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.
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