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Current Events, Feb 5, 1996

BACKGROUND

While adult crime has dropped dramatically, teen crime has risen, leading to more calls for harsher penalties on juveniles. Many states and cities are now treating juveniles as adults if they commit serious crimes, ending a 97-year trend of treating juveniles more leniently.

In colonial times, children were treated as harshly as adults, and Americans continued to view children as little different than adults until the late 19th century. It was then that reformers promoted a new view of children and teens as malleable creatures who could be shaped into God-fearing adults. Reformers argued that imprisonment with adults only increased a child's chance of falling into a life of crime.

First Juvenile Court

In 1899, the nation's first juvenile court was established in Chicago for youths under age 16. Like today's juvenile courts, the Illinois court became a substitute parent, its goal not to punish youthful offenders so much as to rehabilitate them. By 1925, juvenile courts existed in all but two states.

Starting in the 1970s, two different philosophies battled for dominance in state and federal policies of how to treat juvenile offenders. One camp urged a de-emphasis on punishment and the use of High-security institutions only as a last resort for the most serious offenders. At the same time, however, a competing group of conservative thinkers began advancing a "just desserts" philosophy, saying the juvenile courts were two soft on crime.

In the late 1980s, violent juvenile crime began climbing dramatically, influenced, say experts, by the growing availability of guns and the spreading drug trade. Because of this, the public mood has become increasingly punitive, and the conservative just desserts' philosophy now dominates, leading many states to pass tougher laws aimed at juvenile crime.

DOING MORE

Ask students to research their local newspapers and listen to local radio and television news for reports about the crime rate in their city or state. Ask them to find out whether or not their local crime rate has decreased--and if so, to find out why.