| Chapter
2
Juvenile
Justice
By
Jack Kresnak
Introduction
Every day, judges conduct secret hearings to decide the fate of
thousands of children and their families. Covering America's
maddeningly secretive juvenile justice system presents not only
a great challenge for a journalist, but is a public service that
helps kids and makes for fascinating reporting that readers relish.
This chapter will recount the history of juvenile justice in the
United States, describe the complexities of the system and offer
ways to overcome the challenge of confidentiality, as well as ideas
for stories that will make a difference.
In the 19th century, children who committed crimes faced about
the same punishments as adult criminals: public shaming, incarceration,
even execution by hanging. At least 10 juveniles who were under
14 at
the time of their offense were executed during the 1800s, including
two who were just 10 years old, says the Washington-based Coalition
for Juvenile Justice. A criminal was a criminal, regardless of
age, maturity or deplorable family life.
Wayward kids were placed in poorhouses where they were worked
hard, disciplined firmly and, if they were lucky, allowed to learn
a trade. Children accused of serious violent crimes were thrown
into jails with adults, where they risked all manner of abuse and
exploitation, including rape.
Toward the end of the 19th century, reformers such as Jane Addams
of Chicago's Hull House worked to develop a new system of justice
designed to protect abused children from harm and to reform trouble-making
youths. With the Juvenile Court Act of 1899, the state of Illinois
created the nation's first court of justice for children.
One motivating factor was the unease of some state officials
over the growing numbers of jury nullifications – acquittals
of obviously guilty young offenders by jurors who knew what kids
faced in adult prisons. In the new juvenile court, children would
no longer be seen as miniature adults and sentenced to prison.
Nor would they be considered property owned by parents; the state
took upon itself the authority to remove abused, neglected, or
exploited children from their families.
On July 3, 1899, Cook County Court Judge Richard S. Tuthill held
the nation's first juvenile court hearing. The Chicago Tribune wrote that, "Henry Campbell, 11 years old, living with his
parents at 84 Hudson Avenue, was arrested last week on the complaint
of his mother, Mrs. Lena Campbell, she charging him with larceny." Tuthill "left
the group of probationary officers with whom he had been in consultation
and in an informal way disposed of the case," the Tribune wrote.
Tuthill then turned to a petition for "four boys of tender
years" being held at the county poorhouse at Dunning, "which
the petitioner declares is an unfit place for them." The Tribune
identified all four – Johnny Host, Thomas McNally, Antonio Polo
and Leslie Coleman – children who had not committed any crime but
who were neglected by their parents and probably homeless. Their
ages were not reported.
Chicago journalists continued reporting that week on the nascent
juvenile justice system and named other wayward kids: "Little
Steve Gubisich is brought into the new juvenile court as an incorrigible," read
one headline.
Over subsequent decades, other states followed Illinois' lead
and juvenile courts developed into a firm but fair surrogate parent
trying to balance protection with punishment. Juvenile court judges
acted like doctors trying to diagnose the environmental factors
that threatened to hurt kids or lead them astray. Judges would
take into account the child's maturity level and family dynamics
before prescribing a program of help. The guiding principle was
to do what was "in the best interest of the child."
Even the vernacular of juvenile court differentiated juvenile
justice from the criminal justice system. A child accused of
a law violation was not a defendant who could be found guilty
of a crime, but a "respondent" who was responsible
for an act of delinquency. The juvenile justice system would
be kept separate from adult trial courts and handled instead
by probate courts that also dealt with commitments of mentally
ill persons to insane asylums and oversaw the estates of the
elderly, the infirm or the dead (absent a will).
People believed that children were far more amenable to rehabilitation
than were adult criminals. Kids could be saved from a life of crime
by firm guidance and adequate schooling. Juvenile court would be
the place where abused children were protected and misbehaving
children corrected. Most juvenile crime fell into the range of
thefts, fights and "status offenses" – things like running
away from home, skipping school, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes
that are violations only because of the child's status as a minor.
An early version of the Illinois law creating the juvenile court
called for confidential proceedings. But the courts were kept open
after several legislators and child advocates expressed fears
that the court would engage in child slavery or baby-selling.
They worried that do-gooders would take children away from impoverished
or troubled families and send those children to upper-class couples
who could not have children or even to other states where they
could be adopted by farming families.
Beginning in the 1850s, needy children were put on trains in New
York and sent to states like Michigan, Iowa and Kansas. The so-called "Orphan
Trains'' operated until about the 1920s and, although exact numbers
are unknown, an estimated 150,000 children were exported to less-populous
areas. At each stop, farmers would choose a child or two to adopt,
often separating siblings who never saw each other again.
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