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This op-ed ran in the Boston Globe
on Sunday, July 18, 1999.
JUVENILE SYSTEM - LIKE ITS CLIENTS - GET BAD RAP
BY RICHARD MORAN
One hundred years ago this month,
the first juvenile court opened in Chicago. Massachusetts and New
York had already separated juvenile from adult trials, but Chicago's
philosophy was the first to consciously stress the welfare of the
child. In twenty years, all but three states, seeing the wisdom
of the Illinois example, established juvenile courts of their own.
Today, the clock seems to have run out on the juvenile court. The
public—believing that juvenile crime and violence is on the
increase—has come to demand that juveniles be treated as adults.
"Adult punishment for an adult crime" is the all-too-popular refrain.
But in truth, violence by young people is declining sharply, despite
the flood of sensational media reports and political pronouncements
to the contrary.
On this the 100th anniversary of the juvenile court and perhaps
on the eve of its demise, a review of its history, and of current
misconceptions, is instructive.
The early juvenile courts made no legal distinction between a child
who was delinquent and one who was simply neglected. Under the English
Common Law doctrine of "parents patriae," or parental role, the
state was obligated to intervene on behalf of a child in need of
services, and provide the supervision that parents had not. Children
considered delinquent (except the few considered guilty of murder)
were not accused of a crime; instead, the idea was to set them on
the right path, and avert the stigma of a criminal record. Transfers
to the adult court were rare, and then only when it was seen as
in the child's best interest.
Because the courts' focus was on the welfare of the child, due-process
protections were deemed unnecessary; there was no right to counsel,
no jury trial, no protection against hearsay and illegally obtained
evidence.
Conservatives thought the juvenile system not tough enough. Liberals
believed it violated due-process rights by locking juveniles up
without a judicial determination of guilt or innocence.
In 1966 and 1967, the US Supreme Court issued decisions siding with
those who believed juveniles were in fact being punished rather
than "saved" by the court. The high court gave young offenders all
the rights afforded adults charged with crimes, except the right
to a jury trial. The court reasoned that to grant juveniles a jury
trial would "destroy the traditional character of juvenile proceedings."Juveniles,
authorities declared, now had the "best of both worlds," receiving
due process while still being treated as children in need of help.
From 1990 to 1994, while the overall murder rate in the United States
declined four percent, homicides by juveniles fourteen to seventeen
years old rose by a dramatic twenty-two percent. These horrifying
figures led a renowned criminologist to warn of a coming "blood
bath" as the number of juveniles would increase by twenty percent
in the next decade.
Alarm spread as another celebrated crime watcher predicted that
more than a quarter-million "juveniles superpredators" would be
roaming the streets by the year 2010.
Even the highly respected Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention got into the act, claiming that if the upward trends
continued, juvenile violence would rise an astonishing 101 percent
by the year 2010.
There was, of course, some small truth in all the hype. Juvenile
violence had increased. But that obscured a much larger truth: Juveniles
remained a relatively small part of the overall problem of violent
crime.
According to the US Justice Department's own figures, less than
one-half of one percent of juveniles ages ten to seventeen are arrested
each year for any kind of violence. These who are usually charged
with aggravated assault—which may sound serious, but usually
involves merely the threat of violence, or perhaps a shoving match,
but little more. Just one juvenile in 10,000 is arrested for homicide.
Indeed, the latest Justice Department crime statistics show that
the juvenile homicide arrest rate has dropped for the fourth straight
year. Down by more than forty-five percent since 1993. Moreover,
since 1995, homicides by fourteen to seventeen year olds have dropped
more than in any other age group.
The percentage of violent crimes attributed to juveniles is lower
than in 1975, and murder by children under thirteen is at its second-lowest
level since this statistic was first collected thirty-three years
ago, according to the American Society of Criminology.
But this dramatic drop in juvenile crime has not dampened the political
appeal of the "superpredator" myth. Both Democrats and Republicans,
eager to take a stand in the wake of much-publicized (but still
isolated) school shootings, have proposed legislation to combat
what they characterize as a growing threat of juvenile crime.
Congress is considering a bill that adds new offenses to those that
automatically trigger transfer to adult court, and requires states
to transfer some fourteen year-old children to adult court in order
to qualify for federal money. Never mind that research shows no
crime-fighting benefit in transferring more children to adult court.
Connecticut, for example, has the highest transfer rate in the country,
and it has the same juvenile homicide rate as Colorado, which has
the lowest transfer rate. Michigan and Massachusetts have nearly
the same transfer rates, but Michigan's juvenile homicide rate is
among the highest, and Massachusetts' among the lowest.
Moreover, transfer to adult court seems to make young offenders
more crime-prone in the long run. In Florida, for example, young
offenders transferred to adult court had a thirty percent higher
rate of recidivism than those in juvenile court. The higher rate
probably reflects the brutal treatment of juveniles in adult prisons.
Further, research shows that most juveniles transferred to adult
court have committed property offenses, not violent crimes.
In fairness, it must be pointed out that those few juveniles who
commit murder generally do receive a harsher sentence if transferred
to adult court. But this could be achieved by limiting transfer
to adult court to first-degree murder cases. Or, alternatively,
we could achieve harsher punishments for young killers by extending
juvenile detention to age twenty-five or thirty. This would also
give us time to provide the kind of intervention that could discourage
a life of crime when they get out.
The original juvenile court set out to give wayward children guidance
and support. There is a lesson in that history. If we are to prevent
juvenile delinquents from becoming adult criminals, we will return
to the philosophy of setting juveniles on the right path—not
to state prison.
Richard Moran is a professor of sociology
at Mount Holyoke College.
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