Prior to the nineteenth century, children were considered to be adults, thus creating the belief that a child should act and behave as one. The justice system had little patience for the child’s behavior because he or she was to act civil like an adult. If the child was to behave in this negative manner, the justice system would convict the child as an adult by enforcing harsh punishments. During this century, any child offender who was over the age of seven would be incarcerated and placed in prisons with the adult offenders. Many socialists and political activists viewed this as cruel and unusual punishment, and decided to fight against these policies and reform them to something more humane. Psychologists began to recognize that in fact, children and adults were completely two different categories, and could not be compared with each other, especially in the justice system. Psychologists recognized that instead of incarcerating child offenders with adults, one must try and rehabilitate the child offender by nurturing, loving, and caring for them.
It is in the Progressive Reform Era in which society were enlightened, and realized the harsh punishments bestowed on child offenders by the justice system were cruel and inhumane. Socialists and political activists focused more on child offender rehabilitation rather than imprisonment. They found rehabilitation to be more of a useful and productive technique than just locking a child up with adult offenders. In 1824, reformers built the New York House of Refuge for child offenders, which was similar to an orphanage a child would live in today. The child offenders who were placed in prison with adult offenders would be transferred into these houses of reformation in order to seek the proper rehabilitation that a child would need in order to eliminate his or her life of criminality. A multitude of reform houses similar to the New York House of Refuge was built after the positive success that was emitted from these houses. After society experienced first hand-experience from the success of the reformation houses, no longer were child offenders placed in the same prisons as adults.
Society liked the new change within the justice system when dealing with child offenders, thus caused socialists and political activists to create more laws and polices in order to protect child offenders against cruel, inhumane, and unusual punishment such as that prior to the Progressive Reform Era. The juvenile justice system created a law called “parens patriae,” which simply means the state would act as a parent or a guardian role to a child. The state would support the child until he or she has been positively rehabilitated, and was able to function civilly within the community, or until the child became an adult. The Parens patriae policy made it official that child offenders will no longer be tried as an adult, thus making the court and judicial process for children more informal than that of an adult offender.
Another policy that was created to ensure child offenders receive equality and fairness when they are convicted was “In re Gault.” This policy ensured that the child offender’s due process was not violated by the court system. The child offender had the right to receive notice of charges, obtain legal counsel, confront and cross-examine, privilege against self-incrimination, etc. More policies were being created such as the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act of 1968 and The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. These acts were created mainly to rehabilitate juvenile offenders and prevent them from seeking the life of criminality, which was also a major break through within the juvenile justice systems.
Suddenly, a change within the juvenile justice system occurred between the late 1980’s and mid-1990’s, with the enactment of the “get tough on crime” laws. These laws allowed serious, violent juvenile offenders to be tried as adults. For the juvenile offender to be tried as an adult, the juvenile must have been convicted for a violent crime or a possession of weapon violation, thus imprisoning the juvenile offenders with the adult offenders. Rehabilitation for these juvenile offenders is highly unlikely because the justice system incarcerates them. This change in shift from rehabilitation for youth offenders to imprisoning youth offenders has raised much controversy. The same negativity child offenders faced prior to the Progressive Era was believed by society to have never been seen again during this day in age, is unfortunately, slowly starting to make it way around once more.
Manny, S. "Facts, Stats, & History." Frontline:Juvenile Justice. 2010. 12 Mar 2010. www.pbs.org/wgbh.
Rank, J. "Trying Juveniles as Adults." Juvenile Law-History. 2010. 12 Mar 2010. www.law.org.
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