Get Tough Movement and Beyond
The US has generally treated juvenile lawbreakers (younger than 18 years old) differently from criminal adults at least since the early 1800s, when Houses of Refuge were established to hold troubled and delinquent children (see New York State Archives, n.d.). At the end of that century, in 1899, the first separate juvenile justice system was formally established, when Illinois created the first juvenile court designed to focus on the childrenās ābest interestsā and to help troubled juveniles, rather than punish them as adults (see Illinois Juvenile Court Act of 1899). Soon all states had developed separate juvenile justice systems in which most delinquent youths continue to be processed and punished (about 99% of youths who went to court in 2010) (Griffin, Addie, Adams, & Firestine, 2011).
In the 1980s and 1990s, juvenile crime became increasingly worrisome to policymakers and practitioners in the US, who scrambled to get out ahead of what they considered to be a rapidly escalating problem (Lipsey et al., 2010). Specifically, murders (in 1993) and violent crime (in 1994) by juveniles, especially with firearms, were increasing faster than they were for adults and reached new heights (Puzzanchera & Adams, 2011; Snyder, Sickmund, & Poe-Yamagata, 1996). Moreover, population projections were that the numbers of teens generally would skyrocket by the early 2000s, prompting some scholars to worry about even more āteen killersā (e.g., Fox, 1996, p. 3) and young āsuper-predatorsā (Bennet, DiIulio, & Walters, 1996, p. 26) preying on the public. In fact, at the time, Bennet et al. (1996, p. 21) warned that because they expected a rise in young criminal men soon, America was āa ticking crime bombā. Concerns about rising juvenile crime and these warnings of impending doom prompted policymakers and practitioners to enhance their efforts to combat juvenile crime significantly, including āget-toughā policies, such as increasing the use of gang intervention programs and transfer to adult court as ways to get ahead of the projected coming storm of juvenile crime (Torbet & Szymanksi, 1998).
Even during the get-tough movement the vast majority of youths remained in the juvenile justice system (Lipsey et al., 2010; Snyder et al., 1996), but the system was modified to make it tougher on young offenders. A few adolescent offenders, often chronic, serious or older ones, continued to be processed in the adult court system, and the get-tough movement of the 1980s and 1990s significantly increased the number of youths who were transferred to adult court during that period (Griffin et al., 2011; Snyder and Sickmund, 1999).
Because of concerns about rising juvenile crime, state legislatures across the country rewrote their laws to get tougher on juveniles, including expanding provisions for transfer to adult court (Torbet & Szymanski, 1998). Before the 1970s, juveniles primarily were transferred only after a judge had considered their individual cases, but policies changed drastically through the 1990s. Now, 38 states have automatic transfer laws (sending certain offenders automatically to adult court based on age and/or offense), and 15 allow prosecutors the opportunity to make decisions in some or all cases without judicial review (Griffin et al., 2011). Yet, in the last decade, there has been some policy movement in a few states toward reducing the numbers of youths who go to adult court. For example, ten states recently revised their waiver laws, by making it easier to get reverse waiver hearings (to move a case back to juvenile court), increasing the lower age limit at which a youth can be tried as an adult, allowing the possibility that youths who are transferred can be treated as a juvenile in later hearings, and/or reducing the list of offenses that trigger automatic placement in the adult court process (Arya, 2011).
During the 1990s, states also toughened other policies, including increasing the age at which the juvenile justice system could hold youths for dispositional purposes, enhancing the use of blended sentences (some combination of juvenile and adult options), boosting the emphasis on public safety and accountability (versus the best interests of the child), reducing confidentiality protections for juvenile proceedings and records, and strengthening victim participation in the process (Torbet & Szymanski, 1998). Although juvenile violent crime has decreased significantly since the mid-1990s, most of the get-tough laws remain on the books (Griffin et al., 2011). Delinquent youths in the US primarily face processing and punishment in a tougher juvenile justice system. Currently, the juvenile system focuses on both rehabilitation and public safety as goals, and emphasizes the use of evidence-based treatment programming, or approaches that have been shown to be effective through evaluation research (Brown, 2012). Now we turn to specific information about who goes through the system and what happens to them when they get there.
