Happy Birthday Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Act

Sept. 29, 2014
In the 40 years since the Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Act was signed into law many changes have occurred in the way we hold juveniles accountable for criminal behavior.

I’ve always been a huge supporter of milestones. Birthdays, New Year’s and even each changing season gives me a chance to look at where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished and what goals I still need to meet. Taking the opportunity to reflect on where I’ve come from and where I’m going allows me to take stock of what improvements I have made and celebrate my successes. Acknowledging these successes helps me more readily focus on the things that I still need to do to meet my goal or to up the ante a bit if I have accomplished what I’ve set out to do. In the same light, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) also celebrated a recent milestone which gives all justice professionals a chance to look at where we’ve come and where we’ve still got to go. Happy 40th birthday to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

The Beginning

The true beginning of juvenile justice reform began in the late 18th to early 19th century when pioneering penal reformers Thomas Eddy and John Griscom organized the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism to oppose the housing of youth in adult jails. Poor and delinquent youth were sent to Houses of Refuge to receive rehabilitation and education. The first juvenile court was established in 1899 in Cook County (IL) founded on the ancient legal principal of parens patriae or state as parent. The court was designed to take into account development and the ability of juveniles to make changes in behavior. It was also created to separate children from adults in correctional institutions. Throughout the early 1900s the juvenile courts continued to formalize and establish juvenile rights such as due process. It was during this time, in 1974 that the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency and Prevention Act was signed into law. Two crucial parts of the Act included establishing the separation requirement and the deinstitutionalization of status offenders (DSO) requirement. The separation requirement, also called the “sight and sound” requirement meant that juveniles could not be housed with adult criminals. They should essentially not be able to see or hear them. The DSO requirement meant that youth who committed a status offense (one in which it was only a crime by virtue of their age) could not be sent to a juvenile detention facility or adult jail. These two requirements are considered part of the core protections of the Act. Here are other important dates for the Act:

  • 1977: DSO and separation requirements increased and expanded; prevention and treatment emphasized
  • 1980: Jail removal requirements established
  • 1984: Jail removal requirements enhanced and amended
  • 1988: Disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) addressed as a requirement
  • 1992: DSO, jail removal, and separation requirements amended; DMC elevated to a core protection requirement; Title V Incentive Grants for Local Delinquency Prevention Grants Program established; Prevention and treatment, family strengthening, graduated sanctions, and risk-need assessments emphasized
  • 2002: The scope of the DMC core requirement from “disproportionate minority confinement” to disproportionate minority contact” broadened; seven previously independent programs consolidated into a single Part C prevention block grant; a new Part D created, authorizing research, training and technical assistance, and information dissemination; Part E added, authorizing grants for new initiatives and programs; Title V reauthorized; states required to give funding priorities of their formula and block grant allocations to evidence-based programs; Title II Formula Grants Program reauthorized; the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants program revised, which is now called the Juvenile Accountability Block Grants program.

What this all means is that juvenile justice professionals spent the first three decades assessing and modifying this Act so that more youth could benefit from the federal funding, research and evidence-based programs that kept juveniles from being treated the same as adult offenders.

Today

The Chicken Little debate came out in the early 1990s where the Super Predator theory and other ideologies and media campaigns tried to convince the public and justice professionals that youth were going to get meaner, bigger and more violent. This has not proven to be the case at all. In fact, violent crime is down and has continued to steadily decrease over the last few decades. So, what has the Act done to improve juvenile justice? What are the successes?

On the 40th anniversary of the Act, OJJDP Administrator Robert L. Listenbee wrote a blog listing the impact of the Act. Three statistics he included were:

  • Violent crime arrest rates for youth are at their lowest point since at least 1980
  • Youth in residential placement declined 42 percent between 1997 and 2011
  • Youth in residential placement for status offenses decreased 64%

Although these successes give us many things to celebrate, there are still improvements to be made. Listenbee stated we have a ways to go on dealing with the massive amounts of youth that are in detention due to non-violent offenses (2/3 of incarcerated juveniles are confined for non-violent crimes) and the disproportionate amount of minorities that are still coming into contact with the juvenile justice system and being confined.

Brain Development

In the last 40 years many of the changes made to the juvenile justice system were done so with much speculation that juveniles were developmentally different than adults and therefore should be treated differently when it came to consequences and punishment. Since then, the advancements of science, particularly brain research, has proven that brain development is very different in youth. Research has also shown how trauma affects development. The immaturity and impulsivity of youth show very clearly on brain scans, as well as, the dramatic affect trauma has on brain development. Due to this empirical data, we can continue to improve the services we offer youth before, during and after they come into contact with the justice system.

Thanks to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, we’ve come a long way. Many youth have benefited from forward thinking professionals who believed that juveniles needed to be held accountable for their behavior, but also needed to be treated in a different way to attain the results that society wanted from them. Hopefully, we will continue to improve on the Act and in 40 years celebrate even more successes.

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