Juvenile Crime
According to a 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, more than 2,000,000 juvenile arrests take place each year. More than half a million of those arrests relate to property crimes: theft, burglary, vandalism, and arson. More than 90,000, though, are for violent crimes, including more than 1,000 juvenile arrests on murder and manslaughter charges.
Recent Changes in the Juvenile Justice System
Today's statistics are similar to those from the 1970s and early 1980s, but the mid-1990s saw a surge in juvenile crime, especially violent crimes by juveniles. In response, nearly every state revised its juvenile justice system.
As a result, the traditional view of the juvenile criminal court system, in which minors can only be held in juvenile detention facilities until they reach the age of majority, procedures are less formal, and juvenile records are sealed is a thing of the past in many states.
Juvenile delinquency provisions in state law may be slanted toward treatment and education or toward punishment, but the majority of states take a balanced approach, seeking to protect public safety, individual victims' rights, and the development of the offender. However, not all juvenile offenders are processed through that system.
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Moving Juveniles Out of the Juvenile Justice System
In some states, juvenile courts have original jurisdiction only over minors aged 15 and under. In several other states, 16 is the cut-off point.
In addition, every state now has provisions that allow for trial of juveniles in the adult criminal system under certain circumstances. Most states have provisions that specifically exclude certain crimes from the jurisdiction of juvenile courts. Many states have also enacted provisions that allow juvenile courts to impose sentences otherwise reserved to the criminal courts in certain cases, so that even if a juvenile is tried as a juvenile in the juvenile court system, he may be subject to criminal penalties.
The protection of juvenile defendants' privacy has declined substantially as well. Most states now make the identity and address of a juvenile offender available to the victim. In addition, juvenile courts were once closed to the public, but many states now hold open juvenile court, or open certain classes of juvenile proceedings to the public.
Many juvenile court records are now open to the media as well. While there are some restrictions on these provisions relating to age and class of crime, juvenile court information is far more open and available to the public today than in the past. At least nine states make juvenile court records available to the public with no such restrictions.
In fact, nearly every state requires law enforcement or the juvenile court system to notify the administration of the offender's school when a delinquent act is committed.
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More at Stake For Juveniles Accused of Criminal Acts
All of these changes add up to difficulty in knowing what to expect in the juvenile justice process. When a teenager is arrested, whether he's routed to the juvenile system or the adult criminal courts is initially determined by his age and, in some states, the crime of which he's accused. But the age cut-off and the crimes in question vary from state to state. In addition, a minor originally routed to the juvenile justice system can be "waived" into adult court, and the requirements for waiver vary from state to state. Whatever the specifics, a juvenile accused of an act that would be a crime if he were an adult faces substantially greater risks and penalties today than we traditionally expect in juvenile cases.