Juvenile Law Commons^™

Alone And Unrepresented: A Call To Congress To Provide Counsel For Unaccompanied Minors, Shani M. King

UF Law Faculty Publications

The legal rights of children who enter a country without their parents or other guardians, including the right to legal representation in immigration proceedings, differ vastly across the globe. This Article is the first to show that unaccompanied minors lie at the nexus of international and regional human rights standards governing the treatment of immigrants, children, and civil counsel and to show how the development of human rights standards in these three areas underscores the importance of and the need for counsel for unaccompanied minors. Part I illustrates why unaccompanied minors in the United States need legal representation by focusing …

Where The Judiciary Prosecutes In Front Of Itself: Missouri's Unconstitutional Juvenile Court Structure, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will address several issues raised by Missouri’s unusual juvenile court structure, arguing that the structure violates the Missouri Constitution’s separation of powers clauses by placing prosecutorial discretion with-in the judicial branch. By granting juvenile officers, who are subject to judges’ supervision, exclusive power to file child abuse and neglect and juvenile delinquency cases, Missouri law concentrates power into the hands of one branch of government. Missouri law thus empowers individual judges to set child welfare and juvenile justice policy by managerial decree. Subordinate judicial branch officials face pressure to file and litigate cases to please their boss, the …

Dean's Column: Unchain The Children, Mary Berkheiser

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Representing Children At The Intersection Of Domestic Violence And Child Protection, Annette Appell, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Reflecting evolving norms surrounding the legitimacy of intimate violence, the law has made steady progress toward acknowledging that domestic violence is not a private family matter, but instead demands public assistance to help survivors of that violence protect themselves and their children. Most recently, child advocates, juvenile court judges, and domestic violence advocates have joined in a concerted effort to address the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child abuse and neglect, coordinate responses and remedies among the various court systems, and develop methods to avoid re-victimizing mothers and children through legal process. This article traces civil remedies and barriers domestic …

The Contradictions Of Juvenile Crime & Punishment, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the contradictions and puzzles of modern juvenile justice, and illustrates the enduring power of the child-saving philosophy of the juvenile court in an era of punitiveness toward offenders both young and old. The exponential growth in incarceration in the U.S. since the 1970s has been more restrained for juveniles than adults, even in the face of a youth violence epidemic that lasted for nearly a decade. Rhetoric has grown harsher in the wake of moral panics about youth crime, juvenile codes now express the language of retribution and incapacitation, yet the growth in incarceration of juveniles was …

Decriminalizing Students With Disabilities, Dean Hill Rivkin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Contradictions Of Juvenile Crime & Punishment, Jeffery Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Juvenile incarceration in the United States is, at first glance, distinctly different from its adult counterpart. While some juvenile facilities retain the iconic aesthetic of adult incarceration – orange jumpsuits, large cellblocks, uniformed guards, barbed wire, and similar heavy security measures – others have trappings and atmospherics more reminiscent of boarding schools, therapeutic communities, or small college campuses. These compact, benign settings avoid the physical stigmata of institutional life and accord some autonomy of movement and intimacy in relations with staff. They also give primacy to developmentally appropriate and therapeutic interventions.

Intentional Wrongful Conviction Of Children, Victor Streib

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Intentional wrongful convictions in cases involving child offenders may occur when judges have insufficient evidence proving any crime by the child but feel a strong need for the courts to intervene in the child's life and behavior. They believe that the negative factors attached to such a status are worth suffering if the child gains entry into a desired state program. This is wrongfully convicting the child "for the child's own good." Juvenile court judges too often receive knowledge of the child's background and previous record prior to any trial or hearing in order to devise the best result for …

Family Group Conferencing And Child Protection Mediation: Essential Tools For Prioritizing Family Engagement In Child Welfare Cases, Kelly Browe Olson

Law Faculty Scholarship

Family group conferencing (FGC) and child protection mediation maximize family engagement in child welfare cases by prioritizing families' roles in discussions and decisions. This article examines how FGC helps professionals to focus on family and community strengths, encourages family engagement, and provides targeted case plans for families and timely, permanent placements for children. It explores how courts and agencies use these interventions to empower families to contribute to resolutions in ways that are not possible in traditional litigation processes. These complementary processes help children and families by providing forums where families are allowed to make informed choices and take an …

Juvenile Crime And Criminal Justice: Resolving Border Disputes, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court, essentially redrawing the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems. Jeffrey Fagan examines the legal architecture of the new boundary-drawing regime and how effective it has been in reducing crime.

The juvenile court, Fagan emphasizes, has always had the power to transfer juveniles to the criminal court. Transfer decisions were made individually by judges who weighed the compet­ing interests of public safety and …

Adolescent Development And The Regulation Of Youth Crime, Elizabeth S. Scott, Laurence Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

Elizabeth Scott and Laurence Steinberg explore the dramatic changes in the law’s conception of young offenders between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. At the dawn of the juvenile court era, they note, most youths were tried and punished as if they were adults. Early juvenile court reformers argued strongly against such a view, believing that the justice system should offer young offenders treatment that would cure them of their antisocial ways. That rehabilitative model of juvenile justice held sway until a sharp upswing in youth violence at the end of the twentieth century …

Reconceptualizing Due Process In Juvenile Justice: Contributions From Law And Social Science, Christopher Slobogin, Mark R. Fondacaro, Tricia Cross

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article challenges the accepted wisdom, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in Gault, that procedures in juvenile delinquency court should mimic the adult criminal process. The legal basis for this challenge is Gault itself, as well as the other Supreme Court cases that triggered the juvenile justice revolution of the past decades, for all of these cases relied on the due process clause, not the provisions of the Constitution that form the foundation for adult criminal procedure. That means that the central goal in juvenile justice is fundamental fairness, which does not have to be congruent with the …

Public Access To Juvenile Dependency Proceedings In Washington State: An Important Piece Of The Permanency Puzzle, Sara Vanmeter

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment argues that the Washington State legislature took an important step along the road to permanency for abused and neglected children in the state's care when it revised its Juvenile Court Act in 2003. This Act created the presumption that dependency proceedings are open to the public unless a judge determines that excluding the public is in the best interest of the child. This change in Washington state law represents one piece of the puzzle of reforms necessary to reach permanency goals for children in our child welfare system. Those states whose juvenile dependency hearings remainclosed should now consider …

The Ethical Perils Of Representing The Juvenile Defendant Who May Be Incompetent, Adrienne E. Volenik

Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines questions likely to arise with respect to these interests when an attorney suspects his or her juvenile client may be incompetent. Part I reviews the doctrine of adjudicative competence in the context of adult criminal proceedings. Part II summarizes the newly evolved application of the doctrine in juvenile court. Part III examines the ethical, legal, and practical considerations that arise when a lawyer has concerns about whether a juvenile client possesses the competence needed to participate appropriately in juvenile court proceedings.

Reappraising T.L.O.'S Special Needs Doctrine In An Era Of School-Law Enforcement Entanglement, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This essay presents one doctrinal method for lawyers to defend children accused of criminal charges in juvenile or adult court: attacking the applicability of the nearly twenty-year old case, New Jersey v. T.L.O. to most school searches. T.L.O. established a lower standard for searches of students by school officials, but it explicitly did not decide what standard the government must meet to justify school searches performed by police officers, creating a doctrinal starting point for advocates to raise challenges to searches involving police. More fundamentally, the T.L.O. Court based its decision on the presumption that firm gates separate public school …

The Fiction Of Juvenile Right To Counsel: Waiver In Juvenile Courts, Mary E. Berkheiser

Scholarly Works

Although a number of juvenile justice advocates and scholars have decried the prevalence of juvenile waiver of right to counsel, no one has undertaken a comprehensive study of the problem. This Article attempts to fill that gap. The Article begins with a review of the historical context in which juvenile right to counsel arose and proceeds to a discussion of the landmark In re Gault decision and the due process underpinnings of juvenile right to counsel. The Article then chronicles the long-standing practice of permitting juveniles to waive their right to counsel and shows that the vast majority of nearly …

“Owing To The Extreme Youth Of The Accused”: The Changing Legal Response To Juvenile Homicide, David S. Tanenhaus, Steven A. Drizin

Scholarly Works

In this essay, the authors seek to dispel the myth that the juvenile court was never intended to deal with serious and violent offenders; a myth that has largely been unchallenged, especially in the mainstream media, and one that critics of the juvenile court have used to undermine its legitimacy. The discovery of homicide data from the Chicago police department from the early twentieth century, the era in which modern juvenile justice came of age, provides us with new historical date with which to put this dangerous myth to rest, by showing that the nation’s model juvenile court—the Cook County …

Adding Value To Families: The Potential Of Model Family Courts, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

The Harlem Community Justice Center (Justice Center) officially opened in July 2000 with all the fanfare of a major civic event. The Chief Judge of the State of New York, Judith Kaye, and the Mayor of the City of New York, Rudolph Guiliani, were keynote speakers, lauding the combined efforts of private administrators and public officials in reopening a deteriorating but magnificent 1892 court building in the center of Harlem. The ceremony began and ended with gospel sung by the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Choir, a musical reflection of one component of the Justice Center's jurisdiction. The new Juvenile Intervention Court …

A Current Look At Ohio's Juvenile Justice System On The 100th Anniversary Of The Juvenile Court, Scott C. Zarzycki

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note takes a closer look at the problems associated with transferring juveniles to adult court by focusing on Ohio's juvenile transfer statute. Part II begins with an analysis of the history of the juvenile court, including its establishment and evolution throughout time. It also includes an analysis of how the common interpretation of the original approach to juvenile crime has created an overly narrow view of how to deal with the problem today. Part III examines the latest crime statistics that reveal a significant drop in juvenile crime. This section also explores various alternative explanations for the apparent rise …

Foreword, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In November 1998, the interdisciplinary Center for Children, families and the Law at the University of Virginia sponsored a conference on Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice Reform. The conference brought together an extraordinary group of experts from the academic disciplines of law, criminology and psychology. Before an audience made up of researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners in the field of juvenile justice, these experts analyzed legal policy toward juvenile crime from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. The articles in this important symposium issue of the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law are based on the papers …

The Evolution Of Adolescence: A Developmental Perspective On Juvenile Justice Reform, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso

Faculty Scholarship

The legal response to juvenile crime is undergoing revolutionary change, and its ultimate shape is uncertain. The traditional juvenile court, grounded in optimism about the potential for rehabilitation of young offenders, has long been the target of criticism, and even its defenders have been forced to acknowledge that it has failed to meet its objectives. Beginning in the late 1960s, when the Supreme Court introduced procedural regularity to delinquency proceedings in In re Gault, courts and legislatures began to slowly chip away at the foundations of the juvenile justice system. Recent developments have accelerated and intensified that process, as …

Juvenile Justice In Washington: A Punitive System In Need Of Rehabilitation, Jeffrey K. Day

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment argues that the juvenile justice system should be retained in theory, but that Washington’s punitive approach has failed and should be restructured to embrace a system that focuses more on the needs of the offender than on the results of the offense. This Comment advocates for the punitive system to be replaced by laws that once again make rehabilitation a primary goal, but that also provide juveniles with the procedural safeguards necessary to ensure survival in the system. This Comment proposes a significant restructuring of the current system as a means of achieving that goal.

Determinants Of Judicial Waiver Decisions For Violent Juvenile Offenders, Jeffrey Fagan, Elizabeth Piper Deschens

Faculty Scholarship

The selection of jurisdiction for adjudicating juvenile crime today is one of the most controversial debates in crime control policy, reflecting differences in assumptions about the causes of crime and philosophies of jurisprudence and punishment. For adolescent offenders, especially violent youth whose behaviors may pose particular social danger, critics view the traditional goals of the juvenile court and the "best interests of the child" standard as being at odds with public concerns for retribution and incapacitation of criminals. The choice between jurisdictions is a choice between the nominally rehabilitative dispositions of the juvenile court and the explicitly punitive dispositions of …

The Runaways, Richard David Young

IUSTITIA

At the present stage of development, the varied literature on runaway children and adolescents provides little basis for firm conclusions. The apparent heterogeneity of runaways has yet to be fully realized in conceptual or research attempts, although efforts in that direction are beginning. There appears to be little utility or meaning in assigning runaway behavior solely to categories of delinquency or psychopathology. Such efforts have done little to clarify the meaning of running away or to define the important environmental factors and personality features involved in running away. To some extent their greatest impact has been on the restriction of …

Expungement Of Arrest Records, Adrienne Volenik

Law Faculty Publications

Contrary to the philosophy of the juvenile court, it is undoubtedly a rare occasion when a child benefits from his exposure to the juvenile court system. Even when a child is actually rehabilitated by the process, the invidious effects that flow from being labeled a "juvenile delinquent" may serve to negate any benefit that he may have received. Perhaps the most unjustifiable of all side effects is the stigma that attaches to a child who has been arrested and subsequently either released without prosecution or acquitted. In a society that espouses the idea that an individual is innocent until proven …

Juvenile Delinquency Proceedings In Ohio: Due Process And The Hearsay Dilemma, Sara E. Strattan

Cleveland State Law Review

This comment will explore the extent to which the exclusion of hearsay evidence in a delinquency proceeding is a practical reality in the Ohio system. In so doing, the possibilities for abuse will be highlighted and suggestions for their elimination will be made, all in the spirit of the Supreme Court's mandate to provide fundamental due process safeguards to this procedure.

Parens Patriae: From Chancery To The Juvenile Court, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Privacy Versus Parens Patriae The Role Of Police Records In The Sentencing And Surveillance Of Juveniles, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to examine juvenile record systems maintained by police authorities. A primary thesis is that current procedures governing the creation and dissemination of such records are so severely misguided by underlying parens patriae concepts that they often result in the purposeless stigmatization of a far greater range of youths than the juvenile justice system has any justification in attempting to deal with. Indeed, increasing evidence suggests that the net effect of such record keeping is to ensure that many of the subject juveniles will mature into confirmed delinquents.

Criminal Procedure For Juvenile Offenders In Ethiopia, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to set out, in summary fashion, the law concerning juvenile offenders in Ethiopia. Our focus will be on procedural rather than substantive aspects-insofar as it is possible to separate the two-and particularly upon the enforcement of constitutional guarantees in the process.

Due Process And The Juvenile Offender., Carlos Cadena

St. Mary's Law Journal

For over sixty years, courts consistently found notions of due process inapplicable in juvenile proceedings. The goal of the juvenile court movement was to establish systems of education and protection of errant children, rather than deterrence and retribution. To accomplish these results, the juvenile court was shorn of all resemblance to criminal courts. Public hearings were to be avoided and the intervention of counsel was not required, since the juvenile judge represented both the child and the state. However, it became clear that children were receiving the protection of the state because they engaged in criminal conduct and with little …