Return to Justice

Juveniles who commit crimes often find themselves facing charges in adult courts and being committed to adult institutions when convicted. But it wasn't always this way. Before the recent trend to move children into adult courtrooms, juvenile offenders were treated as the children they were and efforts to rehabilitate were more common. Now, after years punishing young offenders like adults, slowly the justice system is making changes that would return us to a time when children were treated as children. Despite this positive direction, the juvenile justice system is still far off course from its founding principles, which focused on treating youth offenders different from adults, as they don't always understand the consequences of their actions or their culpability in a given situation. Further, it was believed that contact with the juvenile justice system should be brief and confidential due to the stigma that would otherwise mar a youth's chances for success upon release. Rehabilitation was the priority, and efforts to redirect wayward youth were implemented when possible and appropriate. However, eventually, the original tenets of the juvenile justice system were slowly dismantled and replaced with a system more like the adult criminal justice system, one which takes no account of age. One in which 12 years olds can be charged and sentenced as adults for various crimes. One in which children have very few opportunities for rehabilitation or any hope for a normal life outside prison walls. But the tide has turned again. In recent years, the record number of incarcerated youth has declined by nearly a third nationally, though disparities based on race still exist. This book assesses the strategies and policies that have produced this shift in direction. These include the declining incidence of youth-committed crime, advances in adolescent brain science, nationwide budgetary concerns, focused advocacy with policymakers and practitioners, and successful public education campaigns that address extreme sanctions for youth such as solitary confinement and life sentences without the possibility of parole. Yet more needs to be done. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently voiced its unfaltering conclusion that children are different from adults in four landmark cases. The question now is how to take advantage of the opportunity for juvenile justice reform of the kind that would reorient the juvenile justice system to its original intent both in policy and practice, and would return to a system that treats children as children. Using case examples throughout, Nellis offers a compelling history and shows how we might continue on the road to reform.