Juvenile Criminal Justice System

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how more and more states and the federal government have been considering or passing legislation that diverts juvenile offenders from the juvenile justice system to the adult justice system because of an increase in violent crime committed by juveniles. It looks at how major news stories such as the shooting at Littleton, Colorado is one reason, but so is the increase in gang shootings and similar violence in urban regions. It discusses how the development of a more violent youth population involves many forces and pressures and cannot be answered simply by shifting young people to adult courts. It looks at how critics claim that this has been done because the juvenile justice system has failed, however, statistics show that shifting juveniles to adult court is also a policy that fails, so it is hardly a reasonable substitute.

From the Paper:

"Other statistics are even more frightening. Webber cites the Children's Defense Fund, which estimates that an American child is arrested for a violent crime every 5 minutes and is killed by guns every 2 hours. Nine in 10 young murder victims in the industrialized world are Americans. Between 1979 and 1991, nearly 50,000 American children were killed by guns, which is more than the number of Americans killed in Vietnam in 25 years. An American child is 15 times more likely to be killed by gunfire in the United States than is a child living in Northern Ireland. More than half the people arrested for murder in the United States in 1991 were under age 25, and juvenile arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter rose 93 percent between 1982 and 1991. It is more and more common for young people to kill each other, and 55 percent of juvenile homicides in 1995 involved friends and acquaintances (Webber)."

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• Analytical Essay # 27423 : "Youth Crimes and the Criminal Justice System"
• Comparison Essay # 30180 : "The Criminal Justice System"

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