Juvenile Justice System

The U.S. juvenile justice system is currently designed to address the special needs of minors who engage in criminal acts but might not yet be held fully responsible for their behavior, as they are not yet legal adults recognized by society. However, juvenile justice has not always been driven by this philosophy. Prior to the 19th century, the criminal justice system treated all individuals over age 5 equally. Around 1825, a reform group called the “child savers” began advocating for more appropriate treatment of children who commit crime, arguing that the justice system should protect and rehabilitate rather than punish juveniles. They claimed that society could control juvenile delinquency if it attacked its causes—namely, poor education, poor morals, and poor standards of behavior—thus alerting juveniles to their wrongdoings in society. The child savers, mostly women, were self-proclaimed altruists and humanitarians who focused on protecting the interests of all children in an increasingly industrialized society, particularly those in the lower class. Their mission was to rehabilitate deviant youth without the stigma of a lifetime criminal record. Although the child savers claimed to be a neutral group, critics contended that the movement was more an effort to control lower-class children than protect these juveniles from societal harm.

In 1899, the Illinois Juvenile Court Act established the nation's first juvenile court in Chicago. While the act did not create a new legal system for juveniles, its rules of procedure, outlining the best court practices when considering juvenile cases, were extensively copied. These procedures followed the British legal concept of parens patriae, a doctrine whereby the State acts in the best interests of the child through the protection, supervision, and upkeep of juveniles within its jurisdiction. This gives the court sentencing discretion, such as probation under guardianship, placement in a school of detention or reformatory, and protection from incarceration with adult offenders. One key distinction of the juvenile court is the privacy of a juvenile criminal record, thus preventing the stigma of a permanent adult record. The doctrine of parens patriae was so dominant in the early stages of the juvenile justice system that in Commonwealth v. Fisher in 1905, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that acting in the child's best interests outweighed the child's constitutional rights, namely, due process and a right to a trial by jury. Acting in the best interests of the child, in most situations, suggests that the goal of the courts is rehabilitation so that juveniles can become productive members of the community.