Talk:Juvenile court

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 26 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Alexandria Paliszewski.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:32, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nataliedeerr.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Changes
I have edited this article as a part of my Global Youth Studies course at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. I have resolved the issues of the article lacking global perspective as well as adding more sources. Nataliedeerr (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Request for Clarification
In all but four states, anyone charged with committing a criminal act before his or her seventeenth or eighteenth birthday is initially processed as a juvenile defendant.

Does this mean that the act has to have been committed prior to the appropriate birthday, or that the charges must have been filed prior to the appropriate birthday? Brownie Charles (talk) 08:47, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

this is what i heard about juvenile. the only way you are going to juvi is if you commit a crime that is not in the seven deadly crimes cause if u you are a felony and you will be punished like a felony

Reform the Reform Section
" From this perspective, the construction of youth and being young is morphing . . . " This kind of language has no place in a credible encyclopedia. "Construction," a word used throughout the article, has an obtrusively ideological ring to it. Moreover, many readers would not even understand its meaning. The purpose of a Wiki article is not to provide people with an opportunity to parade their familiarity with fad theories of "sociol construction." Please morph. Orthotox (talk) 20:49, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions
"However, serious crimes and repeated offenses can result in sentencing juvenile offenders to prison, with transfer to a state prison upon reaching adulthood with limited maximum sentences, often until the age of 18, 21, 23 or 25." But not all juvenile offenders have limited sentences, right? Some would even have to stay in a prison without parole like Lionel Tate and John Anthony Silva, who were 13 and 15 respectively when they committed first degree murder at year 2000.

"In all but four states (Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Mexico, and New York), anyone charged with committing a criminal act before his or her seventeenth or eighteenth birthday is initially processed as a juvenile defendant." I am quite confused with this. If the crime is serious like rape or murder, the juvenile will still be processed in court as a juvenile and not as an adult in these states?

"The normal age of these defendants is under 18, but the age of majority changes based on the state or nation." I think this works since I heard that the age where offenders are tried as juveniles keep changing from 17, 18, to 20. It is not certain whether criminals at that age should be tried as a minor or an adult. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.51.93.171 (talk) 05:40, 5 October 2016 (UTC)


 * And then there's Travion Blount, who was 15 when he tagged along with several adults on a robbery, in the course of which a victim was injured by one of the adults. The robbers were all caught and convicted. The adults were all out of prison within ten years, but the 15-year-old somehow ended up receiving six life sentences, probably because being younger he wasn't as savvy about plea bargaining. Our criminal justice system operates like a game show where defendants are expected to wheel and deal and guess what's behind Door Number Three, and ignorance and inexperience are taken advantage of with sadistic glee. It's sick. --MopTop (talk) 16:58, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion*
The current juvenile court Wikipedia article introduces the entity and extrapolates on its affairs as if the main topic of concern is child offenders. While the handling of juvenile offenders and their crimes is the most common association made between the juvenile court and its affairs–and is thus most appealing to those wishing to learn about child offenders–I propose a reconstruction of the article, in light of the rise of the identification of child-involving crimes committed by adults, of which are often handled in juvenile courts.

My desire to advocate for the reconstruction of the current article derives from the fact that the first juvenile court was established in Chicago in 1899, in taking on the task of handling child abuse cases. As such, I think that providing more information on the history of the juvenile court would serve as a benefit to public comprehension in regards to the types of affairs that they handle. In addition, more precise use of linguistic terms–such as in the case of "juvenile offender"–would be of great educational value as well, since a term such as "juvenile offender" could be used to refer to an adult who offended a juvenile as well.

If this call for this kind of neutrality is accepted, I would like to point out that most of the article as it currently stands (for example, the "Models" section) speaks of the juvenile court and juvenile justice in specific regards to the handling of child criminals, and speaks in no regards to the handling of adult criminals who are deemed responsible for the neglect or physical abuse of a child.

Also, the article as it currently stands is lacking in information on juvenile justice systems and related policies in other countries; a provision of comparable information would be of great benefit to the public as well.

My vision for a reconstructed article would look as such:

Juvenile court
A juvenile court is a tribunal having special authority to pass judgements for crimes that involve children or adolescents who have not attained the age of majority.

...

The juvenile court is most commonly associated with the practice of handling crimes committed by those of juvenile age. However, while the juvenile court has been assigned the duty of handling the crimes of such specific persons, juvenile courts also undertake the trial of people who commit crimes against juveniles. This includes abusive parents and/or caretakers, parents who neglect their children, as well as adults who are at-risk of committing a crime against a child–in addition to juveniles who commit an offense against another juvenile.

....

Prehistory of the juvenile court
The proper way to raise, handle, and prepare children for adult life has been a topic of inquiry–assertably–since Pre-Christian times, and possibly before then. During the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th Century, philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke highlighted the importance of childhood and careful child-rearing. Their views highlighted the potential for a tabula rasa (blank slate) state of the juvenile, which was highly oppositional to prior beliefs that advised parents to raise their children through strict punishment and discipline, due to the concept of original sin. As a result, people began to view children as highly plastic and malleable, and the act of child-rearing received much more careful consideration from this time on.

As the treatment of children at home progressed from being a topic that was highly private to something that could be discussed between parents and other parents, eventually brought to light was the concept of child abuse, first officially addressed in the case of Mary Ellen McCormack. Orphaned, adopted, and then having suffered from the death of her adoptive father–Mary was subject to the physical abuse of her adoptive mother. The situation was reported by some neighbors to the Department of Public Charities and Correction, forwarded to The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (A.S.P.C.A.), and then handled by the New York State Supreme Court. Mary was successfully saved from further harm and eventually relocated and placed with her lawyer's family. Following this instance, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, assertably the first child protective agency in the world, was founded in December 1874.

Afterwards, during the progressive era where immigrants came in masses to the United States, there was a high frequency of wandering and homeless children–and most noticeably, child who were exhibiting "adult-like" criminal behaviors. These children caught the attention of lawmakers and social activists, and eventually constructed were the juvenile courts.

History
The first juvenile court came into existence in Cook County, Illinois in 1899....

Children were given the "privilege" of not being treated as adults, and of not having to defend themselves in court. ...

Reform
With the purest intentions, --Kekeo1121 (talk) 11:35, 24 January 2018 (UTC)Kekeo1121

War
The section on children soldiers is not clear. There is hardly any sourcing & just linguistically, it needs serious rewriting. It is not clear from the current section if this is global or just relating to the SL case.

This article is a mess
Besides the issues noted by others above, this article fails to address the other important purpose of a juvenile court: to supervise the removal of juveniles from households in which their parents are incapable of providing a functional parent-child relationship. Because juvenile delinquents often come from such households, many juvenile courts have been involved in child custody issues from the very beginning. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:11, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Child protective proceedings do not necessarily fall under a juvenile court. Michigan, for example, hears juvenile delinquency proceedings and child protective proceedings through the family division of the circuit court. Also, this article is international in its scope, even if presently heavily focused on the U.S., and it is important to generalize the manner in which a given state or states organize their courts and assume the same to be true internationally. Arllaw (talk) 03:37, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Correct, but Illinois, the pioneer in this field, puts both juvenile delinquency and abused/neglected/dependent children under the Juvenile Court Act. California and Washington also take the same approach too.  I think it was in the In re Chantal S. case where the California Supreme Court pointed out the fundamental difference: family court is for adjusting the relationship between two adults (including related issues of child custody and visitation) while juvenile court involves the state stepping in as parens patriae.  Anyway, juvenile law is not my area of expertise, so it is unlikely I would personally make such revisions.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 14:51, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Legal Research
— Assignment last updated by User78632 (talk) 15:33, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Change
The entry focuses on juvenile courts but only presents information about the juvenile court system in the United States. However, the establishment of juvenile courts varies from country to country due to legal, social, and cultural factors. To address the issue of lacking a global perspective, more information about juvenile courts from around the world needs to be added to the entry. As a graduate student studying WRIT6002 Writing for the Digital World at the University of Sydney, I have researched relevant laws regarding juvenile crime in China and added a subsection titled "Juvenile Courts in China." Iris10086 (talk) 11:52, 24 March 2024 (UTC)