The juvenile justice system began years ago from the strong basis of the adult criminal court mainly to try underage criminals. There are a few differences between the juvenile system and the adult the criminal system is that the juvenile court mainly jails the minors for the protection of the society and to train them but the adult court is mainly for punishment purposes. The adult court offers bail for their criminals but the juvenile court does not offer that. Below are a few holdings on some of the major shifts that have occurred in the court system. This paper seeks to discuss the reasons leading to the development of juvenile justice system and its significance.
In 1996, it was established that the Juvenile transfers to the adult court must consider due process and fair play; an attorney must represent the child. The attorney must have access to the juvenile records of the child. The types of juvenile transfer systems in the United States of America Court include the judicial waiver, statutory exclusion, and direct file. Judicial waiver is the most popular. An example of a case leading to this paradigm shift was the Kent V. case in 1996 where Morris Kent got into the juvenile case system where he had committed various crimes such as house breakings, purse snatching and rape. It was later determined that he had psychopathological problems, but was later on tried in an adult court and tried as an adult. His lawyer placed a motion on placing him under rehabilitation, but the juvenile court, without a hearing, took him to an adult court ( Rosenheim, 2010) .
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Many state policy makers have now come up with different ages designated at which individuals are no longer valid to stand trial at a juvenile court, since the holding. This makes it very fair for every of the offenders as now there is a rule that is observed for all of them. For example, there is an age limit of 17 years according to the original juvenile court jurisdiction in 37 states and the District of Columbia. There is a 16 years age limit in 10 states and age 15 in 3 states. Any offender beyond that age is now eligible for a hearing and trial at an adult criminal court ( Jensen, Jepsen, & Oñati, 2006) .
In 1975, it was determined that a juvenile can only undergo trial in a juvenile court, rather than both the underage and adult courts. This was an important holding claiming that a juvenile would undergo trial in one of the courts and not both of the courts, as this would violate the Fifth Amendment ( Feld & Bishop, 2012) . The court held that the construction went against the philosophy indicating the present juvenile court law. It was in turn violating both the spirit of the statute and the letter. This sought to bring about fairness by having two separate hearings for disposition and detention. The need to have separate hearings was to keep the court from being prejudiced by the minor’s character being brought out not very relevant to the determination of his guilt.
The importance of this ruling was that it ensured that the constitutional rights of the offender were upheld as by patens patriae. This is where the juvenile court now believes that it has the right to intervene if it believes that it is in the best interest of the child, which protected the children against too much mental torture.
To conclude, the justice system should take into consideration the effect of the identification of the participants. They might get manipulated into giving compromised information as witnesses or they might not cooperate as defendants. This would diminish the quality of the proceedings. However, the court may relax their law against the restriction of reporting if they realize that their sanctions are unreasonable.
References
Feld, B. C., & Bishop, D. M. (2012). The Oxford handbook of juvenile crime and juvenile justice . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jensen, E. L., Jepsen, J., & Oñati, International Institute for the Sociology of Law. (2006). Juvenile law violators, human rights, and the development of new juvenile justice systems . Oxford: Hart.
Rosenheim, M. K. (2010). A century of juvenile justice . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
