Legal Changes in Juvenile Justice:

• Author: Stacy C. Moak,Lisa Hutchinson Wallace
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204003001003004
• Published date: 01 July 2003
• Date: 01 July 2003
• Subject Matter: Journal Article

10.1177/1541204003254828Youth Violence and Juvenile JusticeMoak, Wallace / LEGAL CHANGES IN JUVENILE JUSTICE

LEGAL CHANGES IN

JUVENILE JUSTICE:

Then and Now

Stacy C. Moak

University of Louisiana at Monroe

Lisa Hutchinson Wallace

University of Alaska Fairbanks

The juvenile justice system began as an attempt by the child savers to reform unfortunate

youth. As a result of this emphasis, the original goal of the system was to administer

individual treatment to youth in a nonadversarial manner. Many changes have occurred

to this process over the past 100 years, which have blurred the lines of juvenile and adult

justice. It seems that the system no longer knows how to define a child, no longer has

treatment as a goal, and often prefers transfer to adult court. This article identifies many

changes that have occurred in juvenile justice as well as inconsistencies that exit in

juvenile justice policy. The major areas addressed include changes in the court, changes

in the schools, and changes in the community. The article concludes with suggestions for

needed research in several critical areas.

Keywords: legal changes; juvenile justice; changing terminology

Juvenile justice has seen many changes in the past 100 years, and no doubt, the next

100 will bring more changes. The focus becomes the pendulum swing: Will it be forward or

backward? The original foundation of the juvenile court process was that children are

unique and should be treated, not punished, for their youthful transgressions. In addition,

the child savers believed that children should be shielded from public labels such as

criminals to increase their opportunity to reintegrate into society at the end of their

rehabilitation. The original juvenile court was marked by a special terminology that

included concepts such as the taking into custody, adjudication, disposition, juvenile

delinquents, and training schools for youth instead of the adult counterparts of arrest, trial,

sentencing, and prisons. Today, however, we hear the media refer to juvenile arrests,

juvenile criminals, and juvenile prisons. To what extent does this seemingly widespread

change in terminology reflect a change in our belief about the uniqueness of children in the

justice system?

Hurst (1999) suggested that the juvenile justice system is moving backward instead of

forward. He posited that recent changes codify as law a basic shift in our beliefs about our

children: a shift from optimism to pessimism; from solicitous caring to benign neglect; from

rehabilitation to criminal punishment; from nurturing protection to shaming, public

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Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Vol. 1 No. 3, July 2003 289-299

DOI: 10.1177/1541204003254828

© 2003 Sage Publications