Chapter One Summary

Autumn Stafford

Juvenile Justice

North Carolina Central University

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 The criminal justice system consists of many different agencies that are responsible for

carrying out justice to different populations and people. Criminals usually refer to adult offenders

in the correct term for a juvenile offender would be delinquent. The reason that they have

different terminology for different offenders is because they go to different systems. When we

refer to the word injustice we usually think of equality. But for some and for the juvenile justice

system they considered equity what was best for all. Juveniles look like different things in

different places, for “Currently statues in 35 states extend certain juvenile court jurisdiction in

delinquency cases until age 25” (Hess, 2013, pg.4). We often see in science that one’s brain is

not fully developed until 25. The idea of Parens Patriae where this state is responsible for

protecting juveniles from victimization of people in the system. The state is acting as the

protector and parent. The point of having a different juvenile system is to protect juveniles in a

way they get all the proper care that they need and are not punished as adults. We look at

circumstances and often find that they are victims.

“In terms of human development, a juvenile is an individual who is psychologically,

emotionally and intellectually immature.” (Hess, 2013, pg3). It varies in different states and who

they consider to be a juvenile which is something I find interesting. In some states the age goes

as young as six and in most states, they go as high as 17. The most common age for delinquency

and statistics ranges between 15 and 17. “This Lowering of the oldest age reflects the nationwide

trend that took place during the 1980s and 1990s to “get tough “on youth in trouble with law.”

(Hess, 2013, pg 4). So, something that I noted which took place during the late 1980s and 1990s

which were the crack epidemic, and when the mass incarceration of African American teens and

men had taken place. We were seeing these prosecutors feel pressure to apply “Law and Order”

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and lost sight of the true purpose of the system which was to rehabilitate in my opinion. Cases

like this central park five Rodney King and many others have taken place around this time. We

saw how the media had a great effect on policing and the communities that were having high

police presences. Something that we must note is the prejudice that the system we have

presented has shown in the past and present.

Hess discusses how the juvenile system was built upon restorative justice instead of

retributive justice which practices the idea that in the juvenile system they try to focus on just

restoring community relationships and working things out between victim and offender rather

than focus on punishment. I think the shift became present when the statistics they began to

interpret were showing juveniles committing more dangerous and serious crimes. They can track

this data through the National Incident-Based Reporting System. This allows reports that are

documented to be evaluated on the micro level for the UCR is more macro. The NIBRS can

categorize these crimes further and give other information like place of occurrence, type of

weapon, their education, sex, estimated salary all things that could help someone interpret the

data in different ways to discover things like patterns of offense. Something that they have been

seeing is that when doing self-reports there are higher crime rates (Hess, 2013 pg14). “The true

number of crimes, called the dark figure of crime, is unknown and may substantially greater than

official data indicates” (Hess, 2013, pg 14). This shows that no matter how many surveys and

data systems they put into place to account the cases there is never any telling of the true amount

of crime. Many crimes go unreported and they saw that many teens could account for interaction

with police officers that were in the system.

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 The overall thing to note about the juvenile justice system is it must be able to cater to

both the delinquency that is a menace to society and the ones who need rehabilitation and

resources to change behavior and circumstances.

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 Reference

Hess, K. M., Orthmann, C. M., & Wright, J. P. (2013). Juvenile Justice. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.