nce than adults. In light of escalating crime committed by juveniles, this has changed. The juvenile justice system has responded to pressure from citizens and legislators with a series of changes with respect to the sentencing, confinement, rehabilitation, and treatment of juveniles. Harsher sentences, trying juveniles as adults (including the death penalty), and a focus on incarceration instead of and in place of rehabilitation actually increase the chances that a juvenile will re-offend. Many experts argue that by putting juveniles in jail or sentencing them in ways that disrupt their learning environment creates more social ills in the long run than adopting other measures of retribution. Professor of Psychology at Cornell University Laurence Steinberg argues, “A young person whose educational or occupational development is interrupted when it need not be—for instance, if a juvenile who is not actually dangerous is forced to spend time in a correctional institution—will end up at greater risk for later unemployment, mental health problems, and criminal activity” (Steinberg 2).
Disproportionate Minority Representation:
The juvenile justice system has been under fire for quite some time with respect to the minority disparity among the numbers of incarcerated juveniles. In 1988, Congress amended the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act (JJDP) to address the disproportionate incarceration of minorities but the situation has only worsened since that time. As Carl J. Lardiero writes, “Between 1985 and 1994, the number of delinquency cases handled by juvenile courts increased by 41 percent. Within the same time frame, delinquency cases involving black and other nonwhite youths rose 78 percent and 94 percent, respectively, while the number of delinquency cases involving white youths rose only 26 percent” (14).
Other examples of minority disparity abound in the literature. The Tennessee Commission on Childr...