Brown Undergraduate Law Review — Vol. 2 No. 2 (Spring 2021)

The Failure of the Treatment of Low-Level Offenders in the Juvenile Justice System
may be grounds for concern that the child receives the
worst of both worlds: that he gets neither the protections
accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative
treatment postulated for children.? 94 The children in the
juvenile justice system are exposed to the worst of both
worlds, and will continue to be harmed in this system until
low-level offenses are removed from the jurisdiction of
these ?kangaroo courts?altogether, and placed instead into
the care of the community.
strategies that effectively rehabilitate status offenders,
instead of involving a court system that is proven to
increase future criminality. Community-based programs,
that center the family and provide group therapy, have
consistently improved outcomes for juveniles, both
empirically and in observed changes. These methods are
also cost-effective for the state and follow the founding
principle of juvenile justice: rehabilitation.
While more procedural protections, zealous attorney
Conclusion
advocacy for children, and rehabilitative-minded
approaches can incrementally fix problems in the juvenile
In November 2020, 50 prosecutors and 90 current and
justice system, these solutions can not override the
former probation officers issued a joint statement with the
discriminatory and punitive founding of the juvenile
organization EXiT (Executives Transforming Probation
justice system. Children who have been stripped of their
and Parole) calling to end incarceration for technical
liberty do not feel rehabilitated. Justice Fortas feared
probation violations, downsize probation, and make
supervision more individualized and goal-orientated.? 95 children were receiving the ?worst of both worlds? within
the juvenile justice system, and more than 50 years later,
Even those most intimately involved in this surveillance
his warning still rings true.
system, prosecutors and probation officers, recognize that
this two billion dollar system has gone too far. While a
step in the right direction, reforms in the juvenile justice
system have not fixed a system broken from inception. The
failure of the juvenile justice system reaches farther
beyond an overzealous probation system and the
incarceration of low-level offenses for crimes better
handled by community rehabilitation. The largest failure of
the juvenile justice system is its systemic robbing of liberty
from children. Instead of protection and benevolent
rehabilitation, children are robbed of their liberty and due
process in the name of control and punishment.
Through state statute, the jurisdiction over status offenders
can be removed from juvenile or family courts and placed
in social services. By ending juvenile jurisdiction over
status offenders, officials will be forced to reexamine
social services, community interventions and other
programs that play a role in the rehabilitation of these
youth. This can encourage investment in community-based
94. Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 556, (1966).
95. Miriam A. Krinsky and Vincent Schiraldi, ?Community supervision, once intended to help offenders, contributes more to mass incarceration,?
USA Today, November 19, 2020.
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