A History of the Juvenile Justice System in the U.S.

According to an essay written by the Honorable Luis Perez and published online on the U.S. Department of State website, America's juvenile justice system was created in the late 1800s to reform policies regarding youthful offenders. April 1899 that the state of Illinois established the first juvenile court in the United States. This system served as a nationwide model that ultimately came to be adopted, in varying degrees, by every state in the United States, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The juvenile justice system is responsible for keeping citizens safe from young offenders, and also for rehabilitating delinquent juveniles. Meeting both of these responsibilities has been the goal of the system since it was first implemented. The dilemma has been which of the two responsibilities should receive the most emphasis. For example, should the government build more juvenile jails, or should it invest in diversion programs.

Judge Perez notes that the U.S. juvenile court system has changed dramatically since its inception in 1899. In the 1950s and 1960s, experts observed a tendency toward more violent criminality among juvenile offenders. States responded by instituting prevention and rehabilitation programs as well as by imposing stricter punitive measures in order to curb the rise in juvenile violence. Some states changed their procedures to permit a juvenile to be transferred to an adult

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uth had higher rates of recidivism when housed with older inmates. Another reform involved the fact that youth were no longer tried as adult offenders. Their cases were heard in a somewhat informal court designed for juveniles, often without the assistance of attorneys. Extenuating evidence, outside of the legal facts surrounding the crime or delinquent behavior, was taken into consideration by the judge. By the 1960s, the juvenile courts had jurisdiction over nearly all cases involving persons under the age of 18, and transfers into the adult criminal system were made only through a waiver of the juvenile court's authority. Juvenile courts aimed to make their civil proceedings unlike adult criminal trials. The civil proceedings, however, did not afford youths who were indeed facing a potential loss of liberty the due process of law rights as described in the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. A decision in 1967 by the Supreme Court affirmed the necessity of requiring juvenile courts to respect the due process of law rights of juveniles during trials. As a result, despite the considerable discretion associated with juvenile court proceedings, juveniles are given the same due-process safeguards that are associate
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1221
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)