Juvenile Court

Therapy or Crime Control, and Do Lawyers Make a Difference

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4889129
AutoresStevens H Clarke, Gary G Koch
Año1980
Volumen14
Número2
Páginas263-308
Fecha de publicación1980-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3053314
OpenAlexW2321725406
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas24
Referencias citadas9

Disillusionment with the therapeutic ideal has led to the current movement to reduce the jurisdiction of juvenile courts to cases in which they can exercise a crime-prevention function and to emphasize a fair, adversarial court procedure including representation by a lawyer. Two North Carolina juvenile courts were studied in 1975-1976 to determine their degree of concern about rehabilitation, crime prevention, and adversarial procedure. These courts showed a trend toward reducing their intake of cases with a less serious prior record and current offense and becoming more punitive with regard to the remaining cases. The dominant factors associated with disposition-particularly with the decision to commit the child to training school-were prior court record and seriousness of current offense. Other factors found to be of some importance were the child's family structure, support by the family as shown by court attendance, and whether the complainant in the case was a parent or probation officer. Race, family income, and the sex of the child had little or no effect on decisions to commit. Differences in individual judges' commitment rates were explained largely by differences in the cases they handled. Being held in detention before the court hearing made commitment more likely. The type of counsel a child had-private, individually assigned, or specialized Juvenile Defender-made no difference in whether he was adjudicated delinquent or committed. In fact, children represented by counsel were somewhat more likely to be committed than those without counsel. This and other findings of the study suggest that the participation of lawyers in juvenile court may be largely a formality, a token compliance with due process requirements rather than an integral part of court fact-finding

Control (management · Crime control · Criminal justice · Criminology · Economics · Juvenile court · Juvenile delinquency · Management · Political science · Child Abuse and Trauma · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Law · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending