The Juvenile court system of the United States is a court system which addresses cases that involve persons under the age of 18 years. The said court system has exercised its mandate for over 100 years with its existence projecting from the onset of the 19 th century. The court's system categorizes the juvenile system in accordance to the conceptualization and understanding of wrongdoing; specifically, children below the age of 7 years were regarded as infants as they could not decipher the wrongness of an act. Therefore, such children would not be given a guilty verdict on committing a felony. Children above 14 years were classified as persons with an understanding level that is close to the adult range. Hence, felonies committed would lead to a guilty verdict prosecution ( Guarino-Ghezzi, 2017 ). That said, it was not easy to determine the verdict to accord children between the age of 7 and 14 due to the variability of cognition among children aged in between this age range. However, the determination of a felony verdict in such instances was dependent on how the prosecutors determine the understanding of the children. This is to mean that those who understood wrongdoing would attract a guilty verdict as the system categorized them as adults. This study establishes an argument of splitting the juvenile system into two systems that would handle the status offenders and the juvenile delinquents.
It is important to note that the juvenile court system has remained with a similar structure to the present day, but numerous changes are noticeable on the interpretation of the juvenile cases. Notably, in the 19 th century, Chicago and the New York cities became the first to separate the juvenile offenders from the adult offenders. Also, Cook County introduced the first juvenile court in 1899 which indicates the separation of the logic used when deliberating on the intensity and magnitude of the juvenile wrongdoing. In this sequence, there is a great consideration to effect a split on the juvenile courts to status offenders and the juvenile delinquents for an efficient incriminating system. First, a status offense indicates a position where the law prohibits certain actions only to a specific class of people ( Ryan, Williams & Courtney, 2013) . Usually, the targeted cohort in these contemplations are the minors where the motive of the offense is not the determinant of guilt. For instance, status offenses include truancy, curfew violations, underage usage of alcohol, and the general ungovernability. On the other hand, juvenile delinquents typically refer to the young wrongdoers whose determinant of guilt is the motive of the violations and is subject to the interpretation imposed by the incriminating system.
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A state can consider who goes to a status offenses court or a juvenile delinquent one based on the jurisdictional doctrines of parens patriae, which means that a court system resembles a parent of the country. Therefore, the juvenile courts should consider the best interest of the child when deciding when to go to a status offense or a juvenile delinquent court. This is in respect to the mandate of the correctional systems to determine the best course of action to help the offenders in becoming productive members of the community. In status offense, for example, running away is a crime punishable with probation by some jurisdictions, but a more dreadful violation is at harboring a runaway, which is consequentially a misdemeanor to the victims. Also, both court systems vary in the descriptions accustomed to both offenses in that, a status offense is a precise predetermined prohibition against doing what is regarded as a felony while the juvenile delinquency courts determine the verdict of the case depending on the interpretations made for the cases with a close reference on the cognition of the juveniles on their defilements. This implies that the nature of the two offenses is completely different in that for the status offense, there is a predetermined provision of a crime, but for the delinquencies, the interpretation of a verdict would depend on the age of the juveniles and their ability to determine wrong from the right.
Advantages foreseeable on splitting the juvenile court systems into the status offense and juvenile delinquency systems are that young ones are bestowed the intellect relative to the magnitude of their violations. This is in regard to the waivers adopted by various states on whether to prosecute a person below 18 years in the adult courts. Specifically, the statutes passed by various states indicate the rigidness and toughness of the law in the expense of nurturing a citizen’s productivity. Also, this differentiation will enable prosecutors to determine finer ways of determining the reasons of violating status offenses which is a variant with the cognition and the resonance projected by the juvenile offenders ( Sprott, 2012). Conversely, the above notion could mean that the ability of the children to decipher a law could vary with their age regardless of whether the offense is considered as a status offense or delinquency. This determination could turn out as a disadvantage of splitting the courts because whether the offense committed by a young one is categorized for the status offense or the juvenile delinquency courts, there is a constant understanding that the age of the offender is a factor in determining if their interpretation of a wrongdoing from the right is evident. For example, if an eight-year-old-child violates an offense either regarded as a status offense or juvenile delinquency, prosecutors for both institutions cannot make any considerable difference in judging the verdict by virtue of the offender’s age, which is an integral constant for growth and development.
Conclusively, there are considerable reasons why the juvenile court system should split into status offense and juvenile delinquency courts. First, the nature of the laws laid under the two jurisdictions indicates that one is a prohibition predetermined and prosecution is not founded on the grounds of the motive of the offense. Second is to preserve the jurisdictional goodwill of rectifying youthful minds and nurturing their productivity. Nonetheless, in implementing both prosecutorial systems, determining the differences of the offender’s intention will not vary much for the age incapacitated children, which would not mean much whether the offense falls in the category of a status offense or a juvenile delinquent court system.
References
Guarino-Ghezzi, S. (2017). Balancing juvenile justice . Routledge.
Ryan, J. P., Williams, A. B., & Courtney, M. E. (2013). Adolescent neglect, juvenile delinquency and the risk of recidivism. Journal of youth and adolescence , 42 (3), 454-465.
Sprott, J. B. (2012). The persistence of status offenses in the youth justice system. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice , 54 (3), 309-332.
