Delinquency

Juvenile justice began in the United States on the last day of the 1899 session of the Illinois legislature, when that body passed the Juvenile Court Act. This comprehensive law created a juvenile court in Illinois and gave it jurisdiction over delinquent, dependent, and neglected children. Although other states had adopted various procedures and regulations to deal with socially deviant and troubled youth, the Illinois Juvenile Statute of 1899 represented the first attempt at establishing a separate system of juvenile justice. Other states quickly followed the Illinois lead, and by 1925 all but two states (Maine and Wyoming) had established juvenile courts. Juvenile courts were officially established in Canada in 1909, the first in Winnipeg, in accordance with the National Juvenile Delinquent Law.

The philosophy underlying the Illinois Juvenile Court Act was that juvenile offenders should not be given the same punitive treatment as adults, but rather be given individual attention for their own protection, as well as that of society. The Illinois juvenile statute had four essential features: It refined the definition of delinquency; removed juveniles from the jurisdiction of the adult criminal courts; authorized the placement of juveniles in separate facilities from adult offenders, for limited periods of time; and provided for a system of probation, allowing the state to supervise the child outside the confinement of an institution.

Since the Juvenile Court Act, the U.S. Supreme Court has further defined the procedural requirements that the judiciary must follow in adjudicating juvenile offenses. Kent v. U.S. (1966) was the first case in which the Supreme Court extended limited due process guarantees to juveniles. Perhaps more important, in Kent the Court signaled its disenchantment with the operation of juvenile courts as they then existed:

The second landmark decision was In re Gault, in which the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles appearing before a juvenile court have four constitutional rights: to adequate written notice of the charges against them, in order to afford them a reasonable opportunity to prepare a defense; to the assistance of counsel and, if indigent, to the appointment of counsel; to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination; and to confront and cross-examine witnesses. In 1970, the Court in In re Winship held that before a juvenile may be adjudicated delinquent there must be proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the offense with which he or she is charged. Until Winship, juvenile courts routinely found delinquency on the basis of less stringent standards. Several other Supreme Court decisions further defined the constitutional rights of juveniles and the inadequacies of juvenile courts.

Juveniles have also been the focus of congressional initiatives. In 1974, following more than a decade of hearings on juvenile crime, courts, and institutions, Congress passed the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). As the name suggests, its basic philosophy was preventive and it contained a broad mandate for reform. The intent was to deinstitutionalize status offenders (i.e., incorrigibles, truants, runaways), provide alternatives to incarceration for less serious youthful offenders, provide additional funds to localities to improve delinquency prevention programs, establish a federal assistance program to deal with the problems of runaway youth, and ensure that juveniles would not be detained in the same facilities as adults. The JJDPA altered the course of juvenile justice more than any other legislation since the Illinois Juvenile Court Act.

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