Sunday 18 March 2012

Juvenile Justice

The administration of modern juvenile justice is very different from the early common law as the state of the rights of children who committed crimes in early common law were not given any special treatment because they were considered as adults. At common law, for instance, the minimum age of criminal responsibility was set as young as
seven years, and children guilty of crimes were imprisoned. The principle of the best interests of the child or “the child’s welfare” was recognised by the common law courts in the early twentieth century.
The conception of the juvenile justice system in the late 1800s strived to reform US policies regarding youth offenders. Prior to this period, misbehaving juveniles in the US, like in other parts of Western Europe, often faced arrest by the police, initial placement in the local jail with adults, and eventual institutionalisation in a house of refuge or workhouse. In the US, juvenile justice in its earliest form was conceived and developed out of the need for a separate court for child offenders as a result of which the first Juvenile Court was established in Cook County under the 1899 Illinois Juvenile Court Act; and by 1945 every State in the US had a Juvenile Court. From the early 20th century, the Juvenile Court was transplanted to Western Europe; and in England, it was given legal recognition through the enactment of legislation specific for juvenile justice. The three models of juvenile justice—the welfarism, back to justice and corporatism—have impacted on the development of modern day juvenile justice.

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