Afterword

Ironically, at its centennial, the juvenile court has never been more scrutinized and challenged from all sides. The 1999 annual report of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice is entitled A Celebration or a Wake? The Juvenile Court After 100 Years. That title reflects current policy trends and public perceptions.

Between 1992 and 1995 alone, 41 States amended their juvenile justice laws to make it easier to try juveniles in criminal court, and just as many loosened confidentiality protections (Sickmund, Snyder, and Poe-Yamagata, 1997). Last year, nearly 18,000 youth spent time in adult prisons (American Correctional Association, 1997), 3,500 in general population with adults (Sickmund, Snyder, and Poe-Yamagata, 1997). Another 7,000 to 8,000 youth are jailed with adults on any given day; many times that number are confined in America's jails during the course of a year (Sickmund, Snyder, and Poe-Yamagata, 1997).

Although the data collection and statistical sampling techniques that are prevalent today were not available in 1899, the founders of the juvenile court seem to have been prescient about the effects of policies that move more youth into the criminal justice system. The majority of children who are referred to juvenile court once never are referred again. Research provides evidence that youth transferred or waived to adult criminal court are rearrested more frequently and for more serious offenses than youth who remain in the juvenile justice system. Youth jailed with adults are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted and eight times more likely to commit suicide while in confinement than youth detained in juvenile facilities.

Often, when the public hears news about the juvenile court, it is following a violent act committed by a youth. Only about one-quarter of 1 percent of all juveniles ages 10Ð17 were arrested for a violent crime in 1998 (Snyder, 1999). Only 6 percent of all youth arrested are charged with committing a serious violent crime (Sickmund and Snyder, 1995), and both total juvenile crime and juvenile homicides have dropped 56 percent since 1993 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1994 and 1999). Yet the evening news repeatedly portrays children and teenagers as violent, and two-thirds of Americans believe that youth crime is rising.

A tragedy is not a trend. In the public mind, however, the isolated can become the common. The result of media hyperbole is a juvenile court that is badly misunderstood by the very Nation that founded it. One consequence of this misunderstanding is public ambivalence, and at times outright hostility, toward a separate system of justice for juveniles. Yet the public repeatedly indicates that it does not want society to give up on any child, even the child who commits a violent offense.

As the juvenile court enters its second century, there is concern that much of the founders' unique vision of children-as-hope is in jeopardy. The Second Chance success stories are told to rekindle the same spirit that ignited the efforts of Jane Addams, Lucy Flower, and Julia Lathrop to make the world a better and more humane place for children and to secure a more promising future for all. These stories of hope, of perseverance, of young people thriving and ultimately living productive lives despite heavy odds—sometimes with help, sometimes on their own—offer a challenge: society must afford today's young Bob Beamons and Sally Hendersons the second chances to become tomorrow's leaders.