Salt Lake Community College

Juvenile Justice System

Alison Guerrero
CJ 1010
Julia Ellis
May 3, 2016

The treatment of juveniles in the United States started to change during the nineteenth
century. Special facilities were created for troubled juveniles especially in large cities. The
Society for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency created the New York House of Refuge to
house juvenile delinquents in 1825. In 1899, the first juvenile justice system was created in Cook
County, Illinois, and it was a separate system from the adult one. This system took into
consideration a youths intellectual, social, moral, and emotional development and worked to
rehabilitate and treat more than punish offenders who are under the age of eighteen. Within
twenty-five years, most states had set up juvenile court systems.
William Blackstone, one of the most important English lawyers, decided that the
difference between infant and adult is theres a point where one could understand ones
actions in the late 1760s. Blackstone said two things were needful to hold someone culpable of
committing a crime. First, the person had to commit an unlawful act. Second, the person had to
have a vicious will. If the act or the will is not present, then the crime was not committed.
Infants, children under the age of seven, were the first group of people Blackstone identified
as incapable of committing a crime. Children over the age of 14 were obligated to suffer as
adults if found guilty of a crime. If a child between the ages of 7 and 14, however, appeared to
have understood the difference between right and wrong, the child could be convicted and suffer
the full consequences of the crime.
A number of cases were heard by the United States Supreme Court that would change
proceedings in the juvenile courts. The first of these cases was Kent v. United States, 383 U.S.

541 (1966). Morris Kent was only fourteen years old when he first entered the juvenile court
system after numerous housebreakings and an attempted purse snatching. He was placed on
probation in the custody of his divorced mother. His fingerprints were found in the apartment of
a woman who had been robbed and raped two years later. He was arrested and interrogated by
Washington, D.C., police officers and confessed to the crimes when he was 16-years-old.
Psychiatric examination was arranged for the boy and was concluded that Kent suffer from
severe psychopathology and was recommended that he be placed in a psychiatric hospital for
observation.
The juvenile court judge gave up the courts authority to make legal decisions in Kents
case. Kents lawyer offered to convince that if Kent were given proper hospital treatment, he
would be an applicant for rehabilitation. The juvenile court did not respond to the motions made
by Kents lawyer and, without a hearing, waived jurisdiction to the criminal court. Morris Kent
was tried as an adult in district court. Kent was then convicted on six counts of housebreaking,
and robbery, but acquitted on two rape counts by reason of insanity. In another case, Gary Jones,
a 17-year-old boy, was charged with armed robbery. He appeared in Los Angeles juvenile court
and was adjudicated delinquent on the original and two other robberies.
The case of Gerald Gault, a 15-year-old boy, led to a major change in the way young
peoples cases were processed by the juvenile courts a year after the Kent decision. Gerald was
under 6-months probation when he was accused of making an obscene phone call to a neighbor,
Mrs. Cook, in 1964. Police arrived at this home and took him into custody when Geralds

neighbor complained of the call. Geralds parents were at work yet the police made no effort to
inform them.
Neither Gerald nor his parents received notice of the specific charges against him before
his hearing. They did not even see the petition that was filed until two months later. The hearing
was very informal that not even the neighbor who made the complaint was present. The judge
committed Gerald to juvenile detention until he turned 21, unless he was discharged earlier by
due process of law meaning he might have to spend up to six years at the school. An adult
convicted of the same crime would have received a maximum penalty of a $50 fine and
imprisonment for no more two months.
Geralds parents petitioned for their sons release. They argued that his constitutional
rights to a fair trial had been violated and that he had been denied due process of the law. The
case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Gerald in In re
Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967).
Justice Fortas stated that neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Bill of Rights is for
adults alone. Juveniles subject to delinquency hearings were entitled to key elements of due
process to ensure the fairness of their hearings, including: a right to legal counsel, notice of the
charges against them, the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and the right to selfincrimination.

Justice Stewart noted that the nineteenth century before juvenile courts were established,
juveniles tried in criminal courts were given the same due process as adults. They were also
given the harshest punishments for their crimes, including the death penalty. Justice Stewart
agreed that juvenile courts were not perfect. But by blurring the distinctions between juvenile
proceedings and criminal proceedings, the Supreme Court was inviting a long step backwards
into the nineteenth century.
The Supreme Court took another step toward making procedure in the juvenile courts
more like criminal courts three years after the Gault decision. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358
(1970), Samuel Winship, a 12-year-old boy, entered a locker and stole $112 from a womans
pocketbook and was charged with stealing. The juvenile court decided that a preponderance of
the evidence concluded that the boy had committed the theft. The government has to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused committed the crime, however, in a standard
criminal trial. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a higher standard than preponderance of the
evidence meaning that the available evidence leaves you firmly convinced of a defendants
guilt.
One reason that beyond a reasonable doubt is required in criminal cases is because a
person convicted of a crime can be sentenced to serve time in prison. Supporters of the juvenile
court pointed out that the purpose of the training school was not to punish but to rehabilitate the
boy. They also argued that it is not necessarily in the best interests of a troubled juvenile to
win a case if the juvenile is truly in need of a courts intervention. A greater number of the

Court denied these arguments, saying that good intentions do not themselves obviate the need
for criminal due process safeguards in juvenile courts.
With the Supreme Courts ruling in McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528 (1971), the
trend toward extending the due process rights of adult criminal trails to juvenile court
proceedings slowed in 1971. In McKeiver, the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to a
jury trial is not applicable in cases where a juvenile court may impose only a traditional juvenile
disposition.
An important factor in the Courts decision was its refusal to fully equate a juvenile
proceeding with a criminal proceeding, even if the juveniles case involved offenses that would
be felonies or misdemeanors under the states criminal laws and the juvenile court ordered the
youth confined to a secure rehabilitation facility. The Court feared that trial by jury would
effectively abolish any significant distinction between juvenile and criminal proceedings. If the
formalities of the criminal adjudicative process are to be superimposed upon the juvenile court
system, the majority opinion concluded, there is little need for its separate existence. Perhaps
that ultimate disillusionment will come one day, but for the moment we are disinclined to give
impetus to it.

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