History of Juvenile Justice

In early America their was no such thing as a separate Juvenile Justice system. This means kids were put in the same place as murders and child molesters. Finally some people saw this was wrong and reformed it. After the juvenile justice system was made there was a big difference in opinion about when a child is juvenile and when they are counted as an adult. Even though the Juvenile Justice system was made some states still allowed for children to berried as adults. This varied by state mostly. Some state had certain crimes, such as murder, that would land a Juvenile in an adult court. In 1997 46 states passed laws that allowed Juveniles to be reassigned to an adult court. For the the most part when a child was put in a adult prison their sentence was generally shorter. However, some court were not so nice. Some court tried children and sometimes those kids would be put away for life or sentenced to death. In the 1988 the Supreme Court passed a law that made it illegal to sentence a child younger than 16 to death. Today a lot more regulations have been passed to regulate juvenile justice system. Also today their are only about 15 states who still have laws to allow children to be tried as adults.

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Sources
-Juvenile Justice." Crime and Punishment in America Reference Library. Ed. Richard C. Hanes, et al. Vol. 2: Almanac, Volume 2. Detroit: UXL, 2005. 340-357. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 27 Feb. 2014