CHAPTER ONE
CHILDHOOD AND DELINQUENCY
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO1.Be familiar with the risks faced by youth in American culture.
LO2.Develop an understanding of the history of childhood.
LO3.Be able to discuss development of the juvenile justice system.
LO4. Trace the history and purpose of the juvenile court
LO5. Be able to describe the differences between delinquency and status offending.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.Introduction
A. There are more than 75 million children under age 18 in the United States
1. Thirty-seven percent are between ages 5 and 17
2.The present generation of adolescents has been described as cynical, preoccupied with material acquisitions, and uninterested in creative expression
3. By age 18 they have spent more time in front of a TV set than in the classroom
B.In the 1950s, teenagers were reading comic books; today they watch TV shows and movies that rely on graphic scenes of violence as their main theme, and listen to music whose sexually explicit lyrics routinely describe substance abuse and promiscuity
II. The Risks and Rewards of Adolescence
A. Adolescence is a time of trial and uncertainty, a time when youths experience anxiety, humiliation, and mood swings
1. Juveniles are maturing sexually at an earlier age, though many remain emotionally immature longer after reaching biological maturity
2. In later adolescence, youths may experience a crisis that Erikson described as a struggle between ego identity and role diffusion
3.The teenage years are a time of conflict with authority at home, at school, and in the community
B. Youth at Risk
1. Youths considered at-risk are those who engage in dangerous conduct, including drug abuse, alcohol use, and precocious sexuality
2. It is estimated that 25 percent (or 18 million youths) of the population under age seventeen are at-risk
3. The most pressing problems facing American youth revolve around five
Issues:
- Poverty: The increases in poverty have been most severe among the nation’s youngest families (adults under 30). Since 2007, the poverty rate has risen by 8 percent among young families with one or more children in the home, reaching 37 percent in 2010.
i.Minority kids are much more likely than White, non-Hispanic children to experience poverty.
ii.Children who grow up in low-income homes are less likely to do well in school.
b.Health and Mortality Problems
i.Only about 18 percent of adolescents meet current physical activity recommendations of 1 hour of physical activity a day, and only about 22 percent eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
ii.About 10 percent (or 7.5 million) of youths do not have health insurance.
iii.The infant mortality rate rose for the first time in more than forty years.
iv.More than 3000 children and teens are killed by firearms each year
- Family Problems: Family dissolution and disruption also plague American youth.
i.As families undergo divorce, separation, and breakup, kids
are often placed in foster care.
ii.Each year, on their 18th birthday, more than 25,000 kids
leave foster care without family support.
d.Substandard Living Conditions: Many children live in
substandard housing – such as high-rise, multiple-family
dwellings – which can have a negative influence on their
long-term psychological health.
e.Inadequate Education: The U.S. educational system seems to be failing many young people.
i.About 70% of fourth graders in our public schools cannot
read at grade level.
ii.Minority children are the ones most seriously affected:
Poor minority-group children attend the most under funded schools,
receive inadequate educational opportunities, and have the fewest
opportunities to achieve conventional success.
iii.The problems faced by kids who drop out of school do not
end in adolescence.
C. Problems in Cyberspace – Teens are now being forced to deal with problems and issues that their parents could not even dream about.
i.Cyberbullying: thewillful and repeated harm inflicted
through the medium of electronic text.
ii.Cyberstalking: the use of the Internet, e-mail, or other electronic communications devices to stalk another person.
iii.Sexting: sexually explicit texting/photos
D.Is There Reason for Hope?
1.These conditions have a significant impact on kids. Children are being polarized into two distinct economic groups: those in affluent, two-earner, married-couple households, and those in poor, single-parent households.
a.Kids whose parents divorce may increase their involvement in
delinquency, especially if they have a close bond with the parent
who is forced to leave.
2.There are some bright spots on the horizon.
a.Teenage birthrates nationwide have declined substantially
during the past decade.
b.Fewer children with health problems are being born today than in
1990.
c.Education is still a problem area, but more parents are reading to
their children, and math achievement is rising in grades four through twelve.
- College enrollment is now about 18 million and is expected to continue setting new records for the next decade.
- There are indications that youngsters may be rejecting hard drugs
III. Focus on Delinquency
A. Teens are risk takers. According to the CDC’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS):
1. About 10% of students had rarely or never worn a seat belt when riding in a car driven by someone else
2.28% of students had ridden one or more times in a car or other vehicle driven by someone who had been drinking
3. 17% of students had carried a weapon
4.20% of students had been bullied on school property during the past 12 months
5.About 20% of students had smoked cigarettes at least once during the 30 days before the survey
6.72% of students had had at least one drink of alcohol at least once during their life
7.Almost half the students had sexual intercourse
B. Why do youths take such chances?
1.There is a potential for risky behavior among youth in all facets of American life.
2.The social, economic, and political circumstances that increase adolescent risk taking include:
a.The uncertainty of contemporary social life
b.Lack of legitimate opportunity
c.Emphasis on consumerism
d.Racial, class, age, and ethnicity inequalities
e.The “cult of individualism”
IV.Juvenile Delinquency
- The problems of youth in modern society have long been associated with juvenile delinquency, or criminal behavior engaged in by minors
- About 1.7 million youths under age eighteen are arrested each year for crimes ranging from loitering to murder
- Youths involved in multiple serious criminal acts, referred to as repeat, or chronic, juvenile offenders, are considered a serious social problem
- Study of delinquency involves the analysis of the juvenile justice system
- The juvenile justice system includes law enforcement, court, and correctional agencies
- Reaction to juvenile delinquency frequently divides the public; people want to insulate young people from a life of crime and drug abuse
- The scientific study of delinquency requires understanding the nature, extent, and cause of youthful law violations and the methods devised for their control
V. The Development of Childhood
A. Treating children as a distinct social group is a new concept
1.In the paternalistic family, the father exercised complete control over his wife and children
2. Children were subject to severe physical punishment, even death
B. Custom and Practice in the Middle Ages
1. Children of all classes were expected to take on adult roles
2. Boys born to landholding families were sent to a monastery or cathedral school and served as squires, or assistants, to experienced knights
3. Girls were educated at home and married in their early teens
4.Philippe Aries described the medieval child as a “miniature adult” who began to work, and accept adult roles at an early age, and was treated with great cruelty
5. In many families, especially the highborn, newborns were handed over to wet nurses who fed and cared from them during the first two years of life
V. The Development of Concern for Children
A. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a number of developments in England heralded the march toward the recognition of children’s rights.
B.Among them were changes in family style and childcare, the English Poor Laws, the apprenticeship movement, and the role of the chancery court.
C. Changes in Family Structure
1. Extended families, which were created over centuries, gave way to the
nuclear family structure
2.Changing concept of marriage from an economic arrangement to an
emotional commitment also began to influence the way children were
treated
3.Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke launched a new age for childhood
4. Their vision produced a period known as the Enlightenment
5. Children began to emerge as a distinct group with independent needs and interests
D. Poor Laws
1. As early as 1535, the English passed statutes known as Poor Laws
2. The laws allowed for the appointment of overseers to place destitute or neglected children as servants for the affluent, where they were trained in agricultural, trade, or domestic services
3.The Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1601 created a system of church wardens and overseers who, with the consent of justices of the peace, identified vagrant, delinquent, and neglected children and put them to work
E. The Apprenticeship Movement
1. Existed throughout almost the entire history of Great Britain; children were placed in the care of adults who trained them in specific skills
2. Voluntary apprentices were bound out by parents or guardians in exchange for a fee
a. Legal authority over the child transferred to the apprentice's
master
4. Involuntary apprentices were abandoned for wayward youth
a. These youths were compelled, by the legal authorities, to serve a master until age 21
F. Chancery Court
1. Throughout Great Britain in the Middle Ages, chancery courts were established to protect property rights, and seek equitable solutions to disputes and conflicts
2. Eventually, its authority extended to the welfare of children in cases involving the guardianship of orphans; this included safeguarding their property and inheritance rights
3. The courts operated on the proposition that children were under the protective control of the king; thus, the Latin phrase parens patriae was used, which refers to the role of the king as the father of his country
G. Childhood in America
1. While England was using its chancery courts and Poor Laws to care for children in need, the American colonies were developing similar concepts
2. Colonists had illegitimate, neglected, and delinquent children
3. Legislation for apprenticeships passed in Virginia in 1646, and in
Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1673
4. Maryland and Virginia developed an orphans’ court that supervised the treatment of youths placed with guardians
H. Controlling Children
1. In the U.S., as in England, moral discipline was rigidly enforced
2. Stubborn child laws were passed, which required children to obey their parents
3. Child protection laws were passed as early as 1639, but few cases of child abuse were ever brought before the courts
VI. Developing Juvenile Justice
A. Until the twentieth century, little distinction was made between adult and
juvenile offenders; children were treated with extreme cruelty at home, at school, and by the law
1.In New York, Boston, and Chicago, groups known as child savers were formed to assist children; they created community programs for needy children, and lobbied for a separate legal status for children, which ultimately led to the development of a formal juvenile justice system
VII.Juvenile Justice in the Nineteenth Century
A.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, delinquent, neglected, and runaway
children in the United States were treated in the same way as adult criminal offenders. However, several events led to reforms and nourished the eventual development of the juvenile justice system.
B.Urbanization
1.During the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States experienced rapid population growth, in which the rural poor and immigrant groups were attracted to urban commercial centers that promised jobs in manufacturing
2.Urbanization gave rise to increased numbers of young people at risk, who overwhelmed the existing system of work and training.
3.Urbanization and industrialization also generated the belief that certain segments of the population (youths in urban areas, immigrants) were susceptible to the influences of their decaying environment
C.The Child-Saving Movement
1.The problems generated by urban growth sparked interest in the welfare of the “new” Americans
2.Child savers’ focus was on extending government control over youthful
activities (drinking, vagrancy, and delinquency) that had previously been left to private or family control.
3.Poor children could become a financial burden, and the child savers believed these children presented a threat to the moral fabric of society.
4.Child-saving organizations influenced state legislatures to enact laws giving courts the power to commit children, who were runaways or criminal offenders, to specialized institutions.
a.House of Refuge: A care facility developed by the child savers to protect potential criminal youths by taking them off the street and providing a family-like environment.
D.Were They Really Child Savers?
1.Debate continues over the true objectives of the early child savers: concerned citizens motivated by humanitarian ideals, or reformers, who applied the concept of parens patriae for their own purposes.
E.Development of Juvenile Institutions
1.Reform schools devoted to the care of vagrant and delinquent youths opened in 1848 in Massachusetts
2.Children’s Aid Society was a child-saving organization that took children from the streets of large cities and placed them with farm families on the prairie.
3.Orphan trains: A practice of the Children’s Aid Society, in which urban youths were sent west for adoption with local farm couples.
F.Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC)
1.Established in New York in 1874; by 1900 there were three hundred such societies in the United States to protect children subjected to cruelty and neglect at home or at school.
2.SPCC groups influenced state legislatures to pass statutes protecting children from parents who did not provide them with adequate food and clothing, or made them beg or work in places where liquor was sold.Criminal penalties were created for negligent parents, and provisions were established for removing children from the home.
VIII. A Century of Juvenile Justice
A.The Illinois Juvenile Court Act and Its Legacy
1.Although reform groups continued to lobby for government control over children, the committing of children under the doctrine of parens patriae without due process of law began to be questioned by members of the child-saving movement
2.The principles motivating the Illinois reformers were:
- Children should not be held as accountable as adult transgressors.
- The objective of the juvenile justice system is to treat and rehabilitate, rather than punish.
- Disposition should be predicated on analysis of the youth’s special circumstances and needs.
- The system should avoid the trappings of the adult criminal process with all its confusing rules and procedures.
3.The key provisions of the act were these:
- A separate court was established for delinquent and neglected children.
- Special procedures were developed to govern the adjudication of
juvenile matters.
- Children were to be separated from adults in courts and in institutional programs.
- Probation programs were to be developed to assist the court in making decisions in the best interests of the state and the child.
4.The parens patriae philosophy predominated, ushering in a form of
personalized justice that still did not provide juvenile offenders with the full array of constitutional protections available to adult criminal offenders.
5.The major functions of the juvenile justice system were to prevent juvenile
Crime, and to rehabilitate juvenile offenders.
- By 1925, juvenile courts existed in virtually every jurisdiction in every
state.
7.Great diversity also marked juvenile institutions. Some maintained a lenient orientation, but others relied on harsh punishments, which lead to a rapid growth in the juvenile institutional population.
B.Reforming the System
1.In 1912, the U.S. Children’s Bureau was formed as the first federal child welfare agency
2.From its origin, the juvenile court system denied children procedural rights, normally available to adult offenders, because the primary purpose was not punishment but rehabilitation.
3.Reform efforts, begun in earnest in the 1960s, changed the face of the juvenile justice system
a.New York created the family court system
b.Legislation established the PINS classification (person in need of supervision)
4.In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court radically altered the juvenile justice system when it issued a series of decisions that established the right of juveniles to receive due process of law.
5.Federal commissions helped change the shape of juvenile justice
a.In 1967, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice suggested that the juvenile justice system must provide underprivileged youths with opportunities for success, including jobs and education.
- Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control (JDP) Act of 1968
- In 1968, Congress also passed the Omnibus Safe Streets and Crime Control Act. Title I of this law established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA)
b.National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals was established in 1973 by the Nixon administration
- This commission’s recommendations formed the basis for
the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974
- Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP) within the LEAA
C. Delinquency and Parens Patriae
1. The current treatment is a by-product of this developing national consciousness of children’s needs