Juvenile court proceedings were originally conceptualized as civil proceedings

6 Purpose and Scope of Juvenile Court Acts

Chapter Learning Objectives

On completion of this chapter, students should be able to do the following:

· Discuss the purpose and scope of juvenile court acts

· Compare and contrast adult and juvenile justice systems

· Understand the concepts of stigmatization, jurisdiction, waiver, and double jeopardy

· Discuss the constitutional rights of juveniles in court proceedings

· List and discuss the various categories of juveniles covered by juvenile court acts

What Would You Do?

You have a 16-year-old son attending the 10th grade. He is enrolled in a charter school that has rules on behavior as well as academic progress. He has never been a dedicated student, having failed the 2nd grade, but he has maintained a low C average most semesters. His grades this year have been in the D and F range. He isn’t willing to repeat work to bring up the scores and has been purposefully violating the rules of the school. For instance, he wears boots when he’s not supposed to, wears unauthorized uniform pants, hugs people longer than he should in the hallway, and refuses to sit down in the lunchroom on some occasions. These violations have resulted in numerous in-school suspensions and expulsions and a general dislike of him by teachers and school administrators. For the most part, your son is a loving child. He hasn’t broken any laws to your knowledge or skipped school. He is, however, a typical teenager who challenges your authority and has a bad attitude about most things you ask him to do. You’ve caught him smoking vapor cigarettes, and another mother reported to you that he and her son had tried to buy marijuana. Lately, he has been expelled from school more than he’s been present. He’s told you that he wants to get his GED so that he can stop going to school and move out of your house. He has also said he will run away if you don’t allow him to take the exam for the GRE. He hasn’t challenged you in a physical manner yet, but there have been two recent occasions where he refused to back down and approached you in an aggressive way while you were correcting his behavior. When you didn’t flinch or back down, he finally moved away and sulked to his room.

What Would You Do?

1. What do you think is causing the behavior you are seeing in your son? Is the school partly responsible for his behavior? Why or why not?

2. Would you allow him to quit school and get a GED? What long-term implications would this have on his professional and social future?

3. Would you seek counseling or some other service for your son? If so, what types of services would you recommend? Can the juvenile court system help you? If so, how?

Since the inception of the juvenile court in 1899, some critics have argued that the court ought to be abandoned. Some believe that the court is now far removed from the original concepts on which it was based or too limited in scope to be viable today. Others believe that it is currently incapable of meeting the purposes for which it was created. In this chapter, we review the purpose and scope of a variety of juvenile court acts in terms of both constitutional requirements and legislative differences among several states.

Every juvenile court act contains sections that discuss purpose and scope. The purpose statement of a juvenile court act spells out the intent or basic philosophy of the act. The scope of a juvenile court act is indicated by sections dealing with definitions, age, jurisdiction, and waiver. In this chapter, we discuss and refer to the Uniform Juvenile Court Act (National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1968), which was developed in an attempt to encourage uniformity of purpose, scope, and procedures in the juvenile justice network. (A copy of the act is included in the appendix.) For purposes of comparison, sections of various state juvenile codes are presented and analyzed. Revisions of most states’ juvenile court acts are now in accord with the recommendations of the Uniform Juvenile Court Act.

States customize their juvenile court acts to meet their own needs, and revisions occur on a continuous basis. With this in mind, we have used recent statutes from a variety of states to illustrate different points throughout the text, and we encourage those using the text to seek out statutes relating to juvenile justice from states in which they reside or have a special interest. You can use the Internet to find state-specific juvenile court acts.

Purpose

As indicated previously, the first juvenile court act in the United States was passed in Illinois in 1899. By 1945, all U.S. states had juvenile court acts within their statutory enactments or constitutions (Tappan, 1949). Juvenile court acts typically authorize the creation of a juvenile court with the legal power to hear designated kinds of cases such as delinquency, neglect, abuse, and dependency cases as well as other special cases numerated in the acts.

Typically, a juvenile court act establishes both procedural and substantive law relative to juveniles within the court’s jurisdiction. Historically, the law was administered in a general atmosphere of rehabilitation and parental concern rather than with punitive overtones. Table 6.1 provides information on purpose clauses found in states’ juvenile court acts. Some declare their goals and objectives in exhaustive detail; others mention only the broadest of aims. More than one philosophy can guide a state juvenile court act. Juvenile court proceedings were originally conceptualized as civil, not criminal, proceedings (Davis, 2001, sec. 1.3). As a result of reformers’ interests in divorcing the juvenile court from the criminal court in 1899, a separate nomenclature was developed based on the philosophy underlying juvenile courts as opposed to criminal courts. This nomenclature is still followed today in spite of the get-tough approach that has been suggested for serious delinquents.