Juvenile justice

“ The Chief Justice stated in a recent speech to a conference of the National Council of Juvenile Court Judges, that a juvenile court 'must function within the framework of law and * * * in the attainment of its objectives it cannot act with unbridled caprice.' Equal Justice for Juveniles, 15 Juvenile Court Judges Journal, No. 3, pp. 14, 15 (1964) .↑ 383 U.S., at 562, 86 S.Ct., at 1057.↑ The Nat'l Crime Comm'n Report recommends that 'Juvenile courts should make fullest feasible use of preliminary conferences to dispose of cases short of adjudication.' Id., at 84. ”

“ They soon became hardened criminals through their associations. But experience proves that with the right treatment a majority of those who fall into crime before the age of sixteen can be redeemed to normal social conduct. Experiments with boys showed that there was a better way of trial and punishment than that which had been in vogue, and the juvenile courts that they devised have been widely adopted. The new plan is based on the principle of making friends with the boy. ”

“ Unless appropriate due process of law is followed, even the juvenile who has violated the law may not feel that he is being fairly treated, and may therefore resist the rehabilitative efforts of court personnel. [36] Of course it is not suggested that juvenile court judges should fail appropriately to take account, in their demeanor and conduct, of the emotional and psychological attitude of the juveniles with whom they [p27] are confronted. ”

“ What the juvenile court system needs is not more but less of the trappings of legal procedure and judicial formalism; the juvenile court system requires breathing room and flexibility in order to survive, if it can survive the repeated assaults from this Court. ”

“ The gradual realization of this condition through the experience of the juvenile courts and the schools and also the desire to avoid any court procedure in connection with a child whose morals are endangered has led many teachers and social workers to the view that the child should be taken in charge by society as soon as it shows any tendency to disorganization and that the school should have this function and should gradually displace or incorporate the juvenile court, or such functions of the juvenile court as remained would be transferred to the court of domestic relations. ”

“ As we learn from Judge Lindsey: “The whole question of juvenile law-breaking—or at least nine-tenths of it—is a question of children’s play. A boy who breaks the law is in nine cases out of ten not a criminal. ”

“ For, however much the juvenile system may have failed in practice, its very existence as an ostensibly beneficent and noncriminal process for the care and guidance of young persons demonstrates the existence of the community's sympathy and concern for the young. ”

“ But where a State uses its juvenile court proceedings to prosecute a juvenile for a criminal act and to order 'confinement' until the child reaches 21 years of age or where the child at the threshold of the proceedings faces that prospect, then he is entitled to the same procedural protection as an adult. ”

“ Finally, a categorical rule gives all juvenile nonhomicide offenders a chance to demonstrate maturity and reform. The juvenile should not be deprived of the opportunity to achieve maturity of judgment and self-recognition of human worth and potential. ”

“ Mistakes under any law may be made. No system is perfect. If any conceives the idea that the Juvenile Court was created for the purpose of correcting or reforming every disorderly child, they are, of course, mistaken. Jails and criminal courts never did that. ”

“ We conclude that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination is applicable in the case of juveniles as it is with respect to adults. We appreciate that special problems may arise with respect to waiver of the privilege by or on behalf of children, and that there may well be some differences in technique — but not in principle — depending upon the age of the child and the presence and competence of parents. The participation of counsel will, of course, assist the police, Juvenile Courts and appellate tribunals in administering the privilege. ”

“ Now, the boy who violates a law is not arrested and placed in jail or even a Police Station, but under the splendid Juvenile Court system the boy is brought into the presence of a judge who has an opportunity of showing what he would like to do in other courts, by extending an encouraging hand to the wayfaring boy. ”

“ The children’s courts in New York State should also have the power to appoint legal guardians for children in case of need.
To be a judge of a juvenile court requires exceptional qualifications: quick sympathy, and intelligent understanding of the many causes which contribute to child delinquency.
A large part of the problem comes back to the environment of the child, to crowded living conditions, deficient education, lack of vocational training, and absence of opportunities for recreation. ”

“ But I am certain that the answer does not lie in the Court's opinion in this case, which serves to convert a juvenile proceeding into a criminal prosecution.
The inflexible restrictions that the Constitution so wisely made applicable to adversary criminal trials have no inevitable place in the proceedings of those public social agencies known as juvenile or family courts. And to impose the Court's long catalog of requirements upon juvenile proceedings in every area of the country is to invite a long step backwards into the nineteenth century. ”

“ The Judge has always been clear on the point that his Juvenile Court is merely supplementary, that the home and the school are the places where juvenile character should be moulded, and that he had to do only with those children who, for some reason, were not successfully treated in the regular way. ”

“ CHILDREN’S COURTS NO work on boy-training would be complete without a reference to an instrumentality of recent origin for reclaiming the wayward boy which marks a forward step in the solution of the child problem—the juvenile court. ”

“ Where the participation of adult relatives, teachers or counselors, among others, other than their legal representatives in the education of juveniles involved in the criminal cases is conducive to the rehabilitation and rescue of the juveniles, the public security organs, people’s procuratorates, and people’s courts shall invite them to participate in the relevant activities. ”

“ Article 11 Juveniles shall abide by the laws and regulations as well as norms of social and public morality, establish the awareness of self-esteem, self-discipline and self-improvement, enhance the ability to distinguish right from wrong and protect themselves, and consciously resist the temptation and infringements of all kinds of misbehaviors and illegal and criminal acts. ”

“ First, it is clear that an uncertain, but very substantial, number of the cases brought to juvenile courts involve children who are not in any sense guilty of criminal misconduct. Many of these children have simply the misfortune to be in some manner distressed; others have engaged in conduct, such as truancy, which is plainly not criminal. ”

“ They shall, in addition to the same courses offered by ordinary schools, as required by the Law on Compulsory Education, put emphasis on education in the legal system and help the juveniles to rectify or treat their serious misbehavior in light of the causes for such misbehavior and the psychological characteristics of the juveniles.
⁠Families and schools shall show concern for and take good care of the juveniles who study in work-study schools and respect their personality and dignity, and may not impose physical punishment on, maltreat, or discriminate against them. ”

“ Simply stated, the Court's decision in this case rests upon the considered opinion — after nearly four busy years on the Juvenile Court bench during which the testimony of thousands of such juveniles has been heard — that the statements of adolescents under 18 years of age who are arrested and charged with violations of law are frequently untrustworthy, and often distort the truth. ”

“ The records of the Juvenile Court and the books of the John Worthy School emphatically bear out this contention.
Failure to Rule Children Makes Criminals.
What are you doing with your child's sense of right and wrong? Are you certain that you are not training a criminal, [Pg 239] beginning with him at two years old? What is your boy at six years of age? Is he liar, thief—perhaps of insane ego as he was when he first toddled from his mother's arms? ”

“ Parents must help and not hinder in that task.
Prodigal sons and daughters who are normal save for some accidental divergence from legal or actual right-doing must be helped to come back into the line of social usefulness. And, above all, the facts of juvenile delinquency should give us impetus, strong and intelligent, toward a social and family discipline that shall make freedom and happiness of childhood a way to social order and never a pathway toward social degeneracy or personal wrong-doing. ”

“ In the case of more serious offenses, or of repeated wrong-doing, or of violation of parole, offenders are sent to reform schools or industrial schools. The entire effort is to set the young offender on the right road to honest self-support and good citizenship. Unfortunately, however, this machinery for the treatment of juvenile delinquency is so far found almost exclusively in cities. ”

“ In this regard, I think it worth emphasizing that the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a juvenile committed a criminal act before he is found to be a delinquent does not (1) interfere with the worthy goal of rehabilitating the juvenile, (2) make any significant difference in the extent to which a youth is stigmatized as a 'criminal' because he has been found to be a delinquent, or (3) burden the juvenile courts with a procedural requirement that will make juvenile adjudications significantly more time consuming, or rigid. ”

“ A thorough physical and mental examination is necessary in many cases before the court can proceed intelligently in its treatment.47 A fundamental need also in the treatment of juvenile delinquency is the conferring of equity powers on the court, in order to avoid the hindrances of purely criminal trials and to reach the child and his family more directly. ”

“ The Court adds that the rate of juvenile crime is steadily rising. All this, as the Court suggests, indicates the importance of these due process issues, but it mirrors no less vividly that state authorities are confronted by formidable and immediate problems involving the most fundamental social values. The state legislatures have determined that the most hopeful solution for [p70] these problems is to be found in specialized courts, organized under their own rules and imposing distinctive consequences. ”

“ THE JUVENILE OFFENDER.—It has been proved that a large percentage of hardened criminals begin their careers by some careless or mischievous act for which they were severely or unwisely punished. Formerly, juvenile offenders were treated much as were adult criminals; more recently we are coming to believe that children ought not to be committed to penal institutions, but rather should be put on probation, or sent to correctional institutions of a special type. ”

“ In the vital matter of taking care of children, much advantage could be gained by a careful study of what has been accomplished in such States as Illinois and Colorado by the juvenile courts. The work of the juvenile court is really a work of character building. ”

“ Our juvenile courts are at once a standing reproach to thoughtless, indifferent, ignorant, and wayward parents and a beacon light for the guidance of the unhappy children of such parents to useful citizenship. They inspire the admiration, sympathy, and coöperation of every lover of children who sees in them the future of our great republic. ”

“ In my view, however, it is not sufficient to accommodate the [p397] facts about juveniles that an individual youth's culpability may be taken into account in the decision to transfer him or her from the juvenile to the adult court system for trial, or that a capital sentencing jury is instructed to consider youth and other mitigating factors. I believe that the Eighth Amendment requires that a person who lacks that full degree of responsibility for his or her actions associated with adulthood not be sentenced to death. ”

“ The problem is to ascertain the precise impact of the due process requirement upon such proceedings.
From the inception of the juvenile court system, wide differences have been tolerated-indeed insisted upon-between the procedural rights accorded to adults and those of juveniles. In practically all jurisdictions, there are rights granted to adults which are withheld from juveniles. ”

“ We do not in this opinion consider the impact of these constitutional provisions upon the totality of the relationship of the juvenile and the state. We do not even consider the entire process relating to juvenile 'delinquents.' For example, we are not here concerned with the procedures or constitutional rights applicable to the pre-judicial stages of the juvenile process, nor do we direct our attention to the post-adjudicative or dispositional process. ”

“ By removing youth from the balance—by subjecting a juvenile to the same life-without-parole sentence applicable to an adult—these laws prohibit a sentencing authority from assessing whether the law's harshest term of imprisonment proportionately punishes a juvenile offender. ”

“ Viewed from the standpoint of the district and in the light of what we know of its manner of life, juvenile delinquency is seen to be largely the product of conditions dangerous to youth in the homes and on the streets. To deal with the boy only after he has committed a crime is to deal with the product and not at all with the source of his offending; to allow him to return to his old surroundings without official supervision and control is, except in rare instances, a futile expedient. ”