The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act: Federal Leadership in State Reform
The policies advanced by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, while generally viewed as a success, are seen by some as a failure that may even abet juveniles in the commission of crime. After tracing the evolution of federal juvenile justice legislation and examining arrest and treatment data, the authors confront the criticisms aimed at the Act, and find reason for considerable optimism. Nationwide, the number, proportion, and rate of juvenile arrests have fallen more than the juvenile population, and many states appear to have made substantial progress in improving the processing and treatment of juveniles. The authors conclude that the Act is a continuing source of federal leadership for state innovation.
Assessing the conduct of juveniles: diagnosis and delinquency, 1900–2013
Abstract American child psychiatrists have long been interested in the problems of delinquent behaviour by juveniles. With the rise of specific psychiatric diagnoses in the 1960s and 1970s, delinquent behaviour was defined within the diagnosis of conduct disorder. Like all psychiatric diagnoses, this concept was shaped by particular historical actors in context and has been highly contingent on assumptions related to race, class and gender. The history of conduct disorder illustrates the tensions in child psychiatry between the expansive goals of the field and the often limited uses of its professional authority, as well as individual children as the target of intervention and their interactions in groups.
The Unmet Promise of Alternatives to Incarceration
A careful review of the research literature on alternatives to incarcera tion suggests that their promise of reducing the prison population has remained largely unmet. For each of the reform strategies reviewed, the nonincarcerative options were transformed, serving criminal jus tice system values and goals other than reducing imprisonment. Sen tencing alternatives, such as restitution and community service, were found to enhance the sanctions of probation and fines instead of re placing incarceration. Similarly, postincarceration release programs, such as work release and work furlough, often escalated the level of control over clients and served primarily to control populations within prison systems. Increasing the availability of community correctional facilities has not reduced populations in secure confinement. Com munity correction legislation appears less likely to reduce incarcera tion than to change the location of imprisonment from the state in stitutions to county jails. Moreover, initial declines in state prison commitments can be neutralized by modifying over time other sen tencing or release policies that increase prison populations. Although community correction legislation may have redistributed correctional costs and shifted decision making from state to local levels, it is ques tionable whether it has made a long-term contribution to reduced im prisonment. Progress in alternatives will remain frustrated until re forms are more carefully implemented and until proponents of alter natives are willing to test their ideologies through rigorous research. Furthermore, a new political consensus must emerge outside the crim inal justice system in which the values of punishment and public safe ty are rationally balanced with fiscal constraints and competing claims for public revenue.