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.