Chapter 8 Juvenile Justice

What is a delinquent?
It is a juvenile that commits acts that are criminal when they are committed by adults are classified as offenders called delinquents. For example, If I were to go steal something from the mall, I would be considered a juvenile delinquent. Status offenses are only applied to juveniles because acts like smoking underage, disobeying parents, and not attending school are all offenses that are illegal for a juvenile but not for an adult.
Something I didn't know was that the term "binding out" meant that children without parents or with inadequate ones were assigned to foster families through the binding out system. AKA adoption. I work at a daycare and there have been families that take in kids because they don't have parents and are put into foster care. I have even seen parents adopt the kid they are fostering.
The progressives developed a group called the Child Savers. They were liberals who wanted to reform the juvenile justice system. They thought that children needed to be religious and train them to satisfy their needs through labor work and thrift. But the reformers believed that children needed to be in a more family oriented atmosphere so that they could be taught how to value hard work and social conformity. To me the progressives were not saving they children...they might have been forcing them to believe in a certain religion they may not have believe in, creating them something that they're not.
In the Kent v. United States, the final outcome they came up with was that juveniles be granted certain constitutional rights. In the In Re Winship they decided that the preponderance of evidence must be upgraded when the possibility of deprivation of liberty exists. In the Breed v. Jones, they ruled that a waiver to adult court cannot occur after double jeopardy, and jeopardy attaches at the adjudicatory hearing when evidence is first presented. Schall v. Martin, the ruling was that juveniles do not enjoy the right to bail consideration and reasserted the parens patriae interests of the state in promoting the best interests of the child.
When we discussed in class about giving the death penalty to juveniles, I found it interesting because I think many people even knew what the age limit was on sentencing someone to the death penalty. I didn't know that juveniles could be sentenced to death. But there are certain aspects that I agree with about giving the death penalty to juveniles...I think that if you are a juvenile and you murder more than once, you know exactly what you are doing, and if you are able to murder another human being that you are indeed smart enough to know that it is a very serious crime. I know that I was pretty darn mature at age 12, I can recall being mature even younger than that age. Now I can understand getting the juvenile some help because maybe they are just mad at the world, or mad at their parents, anything really, but the fact of the matter is, if the kid is in need of some treatment, then by all means, get them treatment instead of the death penalty.