American Juvenile Justice

✍ Scribed by Franklin E. Zimring

• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 259
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

American Juvenile Justice is a definitive volume for courses on the criminology and policy analysis of adolescence. The focus is on the principles and policy of a separate and distinct system of juvenile justice. The book opens with an introduction of the creation of adolescence, presenting a justification for the category of the juvenile or a period of partial responsibility before full adulthood. Subsequent sections include empirical investigations of the nature of youth criminality and legal policy toward youth crime. At the heart of the book is an argument for a penal policy that recognizes diminished responsibility and a youth policy that emphasizes the benefits of letting the maturing process continue with minimal interruption. The book concludes with applications of the core concerns to five specific problem areas in current juvenile justice: teen pregnancy, transfer to criminal court, minority overrepresentation, juvenile gun use, and youth homicide.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
Part I: Adolescence: Social Facts and Legal Theory......Page 16
one: Childhood and Public Law before the Revolution......Page 18
two: Modern Adolescence as a Learner’s Permit......Page 30
three: The Problem of Individual Variation......Page 36
Conclusion to Part I......Page 42
Part II: A Rationale for American Juvenile Justice......Page 44
four: The Common Thread: Diversion in Juvenile Justice......Page 46
five: Penal Proportionality for the Young Offender: Notes on Immaturity, Capacity, and Diminished Responsibility......Page 62
Part III: The Adolescent Offender......Page 84
six: Kids, Groups, and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret......Page 86
seven: Two Patterns of Age Progression in Adolescent Crime......Page 104
eight: The Case of the Disappearing Superpredator: Some Lessons from the 1990s......Page 118
Part IV: Policy Problems in Modern Juvenile Justice......Page 136
nine: The Jurisprudence of Teen Pregnancy......Page 138
ten: Juvenile or Criminal Court? A Punitive Theory of Waiver......Page 152
eleven: Reducing the Harms of Minority Overrepresentation in American Juvenile Justice......Page 172
twelve: Choosing a Coherent Policy toward Juveniles and Guns......Page 188
thirteen: The Hardest of the Hard Cases: The Young Homicide Offender......Page 206
Notes and References......Page 232
A......Page 250
C......Page 251
D......Page 252
G......Page 253
I......Page 254
L......Page 255
P......Page 256
R......Page 257
S......Page 258
Z......Page 259