Essay One
In the juvenile criminal justice system, a lot of room is allowed for the discretion of the officials involved, hence extralegal factors come into play. The primary extralegal factor in children’s cases is mercy and, to some extent, the benefit of the doubt (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). It is important to clarify that being an extralegal factor, mercy and the benefit of the doubt will vary exponentially from juvenile to juvenile, unlike legal factors that are uniform. Secondary considerations include the kind of parental support a child is having, how a child performs in school, the social status of the child, and even appearances. The police officer handling a children’s case has the choice to warn the child or issue a ticket. Similarly, the prosecutor has a choice to either charge the juvenile or provide some form of intervention for the child (Leiber & Peck, 2015). Conversely, if the child is charged, the prosecutors can also allow for plea bargaining where mercy and benefit of the doubt will still play a role. Finally, upon trial and conviction, the judge has wide discretions on the kind of punishment to be meted, and this also has mercy and benefit of the doubt playing a role. Two children can be convicted of the same crime with one being sentenced to juvenile detention while the other gets away with a warning or community service.
The best way to evaluate whether extralegal factors should be used in juvenile cases is to imagine the juvenile justice system without these factors. Under such a system, every child who commits an offense would be apprehended and forced to face the full might of the criminal justice system. Mistakes would become crimes then forever hover over the lives of the minors no matter how silly they are. It is on this basis that extralegal factors should be applied to all juvenile cases.
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Easy Two
Juvenile courts are becoming more adversarial since the consideration of extralegal factors is being abandoned through the adoption of more trials and more importantly, more plea bargains. Traditionally, the most important person in a juvenile delinquency case was the officer from the children’s services. The officer would review the case, talk with the child then advice the police, prosecutor, or judge on the way forward. However, in a bid to streamline criminal justice systems, a preference for following the rule of law has gradually developed and to the detriment of the juveniles themselves (Leiber & Peck, 2015). To speed up juvenile cases, more prosecutors, magistrates, and judges have been hired hence creating an ability to take more cases to trial. Similarly, more public defenders were hired to provide counsel for the juveniles. The moment two opposing counsel and a judge get involved in a case, it is almost impossible to prevent it from taking an adversarial perspective. Juvenile cases have not become increasingly adversarial by design but rather inadvertently.
As the system became increasingly adversarial, the role of the prosecutor increasingly and definitively changed for the worse. Instead of juvenile cases being about the best interest of the minor, they became about winning and losing with the prosecutor having an inordinate advantage, more so, against children represented by the public defender. Faced with the might of the prosecutorial apparatus, juveniles often opt for plea bargaining (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). As with all plea bargains, the most powerful person in the entire system becomes the prosecutor who can determine which child deserves what deal. The fact that extralegal factors play a role in the juvenile justice system more than the ordinary system adds more power and discretion to the prosecutor hence the future of the child will sometimes depend on the whims of the prosecutor (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). The changes that have given so much power to the prosecutor are detrimental to the entire juvenile justice system as they allow for the oppression and discrimination of children. Determination of children’s cases in a non-adversarial manner will ensure that children are offered fair trials.
References
Leiber, M. J., & Peck, J. H. (2015). Race, gender, crime severity, and decision making in the juvenile justice system. Crime & Delinquency , 61 (6), 771-797
Neubauer, D. W., & Fradella, H. F. (2018). America's courts and the criminal justice system . Boston, Massachusetts: Cengage Learning
