Introduction

The paradigm of juveniles receiving different treatment than adult criminals began in the 1800s.
there were facilities created to aid youth offenders such as, Society for the Prevention of Juvenile
Delinquency, and the Chicago Reform School. Facilities were built upon the foundation of rehabilitation.
The first official juvenile court was created in 1899 in Cook County, Illinois. Juvenile justice and its court
system were morphed into a rehabilitation mind set. The idea was children could be rehabilitated, and if
treated properly, would not become adult criminals (Troutman, 2018).
As this idea began to spread, almost every state in the country had created a Juvenile Justice court
by 1930. Since then, the Supreme Court has made decisions that positively impact juveniles. The
beginning of the Juvenile Justice System relied on its foundation of rehabilitation. This was different from
the criminal justice system that punished adult offenders. It appears the Juvenile Justice System paradigm
swings between punitive and rehabilitation just like the adult criminal justice system. Although the
foundation of juvenile justice is rehabilitation, scholars would argue punitive goals have made its way
into the juvenile justice system too (Troutman, 2018).

Cycles of Rehabilitation and Punishment

1750-1850: From almshouses to House of Refuge
From the late 17th century to the early 20th century, almshouses offered food, shelter, clothing, and
medical care to the poorest and most vulnerable, often in exchange for hard labor and forfeiture of
freedom. In addition to use of the almshouses – locked, one-room buildings that housed many types of
people with many different problems. It’s also existed in most colonial communities and were a place of
last resort for many troubled adults and orphaned children (philadelphiaencyclopedia.org). During the
later 1700s, the family was responsible for control of children, with the most common response by the
community being removed children and place them with other families (a philosophy and legal doctrine
that came known to be known in loco parentis - is a legal doctrine describing a relationship similar to
that of a parent to a child. It refers to an individual who assumes parental status and responsibilities for
another individual.
By the 1800s with the impact of increased poverty across many regions of the country, urban
growth particularly in the Northeast, economic downturns, and immigrant influxes (in particular, from
Ireland), new facilities were established in major cities to help control troubled, wayward, or orphaned
children the House of Refuge. House of refuge were the first institutions to provide separate facilities for
children, apart from adult criminals and workhouses, and incorporated education along with reform
efforts.
On the 1st of January, 1825, Mr. Joseph Curtis, is one of the comparator who had been chosen
Superintendent, opened the House of Refuge, with three boys and six girls
(http://edge.sagepub.com/mallett).

The Child-Saving Movement

 The child-saving movement was developed in the late 1800s by a group of upper middleclass
women who were concerned with children and their futures. Increasing immigrations and
industrialization, the rise of child laborers, and the stress of caring for children on overworked parents
became an issue. Parents were abandoning their children in times of desperation, and youth were left to
fend for themselves.
Child-savers believed that if they could protect children from problems such as poverty,
abandonment, child labor, and lack of education, then they would be securing a better future for the
country. Child-savers made great strides in free education, child labor laws, child abuse, and the
development of the juvenile justice system.
The focus of the original child-savers was to help children escape from poverty, abusive families,
and laborious jobs. They looked at these environment factors as the cause of developmental issues such
as delinquent behavior and intellectual problems.
Around 1890-1920, the child-saving movement was grounded and funded by private charitable
organizations, such as the New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS). CAS sought to save urban youth
from poverty and troubled homes.
The idea of the program was to remove the child from the troubled environment and place them into a
more wholesome environment where their behavior could be reformed (http://study.com>academy).

1899-1920: Establishment of the Juvenile Court

As the child-saving movement’s influence expanded, it included philanthropists (leaders included
Julia Lathrop, a social reformer for education and child welfare; Jane Addams, established the profession
of school work; and Lucy Flower, children’s advocate and major contributor to establishment of the
juvenile courts), middle-class citizens, and professionals focused on motivating state legislatures to
extend government interventions to save troubled children and adolescents.
In addition to the establishment of the juvenile courts, this era is represented other advancement
across social services, schools, and how children were viewed, including the recognition of adolescence
as s distinct life stage; establishment of child labor laws that limited work and promoted mandatory
school attendance; emergence of the social work and related professions; epidemiological tracking of
poverty and delinquency, allowing for the first time an ability to identify and track social problems; and
the legal recognition of delinquency that allowed the states to take a proactive and protective role in
children’s lives.
Over subsequent decades, however, the juvenile courts moved away from these initial reformative
and informal supervision plans. This happened because of the significantly large numbers of young
people who became involved with the juvenile courts requiring an expansion of rules and processes to
hear many types of child and adolescent cases. Many of these situations could have been handled without
state intervention or supervision, but nonetheless they came to the juvenile court’s jurisdiction.

1920-1960: Institutionalization of Youthful Offenders

The significant expansion and commitment of many youthful offenders to juvenile court
detention and incarceration facilities was far from the juvenile court’s original rehabilitative philosophy.
Like the houses of refuge and reform school eras, institutionalization became the primary determination
and outcome for those involved with the juvenile courts. Most young people who were brought before the
juvenile courts were adjudicated delinquent and placed within a locked facility. Correctional facility
placement of delinquent youthful offenders across the country expanded from 100,000 in the 1940s to
400,00 in the 1960s.
Most of these facilities were substandard and overcrowded, did not include rehabilitative services
or medical care, and employed a controlling and punitive environment. Although varying interventions
were tried within the institutions- therapy, group treatment, and environmental management techniques,
among other- outcomes remained poor, both inside the facilities and for those who left (Lerman,2002;
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice,1967; Roberts, 2004). The
juvenile courts continued to pre-dominantly involve low income and “other people’s children,” although
some alternatives to incarceration of youthful offenders were introduced as community-based corrections.
This included group homes, partial release supervision, and halfway houses, but these types of
programming were not widely implemented across the country. The next phase of the juvenile justice
system brought a short-lived shift away from institutionalized placement of youthful offenders towards
more community-based alternatives, as well as the expansion of due process rights for young people
formally involved with the juvenile courts.

1960-1980: Juvenile Justice and Individual Rights

First Juvenile Court Established
In Cook Country, 111., the first juvenile court in the united states is established. It is founded on
the idea that juvenile offenders need protection and treatment, not just punishment. The idea comes from
the British justice system’s principle of parens patriae (the state as Parent), meaning that the state has a
duty to protect children under its care. By 1925, all but two of the states have juvenile courts or probation
services. These institutions operate much less formally than their counterparts in the adult judicial system.
The U.S Supreme Court rules that juvenile offenders are entitled to a full hearing before their
criminal case can be transferred from the juvenile justice system to the adult justice system. In so doing,
the Court recognizes that juveniles accused of a crime need as many procedural protections in the justice
system as adults do. The Court reaffirms this idea two years later, in another case involving the due
process rights of a juvenile facing a sentence in a detention facility( https://www.annebergclassroom.org).

1990s to present day

In the 1990s, juvenile crime – especially violent crime – decreased, although policies remained
the same. Schools and politicians adopted zero tolerance policies with regard to crime, and argued that
rehabilitative approaches were less effective than strict punishment. The increased ease in trying juveniles
as adults became a defining feature of "tough-on-crime" policies in the 1990s. As Loyola law professor
Sacha Coupet argues, "[o]ne way in which "get tough" advocates have supported a merger between the
adult criminal and juvenile systems is by expanding the scope of transfer provisions or waivers that bring
children under the jurisdiction of the adult criminal system".
Some states moved specific classes of crimes from the juvenile court to adult criminal court while
others gave this power to judges or prosecutors on a case-by-case basis. Still others require the courts to
treat offending youth like adults, but within the juvenile system. In some states, adjudicated offenders
face mandatory sentences. By 1997, all but three states had passed a combination of laws that eased use
of transfer provisions, provided courts with expanded sentencing options and removed the confidentiality
tradition of the juvenile court.
Today’s juvenile justice system still maintains rehabilitation as its primary goal and
distinguishes itself from the criminal justice system in important ways. With few exceptions, in most state
delinquency is defined as the commission of a criminal act by a child who was under the age of 18 at the
time; most states also allow youth to remain under the supervision of the juvenile court until age 21. In
lieu of prison, juvenile court judges draw from a range of legal options to meet both the safety needs of
the youth, although youth may be confined in juvenile correctional facilities that too often resemble adult
prisons and jails, routinely imposing correctional practices such as solitary confinement, strip searches,
and the use of chemical or mechanical restraints (http://jlc.org>youth-justice-system).

Age of Responsibility
There is no uniform national age from which a child is accountable in the juvenile court system;
this varies between states.

 In 44 states, the maximum age for juvenile court jurisdiction is age 17.
 In five states (Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin) the maximum age for juvenile
court jurisdiction is age 16.
 One state, North Carolina, has a maximum age for juvenile court jurisdiction of age 15.
States vary in relation to the age at which a child may be subject to juvenile court proceedings for
delinquent behavior. Most states do not specify a minimum age as a matter of law. Of states that sets a
minimum age, for status offenses:

 Massachusetts and North Carolina set a minimum age of 6.

 Connecticut and Mississippi set a minimum age of 7.
 Arizona sets a minimum age of 8.
And for delinquency:

 North Carolina sets a minimum age of 6.

 Connecticut, New York, and Maryland set a minimum age of 7.
 Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and
Wisconsin set a minimum age of 10.
 California sets a minimum age of 12 except for murder or rape, which for there is no minimum
age.