Juvenile Delinquency
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Juvenile delinquency is a major social problem in the United States today. It is defined as that behavior on the part of children which may, under the law, subject those children to the juvenile court laws. It is a legal invention of the nineteenth century that did not exist either under the English common law or under early Roman law. Both these legal systems regarded very young children as beyond the reach of the law, and for offenders between the ages of seven and fourteen years provision was made for the determination of the child's responsibility before the law. Once this determination was made, however, the child was either subject to the same criminal law as were adults or he was beyond its reach there were no special juvenile courts (Bliss, 1977, p. 1). Age was a factor in determining whether the child would be held responsible for his acts, with common law exempting children under age seven years from being found guilty of commission of a criminal act. Under age seven years, it was deemed that there was an absence of mens rea or criminal intent. Children aged seven to fourteen years might be tried and convicted if evidence contrary to the presumption that the children were incapable of formulating an intent to commission of a crime could be presented by the prosecution (Haskell & Yablonsky, 1978, p. 379-380). Separate correctional facilities for children date back to 1825 with the New York City House of Refuge for children that housed those children convic
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rt and affirmed that juveniles may not be stripped of their constitutional rights.
The Kent case was actually quite complex, and had wide reaching effects because many state laws provided for the transfer of a juvenile to adult criminal court when a felony was committed. The complexity of the Kent case comes from the fact that the high court was dealing with the rights of a youth in both the juvenile and adult court systems (Heaps, 1974, p. 52-55).
The 1966 Kent case marked a major change; as recently as 1955, in the Holmes case, the U.S. Supreme Court had actually affirmed that the constitutional rights are not granted to the accused in juvenile courts because the juvenile courts are not criminal courts. In Holmes, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the juvenile courts were trying to salvage the defendant and safeguard his adolescence rather than punish the 18 year old Holmes who had been arrested riding in a car stolen by another youth. The Philadelphia municipal court sent Holmes to a state training school. In the appeal, Holmes' lawyer contended that his client had not been represented by counsel, not been informed of charges against him, not advised of legal rights (including the right to refuse to testify), that the e
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 5713
Approximate Pages = 23 (250 words per page)
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