Juvenile Law Outline

Juvenile Law
 
I. Closed book final, can use statutes- no writing on the statutes
II. Background of Juvenile Law
A. Issues:
1. gangs
2. extended jurisdiction (kids let out when they turn 18)
3. does the system treat kids differently based on class?
4. can we rehabilitate kids, what age is too old, what crime?
5. insanity defense, can juveniles use it? Should they be able to?
a. Throughout history kids have committed crimes
b. What do you do w/ a 6 year old murderer?
1. Other side: innocent children who have been abused, neglected, exposed to poverty and violence, homeless, parents w/serious mental, drug etc problems.
B. Three ways we get info about juveniles
1. Official statistics – came to attention of law enforcement/ FBI uniform crime reports/ voluntary given by police departments
a. Index crimes: the most serious crimes, 1
b. Part 2, less serious
1. the data given gives the offense, sex, race, and age
2. not really personal info
a. general crime trends – 60’s 3 million reported
b. 80’s 13 million reported
c. then decline in ’84, up in ’85
d. has been declining recently
c. Juveniles reported under this: doesn’t count persons, just total number of offenses
1. Have seen decline in juvenile offenses but not if you look at under 13, that number went up and became more violent
d. There are concerns about this data from the FBI: some say too much reported some say too little
2. Self-reported Data
a. Questionnaires handed out to juveniles
1. Example – monitoring the future, by University of Michigan samples 3,000 kids per year
a. Get social and personal characteristics
b. 13% reported hurting someone who then needed medical care, which = 5.5 million teenagers
c. High numbers of reporting crimes and a lot less say/were ever taken in
d. So this means the official data is not correct
e. Self reporting doesn’t ask about murder or rape
i. There are questions about the validity of this self-reporting, worried to tell the truth or those that exaggerating
ii. Maybe not given to a true sample of the entire population
3. Victimization Data
a. Bureau of justice statistics and Census Bureau
1. They ask victims to report crimes, ask households
2.  A lot of victims don’t report crimes that they are the victims of
a. Teenagers seem to be victims by people they know, adults by strangers
b. Teenage boys are more likely to be victim of crime
c.  A lot of crime happens on the way or from school
d. Victim and the delinquent are a lot of times the same person, are the victim and then strike back
4. Also get data from hospitals, etc but primary are from those three
C. What the data tells us
1. Age and amount inversely related, people commit less crimes as they mature
2. The majority of kids who get picked up never are in court again after that – the “aging out factor”
3. The earlier a child becomes an offender the more likely the child is to commit crime for a longer duration of their life, or more likely to be a chronic offender, the statistics aren’t on their side if picked up when young
4. What about gender? Now boys seem to be more than girls but recently a change in this. Boys are decreasing and girls rates are increasing.
a. Boys and girls commit different crimes as a rule, girls more runaway etc.
b. Racial/ethnic data – it does show that more minorities commit crimes but ther