Introduction

Overview

Houses of Refuge

Training or Industrial Schools

Juvenile Court

Introduction
The Juvenile Court was created in the early 20th century on the philosophy that children are inherently different from adults and it is the state’s responsibility to protect and rehabilitate young offenders.

Over the past 20 years, despite actual declines in youth crime rates, the public’s perception of youth violence has contributed to widespread support for the dismantling of the juvenile court system and the implementation of tougher crime legislation.  Examples of such legislation include the allowance to try children as adults, and the increased dependence on incarceration as a false solution to juvenile delinquency.

Research shows that incarceration does not rehabilitate juvenile offenders.  In fact, more and more youth who end up in juvenile halls or state prisons are actually non-violent offenders.

California leads the nation in juvenile arrests and incarceration rates.  According to the OJJDP, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, California had 16,782 juveniles in custody in 2006.  Florida ranked second in the nation with 8,208 juveniles in custody.  California more than doubled the number of youth in custody when compared to Florida, the second highest-ranking state.  This includes a growing number of girls and a disproportionate number of minorities.

To access statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, view the Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report.

Overview
Until the 19th century, children were punished and confined in the same way as adults.  Early jails housed men, women, adults, juveniles, mentally healthy, and mentally unhealthy people all together in the same facility.

Houses of Refuge
In the early 1800’s reformers became concerned about the overcrowded conditions in the jails and the corruption youth experienced when confined with adult felons.  The first House of Refuge opened in New York in 1825, as a facility exclusively for children.  By the 1840’s, 53 more were built around the country.

Houses of Refuge were not limited to children who had committed crimes.  They were also homes for poor children, orphans, or any child thought to be incorrigible or wayward.  The average number of children in any given House was 200, but some, like the New York House of Refuge, housed over 1,000 youth at any one given time.

Training or Industrial Schools
In response to overcrowding, deplorable conditions, and reports of brutality in the Houses of Refuge, training schools were developed in the mid-nineteenth century.  Massachusetts opened the first state-operated training school for boys in 1847 and for girls in 1856.  Training Schools placed a larger emphasis on schooling and vocational training.

Many of the new facilities were built outside cities.  According to contemporary thinking, the city was the source of temptation and a rural setting would offer a more virtuous and simpler way of life.

Training schools are still the models of juvenile incarceration today.  While the 20th century brought some changes, like the evolution of individualized diagnosis and treatment, new kinds of rehabilitative therapy, and improved educational programming, the congregate model of concentrating large number of juvenile offenders in one institution has remained.

Juvenile Court
Until the late 19th century, children and adults alike, were tried in criminal courts.  The 16th century educational reform movement in England that perceived children to be different than miniature adults, with less than fully developed moral and cognitive capacities, fueled the movement for juvenile justice reform.  The Society for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency along with other reform organizations were advocating for a separate court system for youth as early as 1825.

In 1899, the first juvenile court was finally established in Cook County, Illinois, and by 1925, all but two states had followed.  Borrowing from the British thinking, the doctrine parens patriae (the State as Parent) served as the foundation for the newly established right for the state to intervene and to provide protection for children whose parents did not provide adequate care or supervision, such as in the case of juvenile delinquency.  The primary motive of the juvenile court was to provide rehabilitation and kindhearted supervision for children.

There were now significant differences in the juvenile and criminal court systems.  The focus of the juvenile court was on the offender, not on the offense.  Additionally, the focus was on rehabilitation rather than punishment.  All crimes by individuals under the age of eighteen were adjudicated in a juvenile court, with rare exceptions (decided upon a case by case basis) when a waiver could transfer a youth to adult court.

The juvenile court, with its rehabilitative mission, could be much more flexible and informal than the criminal court.  A range of dispositional options related to the child’s situation, and not only to the crime, was now available to a judge.

In the 1950’s and 60’s public concern grew about the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system, not because of the rehabilitative philosophy, but because of its perceived lack of effectiveness and the number of juveniles who were detained indefinitely.  In the 1960’s, the Supreme Court made a series of decisions that formalized the juvenile courts and made them more like criminal courts.  Formal hearings were required in situations where juveniles were waived to adult courts, juveniles facing confinement were required to be given the right to receive notice of charges held against them, and the right to have an attorney represent them.  “Proof beyond a reasonable doubt” had to be established, instead of just “a preponderance of evidence” for an adjudication.  In the 1980’s the public perceived that juvenile crime was on the rise and that the system was too lenient.  Many states passed punitive laws, including mandatory sentences and automatic waivers to adult court for certain crimes.

In the 1990’s this tough on crime trend accelerated.  Transfer provisions made it easier to transfer juvenile offenders to the criminal justice system.  In the court process and in detention, a greater emphasis moved from rehabilitation to punishment.