A History of the Juvenile Justice System in the United States
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 penal institution after an adjudication of delinquency in the juvenile court. In some other states, the juvenile could be transferred to the adult court at an earlier stage in the proceedings for trial as an adult (Perez).
According to an essay published online at the Einstein Law Inc. website, preventative programs and programs intended to rehabilitate juveniles convicted of crimes have been proven to significantly lower the likelihood of a youth re-offend...