is being physically bullied, its quite obvious what intent the bully has as well as how to interpret their acts. But, the internet allows for multiple misinterpretations of meanings which through, “Are Cyberbullies really bullies? An investigation of reactive and proactive online aggression” showed that adolescents saw their own aggression online as reactive, and saw others aggression as proactive, meaning intentionally aggressive. In reality, most of the aggression was proactive because of a misinterpretation of the circumstances on either side (Law, Shapka, Domene, and Gagne 670). 

The news has reported extreme cases of cyberbullying in combination with face-to-face bullying during which the victim commits suicide and these are horrible situations but also rare. Bullies who cross over into both forms are the most aggressive, and the combination can be what’s so detrimental as the victim never has peace from insults and threats (Wang, Iannotti, and Luk 531). These bullies require a different type of treatment, one that would be used in a traditional bullying situation involving teachers and parents, with school counselors and psychologists.

This information means that, in most cases, kids are more likely to exert aggression online because they feel invincible with no one monitoring their activity, or because they believe they are in the right. So, parents and teachers have to be proactive to prevent this from happening with a child as a bully or victim meaning stay involved in your child’s online activities, put the computer in a family area,encourage communication between parents and kids and when there is a change in behavior be open to the possibility bullying of some form is happening. New research will be going in the direction of understanding how “website designs, policies, and audiences can impact the occurrence of cyberbullying.” A two side approach is the start of more holistic proactive prevention which should prove effective (Moore, Nakano, Enomoto, and Suda 861-67).

References

Hinduja, Sameer, and Justin W. Patchin. "Cyberbullying: An Exploratory Analysis Of Factors Related To Offending And           Victimization." Deviant Behavior 29.2 (2008): 129-156. Criminal Justice Abstracts. Web. 8 Oct. 2012.

Law, Danielle, Jennifer Shapka, Jose Domene, and Monique Gagne. "Are Cyberbullies really bullies? An investigation of reactive and proactive online aggression." Computers in Human Behavior. 29.(2012):664-672. Computers in Human Behavior. Web. 8 Oct. 2012.

Moore, Michael, Tadashi Nakano, Akihiro Enomoto, and Tasuya Suda. "Anonymity and Roles Associated with Aggressive Posts in an Online Forum." Computers in Human Behavior. 28. (2012): 861-67. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.

Wang, Jing, Ronald Iannotti, and Jeremy Luk. "Patterns of Adolescent Bullying Behaviors:Physical,Verbal, Exclusion, Rumor, and Cyber." Journal of School Psychology. 50. (2012): 521-534. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.

A Short Overview of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Juvenile Delinquency is an issue the United States has focused on since the first settlers existed. It started in the 1600s in Europe as very limited, but by the 1900s a juvenile institution had been built and there were laws regarding children's rights. The idea of “what is best for the child in juvenile court” rather than being in an adult court was introduced. 

Our country needed this system because it had a group of criminals who were children; this problem being more prevalent in this century. As a society, we have an intent focus on living without crime, and we can only strive to find a balance.

The costs of juvenile delinquency can be great in both victims and monetary ways. Juvenile delinquents make victims out of neighborhoods, schools, peers, families, and ultimately themselves with youth authority and/or prison eating away their future. Monetarily, juvenile delinquents who progress onto adult criminals cost society the most. A research article titled, “Crime Costs across Offender Trajectories” tells us there are two different ways to estimate costs for an individual crime: bottom up and WTP ( public’s willingness to pay),which is the more accepted estimate. For murder, the WTP estimate is 11.8 million dollars a year. More directly, an article titled, “ Estimating the Costs of Bad Outcomes for At-Risk Youth and the Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions to Reduce them” by Mark Cohen estimates a career criminal imposes $2.1- $3.7 million dollars throughout their lifetime (Cohen, Piquero, and Jennings 391-434).

Juveniles usually commit crimes to get something of material value like a car, money, shoes, electronics. The success of an endeavor tells the juvenile it will continue to be successful although that is not true. So, in the short run the kids think they are benefitting but when it comes to a future where crime is not necessary to survive, they are shorting themselves. It is shown in “Coping while Incarcerated: A study of Male Juvenile Offenders” that incarcerated juvenile males are not effective at dealing with multiple stressors that adolescents face and are more violent during the transitioning period of one month. Repeat offenses can be likely and this means a path of crime has begun.

The totality of the problem of juvenile delinquency cannot be blamed solely on the youth, even though it is youth who are committing the crimes. Researchers look at environments and cultures that juvenile delinquents share and come to a decision about whether one can be called a factor of juvenile crime. In the Cohen article, “Estimating the Costs of Bad Outcomes...” it rates different crimes and “bad outcomes” that cost the system money but those outcomes allow for juvenile delinquents to exist. For example, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, and drug abuse are known to be important factors in predicting a delinquent outcome of youth.

Numerous programs are implemented but most beneficial have been intervening at a young age in a youth offender, and training young parents how to have a violence-free relationship with their children while getting the necessary balance between respect and love. Programs that aren’t as successful are drug treatment programs. They work if its court ordered, but after a person is determined sober and leaves the treatment, there is not enough support for staying that way and the success rate is low-about 25 percent of parolees according to “Differential Outcomes of Court-Supervised Substance Abuse Treatment Among California Parolees and Probationers.”

The future holds more legislation for getting programs shown to have results in a generally accepted treatment group. The government’s role is to provide the funds necessary to do so. Through the costs articles we see how much an offender costs the system, therefore how much we can save by treating that offender. That money can be used to fund effective programs which will save the government money over the long term. 

       The short term cost tends to be the deciding factor and social programs are usually the first to be cut or denied for funding but effective programs will save the taxpayers money, and of course help curb juvenile crime.

Cohen, Mark , Alex Piquero, and Wesley Jennings. "Estimating the Costs of Bad Outcomes for At-Risk Youth and the Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions to Reduce Them." Criminal Justice Policy Review. 21.4 (2010): 391-434. Web. 12 Sep. 2012. <http://cjp.sagepub.com/content/21/4/391>.

Cohen, Mark, Alex Piquero, and Wesley Jennings. "Studying the Costs of Crime Across Offender Trajectories." American Society of Criminology. 9.2 (2010): 279-305. Web. 17 Sep. 2012.

Clayton, J. (2012). Washington's Journey with Evidence-Based and Research-Based Programs in Juvenile Justice. Policy & Practice (19426828), 70(3), 20-22

Evans, Elizabeth, Adi Jaffe, Darren Urada, and M. Douglas Anglin. "Differential Outcomes of Court-Supervised Substance Abuse Treatment Among California Parolees and Probationers." International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology, 56.4 (2012): 539-556

Schulman, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Cauffman. "Coping While Incarcerated: A Study of Male Juvenile Offenders." Journal of Research on Adolescence. 21.4 (2011): 818-826. Web. 17 Sep. 2012.