| The Honorable Cindy S. Lederman is presiding judge of the Miami-Dade Juvenile Court, FL. Judge Lederman is a member of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine.
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The juvenile court is a noble institution—a noble, underfunded, often unappreciated institution charged with the most important duty imaginable, protecting and reforming our children when all else has failed.
The scrutiny the 100th anniversary of the juvenile court has brought to bear on the institution is welcome. It provides an opportunity to examine the court's record in attempting to achieve its virtually impossible charge. More important, it provides a forum to discuss the modifications that need to be made to design a juvenile court that can meet the challenges of the next century. This discussion, involving legal scholars, researchers, judges, lawyers, historians, social scientists, and others, is taking place at a time in history when society is scared of its own children (Klein, 1998).
Society is permeated with rhetoric about how children are its most precious resource, but too often those words ring hollow. In reality, the needs of children are not a national priority. One in five children lives in poverty, more than 11 million (1 in 7) have no health insurance, and among industrialized countries, the United States ranks 18th in infant mortality (Children's Defense Fund, 1998). Some children who have recently immigrated to the United States appear to be protected from these and other risk factors (e.g., those involving physical and mental health), but this advantage wanes with length of residence and from one generation to the next (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 1998).
The juvenile court is one of the few places in society where the needs of children are paramount and where a passion for helping children defines its work. In the juvenile court, children are the absolute priority. The juvenile court is doing a creditable job under adverse circumstances toward achieving these goals—however, a better job is needed and, fortunately, it can be achieved.
Most citizens see the juvenile court as an institution designed to deal with young offenders who commit crimes. Although this may be its most public function, the juvenile court is much more. The dispositions of child abuse and neglect cases and cases involving the termination of parental rights are equally and increasingly important functions that are essential to understanding the relationship between dependency and delinquency.1 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse and neglect each year, almost half of which are substantiated (Children's Defense Fund, 1998). These children, who have been beaten, raped, starved, burned, maimed, neglected, and abandoned, are at increased risk for delinquent behavior. Many of the children who are arrested for committing offenses are already familiar with the juvenile court as dependent children. Data indicate that 75 percent of violent juvenile offenders suffered serious abuse by a family member, 80 percent witnessed physical violence, and more than 25 percent had a parent who abused drugs or alcohol (Trask, 1997).
From Rehabilitation to Punishment
In the past decade, the juvenile court has undergone a major shift toward a more punitive and less therapeutic institution. There have been significant changes in State juvenile codes based not on data or research, but on the misconception that America is in the midst of a violent juvenile crime epidemic. Contrary to such perceptions, the record shows:
 The juvenile crime rate, while cyclical in nature, is declining (see Snyder and Sickmund, 1999).
Adults—not youth—are responsible for most violent crime. Seven out of eight violent crimes are committed by adults (Torbet and Szymanski, 1998).
Although juvenile violence remains at a higher level than a decade ago, it is declining (Torbet and Szymanski, 1998).
Today's youth do not commit more acts of violence with greater regularity than their predecessors, but more juveniles are being arrested for violent acts (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999; Torbet and Szymanski, 1998). This means that the "superpredator epidemic" does not exist.
Despite these facts, virtually every State has enacted legislation during this decade to significantly alter the philosophy of juvenile justice and promote the view that the juvenile justice system should mirror the criminal justice system. Increasingly, judicial authority and discretion have been taken away despite the belief that properly constrained judicial discretion in charging and sentencing is more effective than prosecutorial or legislative control (Yellen, 1996). Limitations on juvenile jurisdiction, mandatory sentencing, and the creation of more punitive programming have seriously affected the ability of the juvenile judge to dispense justice in a therapeutic environment.
The juvenile court has undergone a major shift toward a more punitive and less therapeutic institution.
The social reformers who created the juvenile court 100 years ago believed that children's culpability for their actions was limited and that delinquency was closely related to poor parenting, neglect, poverty, and lack of moral values. They believed that children were malleable and that rehabilitation could occur under the jurisdiction of a benevolent juvenile court through which the State adopted the philosophy of parens patriae.
Since that time, the juvenile court has undergone significant change, from being an institution focused on social welfare and acting in a child's best interest to one, after In re Gault,2 focused on children's due process rights, and, in the 1990's, to one focused on accountability and punishment. None of these, alone, is enough. Today, the court must somehow simultaneously afford children due process, deliver swift and appropriate punishment, and endeavor to rehabilitate and meet the therapeutic needs of juvenile offenders and their families.
Juvenile or Criminal Justice?
The "adultification" of the juvenile justice system continues to this day. Increasing numbers of youth—some 17,000 per year—are transferred to the criminal justice system, often without benefit of judicial intervention in the decisionmaking process. Florida researchers, led by Donna Bishop, compared 3,000 transferred Florida youth with 3,000 nontransferred Florida youth and found that the former group was more likely to be incarcerated and for longer periods of time. When released, transferred youth were more likely to reoffend and reoffend earlier than those who were not transferred (Altschuler, 1999).
Increasing numbers of youth are transferred to the criminal justice system.
There is no question that some juveniles merit transfer. Serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders may demonstrate by the nature of their offenses or offense history, their failure to benefit from treatment programs in a manner indicating a lack of amenability to treatment, and in other ways that transfer to the criminal justice system is appropriate. However, the wholesale transfer of juveniles on the basis of factors other than individual characteristics and without judicial intervention is imprudent. It is crucial that juvenile courts be allowed to make carefully defined, individual determinations regarding transfer (Klein, 1998).
Accountability is a crucial goal of the juvenile justice system. When necessary, punishment should be swift, measured, and well reasoned. In some cases, secure confinement is appropriate. Juveniles must learn that delinquent behavior is intolerable and that they will be held accountable for their actions. Tough sentencing laws for crimes involving firearms, often involving mandatory confinement, have proven effective (Loeber and Farrington, 1998). While there are children in the juvenile justice system who can be classified as serious, violent, and chronic offenders, they constitute a small minority of the juvenile offender population (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). These offenders may need to be confined to receive long-term treatment and to ensure the safety of the community.
At the same time, the juvenile justice system should not be redesigned to respond disproportionately to the behavior of a small number of offenders who are uncharacteristic of the population as a whole. Juveniles often stop committing crimes as they mature and become employed (see Hamilton and McKinney, 1999). Increasingly punitive in nature, juvenile justice legislation must not abandon the critical goal of rehabilitation. The juvenile court needs to adopt a rational, measured, and scientific approach to the continuing problem of violent juvenile crime (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1996). Such an approach should include balancing accountability and rehabilitation. Education, counseling, and training of youth increase the chances that those adjudicated for delinquent acts, whether confined or not, will be helped to avoid lives of crime (Yellen, 1996). It is essential to avoid creating a one-dimensional juvenile justice system with rules, laws, practices, and goals designed to adjudicate Billy the Kid when most of the juveniles in the system more closely resemble Dennis the Menace (Klein, 1998).
Intervention
Reliance on scientific research is key to realizing the promise of the juvenile court. Decades of research in juvenile and criminal justice, developmental psychology, epidemiology, and other disciplines, including evaluations of promising program interventions, should inform policymaking, decisionmaking, and the development of programs and treatments. Working as a multidisciplinary team, juvenile justice and child welfare system practitioners, researchers, and experts in the community should combine their clinical experience with this growing body of knowledge.
Some argue that the juvenile justice and child welfare systems have been one huge experiment (Courtney, in press). Children are assigned to a variety of treatments or programs, and child welfare and juvenile justice practitioners have little to say about the comparative benefits of these interventions or the quality of decisionmaking by those who operate the system.
Most practitioners believe—as does the public—that a well-meaning intervention designed by competent people will have a positive effect. Whether a program could have unintended negative effects—or no effect at all—is seldom considered. Initial progress may be short lived (Altschuler, 1999). These factors underscore the need for rigorous program evaluations across the entire spectrum of child welfare and juvenile justice services to ensure that interventions benefit children and society and do not produce unintended effects that may even increase the risks of delinquent behavior. The juvenile justice system must be vigilant about the quality of its programs, services, and service providers and must work with researchers to design an agenda that will make a positive contribution to the body of evaluation research.
Working collaboratively, juvenile justice officials and researchers can develop study designs and outcome measures that more accurately assess the effectiveness of treatment programs. Measures of success should embrace more than the customary outcome measures of efficient case management and reduced recidivism. Intermediate outcomes also should be measured, and evaluators should determine whether participating children received other benefits from the program such as academic success, conflict resolution skills, and reduced use of alcohol and drugs.
Some argue that the juvenile justice and child welfare systems have been one huge experiment.
Risk and Protective Factors
For decades, juvenile justice researchers and social scientists have been studying the causes and correlates of delinquent behavior and identifying a variety of risk factors for delinquent behavior that could assist the court in designing and adopting earlier and more effective interventions. A major risk factor for delinquent behavior is family dysfunction; other risk factors include negative peer influences, parental neglect, low academic achievement, early onset of antisocial behavior, substance abuse, and exposure to violence (Loeber and Farrington, 1998). The risk factors for maladaptive behavior are all too prevalent in dependent children and are often seen well before they begin to engage in acts of delinquency. Early childhood victimization has demonstrable long-term consequences for delinquency, adult criminality, and violent criminal behavior, providing strong support for the "cycle of violence" hypothesis (Widom, 1989). Research enables us to identify those juveniles most in need of intervention (Catalano and Hawkins, 1996; Loeber and Farrington, 1998; and see Howell, 1995).
Early victimization has long-term consequences for delinquency, criminality, and violent criminal behavior.
From a developmental perspective, it is now possible to identify risk factors facing children before birth. The potential for offending is higher among individuals with multiple perinatal complications (American Society of Criminology, 1997; Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1996; Howell, 1995), particularly when coupled with other risk factors. Examination of risk factors for delinquency leads to the conclusion that if delinquent behavior is to be prevented, the juvenile justice system must work at the earliest possible opportunity not only with the child but with the child's family, peers, school, and neighborhood.
Developmental experts have identified a variety of protective factors that counter risk factors and thus reduce the likelihood of delinquency. Protective factors range from a strong and involved grandmother to parental involvement, a commitment to school, and personal self-esteem (Smith and Dabiri, 1995). The research on risk and protective factors can be used by practitioners to develop risk assessment instruments that measure exposure to risks and to design interventions that reduce the impact of risk factors and strengthen protective factors. It is important to note that protective factors can change over time. Being a female was once considered a significant protective factor against delinquency, but today girls make up 26 percent of all juvenile arrests (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). Learning more about the needs of these girls should be a priority of the juvenile justice research agenda. With knowledge delivered from research, courts can expand their influence over children and their environment and not be limited to merely adjudicating cases and making educated guesses about their appropriate disposition.
There are several clearly defined developmental pathways to delinquent behavior, and every child responds differently to risk and protective factors. Sound intervention by the juvenile court requires specific inquiry into a particular child's family, school performance, social activities, and other circumstances to identify risk and protective factors present in the child's life. The factors that cause youth to commit delinquent offenses do not disappear when they return home from the juvenile system (Treiber, 1998), and rehabilitation will fail if a youth returns to the same environment without the support and services needed to succeed (effective aftercare services involve the family, school, and community and take into account the child's therapeutic and academic needs).
Early Intervention and the Dependency Court
In addressing delinquent behavior, it is important to consider its developmental origins and intervene at the earliest opportunity to prevent it. Prevention efforts should include intensive, individualized intervention in the lives of dependent children so that the dichotomy between interventions with delinquent and dependent youth, and between the way their cases are handled, can be dissolved. Such efforts would ensure that the juvenile court may act to prevent delinquency before it takes root rather than simply prevent recidivism, a traditional outcome measure of the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Simply preventing another offense is inadequate.
Unless society devotes significant attention and resources to abused and neglected children, the juvenile court will not realize its potential. More than half the children who enter the child welfare system as a result of child maltreatment are under 7 years old (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). For these young victims, the juvenile court needs to consider their developmental and mental health needs. With a comprehensive picture of the child in mind, the juvenile court has its best opportunity to provide needed services.
Comprehensive and Interdisciplinary Interventions
The response of the juvenile system must be collaborative and interdisciplinary because children at risk are often the victims of cumulative disadvantage. Juvenile justice system professionals, in particular service providers, need to take into account the relationships between child maltreatment and other problems, including violence, substance abuse, and other high-risk behaviors. More research on how these factors combine to place dependent and delinquent youth at risk is essential, and the knowledge gained from this research should be used to reform practice, guide policy, and influence the design of interventions.
Society should devote significant attention and resources to abused and neglected children.
The Dependency Court Intervention Program for Family Violence, a national demonstration project in Miami, FL, provides an example of interdisciplinary work in jurisprudence. Funded by the Violence Against Women Office, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, this demonstration project seeks to address the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and family violence in a juvenile court setting (Lecklitner et al., 1999). Advocates are provided to battered mothers of dependent children, assessment instruments have been designed to measure the extent and impact of violence on children, and collaboration between the child welfare and domestic violence community has been fostered as the foundation of a communitywide approach to handling child abuse cases in which other forms of family violence are also present.
Because infants and toddlers can tell the court about their development through their actions, an assessment for use with children from 1 to 5 years old has been developed through this program, with assistance from Joy Osofsky, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Louisiana State University Medical Center. Parents and dependent children are videotaped in a number of structured and unstructured interactions. The developmental and cognitive functioning of the young child and his or her bonding and attachment with a caregiver are assessed. Preliminary data indicate that, while many of these dependent children are developmentally delayed, the developmental delays often go undetected. The Miami court is now able to reach these children earlier, enhancing their ability to develop in a healthy, age-appropriate manner.
The program is undergoing a rigorous process and outcome evaluation. A quasi-experimental research design is being used to develop data on the needs of children and their families when multiple forms of family violence are present. The demonstration project already has resulted in institutional reform intended to enhance child safety.
Every person or institution that touches a child's life and interacts with his or her family can contribute positively to that child's development.
Other innovative interventions have been developed to address the comorbidity of substance abuse and child maltreatment. By 1995, dependency and delinquency courts, building on the success of adult drug courts, had begun to experiment with similar collaborative processes that focus on a juvenile's recovery from drug dependency rather than on punishment. In addition to drug treatment, a variety of psychosocial interventions were marshaled to encourage recovery. The juvenile drug court team could look beyond the individual to the family and seek to change behavior by attacking problems that permeate the juvenile's environment: drug use, mental health needs, poverty, and poor parenting skills. There is hope that a youth's behavior can be modified by relying on some of the same processes used in adult drug courts, such as interdisciplinary teamwork, intensive judicial supervision, close monitoring of drug use, rewards, and sanctions. Long-term evaluations of juvenile drug court programs are under way.
Every person or institution that touches a child's life and interacts with his or her family can contribute positively to that child's development (Smith and Dabiri, 1995). The juvenile judge's role should be expanded to include leading the community in responding to the needs of its children. The California Rules of Court, for example, encourage juvenile judges to provide community leadership in determining the needs of at-risk children and families and obtaining and developing resources and services to address them.3 The larger society that contributed to the problem should also be part of the solution (Treiber, 1998). It is essential to learn more about collective efficacy and how neighborhoods can organize to protect and supervise their children. The heart of any institutional reform must begin with a community partnership for child protection (Executive Session on Child Protection, 1997) and a collective realization that every citizen is responsible for the well-being of all children, a responsibility that cannot be delegated to the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
School and community interventions are key to serving children's needs. The following types of interventions have demonstrated positive effects on reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors (Loeber and Farrington, 1998):
School organization interventions.
Comprehensive community interventions incorporating community mobilization.
Parental involvement and parental education.
Classroom-based social and behavioral skills curriculum.
Intensive police patrolling, targeting hotspots in particular.
Media campaigns to influence public attitudes.
Aftercare programs, specific to each child and each treatment program, are also important. The progress made by program participants will be limited unless it is followed up, reinforced, and monitored in the community (Altschuler, 1999).
Tomorrow's Juvenile Court
Modernizing and professionalizing the juvenile court requires that interdisciplinary training be provided to court staff—judges in particular. Knowing the law is not enough. Judges should be aware of available diagnostic tools, sensitive to the developmental needs of children and possible risks that they face, and proactive in efforts to prevent youth crime and violence (Smith and Dabiri, 1995).
There should be no need to wonder whether the juvenile court's work makes a difference. Juvenile court judges need to take the lead in promoting program evaluation as an integral part of each new intervention by demanding that services have been proven effective or are based on sound principles of proven effectiveness before more children and families are sent to participate in them. With the resources to conduct evaluations of promising and innovative programs, dedication, and a willingness to collaborate across disciplines, juvenile court and juvenile justice practitioners can answer the question of what works empirically.
The juvenile court should also stress its nonadversarial nature, keeping the child's best interest in mind by promoting a more sophisticated, less confrontational manner of adjudication (Schaller, 1997). The juvenile justice system should avoid duplicating the criminal court model, while protecting the fundamental rights of juveniles. A one-dimensional system dealing exclusively with adjudication would limit the juvenile court's potential to promote rehabilitation and the well-being of youth while protecting the community and serving victims. Adjudication culminating in individualized dispositions and based on the need for accountability and the best interest of youth and society should be the cornerstone of the juvenile court's work.
There should be no need to wonder whether the juvenile court's work makes a difference.
Despite the lack of resources and respect accorded juvenile courts, their overwhelming caseloads, and the many other challenges that confront them, they are staffed with professionals who reflect talent, dedication, and commitment.4 A fully functioning professional juvenile court has the potential to be the most effective prevention tool in the juvenile justice system. However, this cannot occur unless judges take the lead in revitalizing and professionalizing America's juvenile courts, using the results of scientific research, the promise of creative innovation, and the resources of the community. The Nation's societal pledge that "children come first" must not be allowed to ring hollow in, of all places, the halls of justice.5
The juvenile court has the potential to be the most effective prevention tool in the juvenile justice system.
Notes
"Dependency" and "dependent children" refer to children involved in dependency cases related to abuse, neglect, and abandonment.
387 U.S. 1 (1967).
California Rules of Court, 24(e) (1999).
In 1998, each juvenile court judge in Florida managed 3,273 cases, compared with 1,270 cases per judge in the criminal division and 1,357 cases per judge in the civil division. Amendment to Florida Rule of Juvenile Procedure 8.100(a), No. 84,021, at fn.3 (Fla. April 29, 1999).
See Amendment to Florida Rule of Juvenile Procedure 8.100(a), at 11.
References
Altschuler, D.M. 1999. Trends and issues in the adultification of juvenile justice. In Research to Results: Effective Community Correction, edited by P. Harris. Lanham, MD: American Correctional Association.
American Society of Criminology. 1997. Critical Criminal Justice Issues. Task Force Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.
Catalano, R.F., and Hawkins, J.D. 1996. The social development model: A theory of antisocial behavior. In Delinquency and Crime. Cambridge Criminology Series. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Children's Defense Fund. 1998. The State of America's Children. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 1996. Combating Violence and Delinquency: The National Juvenile Justice Action Plan. Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Courtney, M. In press. Research Needed to Improve the Prospects for Children in Out-of-Home Placement. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Executive Session on Child Protection. 1997. Child Protection: Building Community Partnerships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Hamilton, R., and McKinney, K. 1999. Job Training for Juveniles: Project CRAFT. Fact Sheet #116. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Howell, J.C., ed. 1995. Guide for Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders. Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Klein, E. 1998. Dennis the Menace or Billy the Kid: An analysis of the role of transfer to criminal court in juvenile justice. American Criminal Law Review 35:371-408.
Lecklitner, G., Malik, N., Aaron S., and Lederman, C.S. 1999. Dependency Court Intervention Program for Family Violence. Child Maltreatment 4(2):175-182.
Loeber, R., and Farrington, D. 1998. Never too early never too late: Risk factors and successful interventions for serious and violent juvenile offenders. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 7(1):16.
National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. 1998. From Generation to Generation: The Health and Well-Being of Children of Immigrant Families. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 1996. State Responses to Serious and Violent Juvenile Crime. Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Schaller, B. 1997. A Vision of American Law. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Smith, G.B., and Dabiri, G. 1995. The judicial role in the treatment of juvenile delinquents. Journal of Law and Policy 3:347-365.
Snyder, H.N., and Sickmund, M. 1999. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report. Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Torbet, P., and Szymanski, L. 1998. State Legislative Responses to Violent Juvenile Crime: 1996-97 Update. Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Trask, G. 1997. Diffusing the teenage time bomb. The Prosecutor 31(2):29-31.
Treiber H. 1998. Juvenile justice: Rehabilitating the system after the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences. Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy 3:175-189.
Widom, C.S. 1989. The cycle of violence. Science 244:160.
Yellen, D. 1996. What juvenile court abolitionists can learn from the failures of sentencing reform. Wisconsin Law Review 1996:577-600.
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