Juvenile offender

“ 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. ”

“ The differences between juvenile and adult offenders are too marked and well understood to risk allow- [p573] ing a youthful person to receive the death penalty despite insufficient culpability. An unacceptable likelihood exists that the brutality or cold-blooded nature of any particular crime would overpower mitigating arguments based on youth as a matter of course, even where the juvenile offender's objective immaturity, vulnerability, and lack of true depravity should require a sentence less severe than death. In some cases a defendant's youth may even be counted against him. ”

“ Hence it is constitutionally inadequate that a juvenile offender's level of responsibility be taken into account only along with a host of other factors that the court or jury may decide outweigh that want of responsibility. ”

“ It is well known that the majority of habitual criminals are persons who began to commit punishable offences in the earlier years of their life. It is only in the rarest instances that by legal punitive methods we prevent a juvenile offender from developing into a habitual criminal; the object of the punishment is seldom attained. The question therefore presses itself upon our attention, whether the prevention of crime cannot best be attained in another way than by the use of penal methods, namely, by the proper education of children. ”

“ Given Graham's reasoning, the kinds of homicide that can subject a juvenile offender to life without parole must exclude instances where the juvenile himself neither kills nor intends to kill the victim. ”

“ Even though the few juvenile criminal reformatories be full, the gaol doors are open, and the teachings of evil companionship are consummated by the prison brand. The individual war against society gains strength and purpose, for society itself has acknowledged and resented it. The child has entered on a career, and unless some extra legal interposition shall succeed in changing the course of the juvenile offender by assuming a better guardianship, the boy may become an habitual thief, a full-fledged London ruffian ”

“ In addition, apart from the equivalence for this purpose of exposure to commitment as a juvenile delinquent and exposure to imprisonment as an adult offender, the fact of the matter is that there is little or no assurance in Arizona, as in most if not all of the States, that a juvenile apprehended and interrogated by the police or even by the Juvenile Court itself will remain outside of the reach of adult courts as a consequence of the offense for which he has been taken into custody. ”

“ In the case of juvenile criminals, there has also been an increase in the number of habitual offenders, as well as in the gravity of the punishable offences. Perhaps the most important difference between the older criminality and the newer, is that to-day the juvenile criminal and the habitual offender are more in evidence. Unquestionably these two phenomena are closely associated, for the great majority of professional criminals are persons whose first criminal offence was committed during childhood or youth. At the present day, in all the civilised countries of Europe, about 25 per cent. ”

“ Our society tends to treat the average juvenile as less culpable than the average adult. But the question here does not involve the average juvenile. The question, instead, is whether the Constitution prohibits judges and juries from ever concluding that an offender under the age of 18 has demonstrated sufficient depravity and incorrigibility to warrant his permanent incarceration. ”

“ The tendency of modern legislation in regard to juvenile offenders is to recognize them more and more as a distinct class of unfortunate children and to give more and more freedom to the Judge in dealing with them. In most cases they are either orphans or castaways, or children of parents who have not made their homes sweet to their children. Some of them may be of a comparatively good sort: others may be of an absolutely bad sort. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All that is just as true here. Almost all jurisdictions allow some juveniles to be tried in adult court for some kinds of homicide. See Dept. of Justice, H. Snyder & M. Sickmund, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report 110–114 (hereinafter 2006 National Report) . But most States do not have separate penalty provisions for those juvenile offenders. Of the 29 jurisdictions mandating life without parole for children, more than half do so by virtue of generally applicable penalty provisions, imposing the sentence without regard to age. ”

“ Given the lesser culpability of the juvenile [p837] offender, the teenager's capacity for growth, and society's fiduciary obligations to its children, this conclusion is simply inapplicable to the execution of a 15-year-old offender.
For such a young offender, the deterrence rationale is equally unacceptable. [45] The Department of Justice statistics indicate that about 98% of the arrests for willful homicide involved persons who were over 16 at the time of the offense. ”

“ We must, therefore, add those children, along with the Reformatory population, to the number of juveniles in gaol if we wish to form a proper estimate of the extent of juvenile delinquency. If this is done we arrive at the conclusion that the criminal and semi-criminal juvenile population is at the present time more than 25,000 strong in England and Wales alone; if Scotland be included it is more than 30,000 strong. These figures are enough to show that it is only compulsory detention in State establishments which keeps down the numbers of juvenile offenders ”

“ Up to within recent times juvenile offenders have been subjected to the same laws and the same penalties as hardened criminals, and there is no doubt but that a great many boys and girls who had broken some law or local ordinance, often through carelessness or ignorance, were placed in detention houses with older criminals and in this way became accustomed to the criminal classes and frequently were induced to enter upon a life of crime. ”

“ As used in this section:"Convicted criminal" includes a youth offender in juvenile court delinquency proceedings."Criminal defendant" includes an alleged youth offender in juvenile court delinquency proceedings."Victim" means any person determined by the prosecuting attorney to have suffered direct financial, psychological or physical harm as a result of a crime and, in the case of a victim who is a minor, the legal guardian of the minor. ”

“ Secondly, it was suggested that juvenile whipping was a deterrent.
[62] ⁠ The purpose of section 294 of the Act is to provide a sentencing option for the punishment of juvenile offenders. What must be addressed is whether it is reasonable, justifiable and necessary to resort to juvenile whipping, notwithstanding the fact that it "constitutes a severe assault upon not only the person of the recipient, but upon his dignity as a human being." ”

“ Similarly, a state legislature might conclude that very dangerous individuals, whatever their age, should not be confined in the same facility with more vulnerable juvenile offenders. Such reasons would suggest nothing about the appropriateness of capital punishment for 15-year-olds. The absence of any such implication is illustrated by the very States that the dissent cites as evidence of a trend toward lowering the age at which juveniles may be punished as adults. ”

“ B The second line of precedent relevant to assessing Graham's sentence consists of our cases acknowledging that juvenile offenders are generally—though not necessarily in every case—less morally culpable than adults who commit the same crimes. ”

“ Juvenile offenders shall be segregated from adults and be accorded treatment appropriate to their age and legal status. Article 11 No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfil a contractual obligation. ”

“ Accordingly, "juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders." Id., at 569. A juvenile is not absolved of responsibility for his actions, but his transgression "is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult." Thompson, supra, at 835 (plurality opinion) .
No recent data provide reason to reconsider the Court's observations in Roper about the nature of juveniles. As petitioner's amici point out, developments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds. ”

“ The younger the children are, the better they suit the purposes of such miscreants; because, if children are detected in any dishonest act, they know well, that few persons will do more than give the child or children a tap on the head, and send them about their business. The tenth part of the crimes committed by these juvenile offenders never comes under public view, because should any person be robbed by a child, and detect him in the act, he is silenced by the by-standers with this remark,—Oh! ”

“ But sadly, crime among young people has been on the rise. According to a report by the Justice Department's juvenile division, unless we act now, the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes will more than double by the year 2010. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Article 25
⁠Where teachers, administrators or workers instigate or coerce juveniles to perpetrate or lure them into misbehavior, or where these people are ill-behaved, have a baneful influence on and are not suitable for school work, the administrative departments for education and the school authorities shall dismiss or discharge them; where a crime is constituted, criminal responsibility shall be investigated in accordance with law. ”

“ Furthermore, most juvenile crime apparently goes undetected or not formally punished. Wheeler & Cottrell, supra, observe that ' (A) lmost all youngsters have committed at least one of the petty forms of theft and vandalism in the course of their adolescence.' Id., at 28-29. See also Nat'l Crime Comm'n Report, p. 55, where it is stated that 'self-report studies reveal that perhaps 90 percent of all young people have committed at least one act for which they could have been brought to juvenile court.' It seems that the rate of juvenile delinquency is also steadily rising. ”

“ Supplemental to the juvenile law is the adult delinquency law, now on the statute books of certain states, which makes it a misdemeanor for any parent or other person to encourage, cause, or by any act contribute to the delinquency of a child, punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000 or by imprisonment not to exceed one year or by both such fine and imprisonment ”

“ Section 712 of the New York Family Court Act defines a juvenile delinquent as 'a person over seven and less than sixteen years of age who does any act which, if done by an adult, would constitute a crime.' During a 1967 adjudicatory hearing, conducted pursuant to § 742 of the Act, a judge in New York Family Court found that appellant, then a 12-year-old boy, had entered a locker and stolen $112 from a woman's pocketbook. ”

“ In 1816 another body of well-meaning people, moved by the “alarming increase of juvenile delinquency in the metropolis,” formed a society to investigate its causes, inquire into the individual cases of boys actually under sentence, and afford such relief upon release as might appear deserved or likely to prevent a relapse into crime. ”

“ Article 51 In handling criminal cases involving juveniles, the public security organs, people’s procuratorates, and people’s courts may conduct on their own or entrust relevant social organizations or institutions to conduct social investigations on the growth experience, causes of crime, guardianship, education, and other situation of juvenile suspects or defendants ”

“ Article 17
⁠When parents or other guardians of juveniles and schools find that juveniles organize or join gangs that perpetrate misbehavior, they shall stop the juveniles promptly. When they find that the gangs have violated laws or committed criminal offences, they shall report the matter to public security organs. ”