Law - Court System

Many studies have been more concern with the victim's rights movement in the capital and criminal cases. Studies have not paid attention to the intersection of the victims' rights and juvenile justice system. According to the argument of these authors, victim impacts statements move the juvenile court too far from the original mission. It also affects report delivered in the highly charged environment of the courtroom, and it is impossible to produce satisfaction and the catharsis that the victim is seeking after the offense. Kristin Henning is from Georgetown University of Law, and this means that the information provided is based on her understanding of this concept. However, the year of publication of this article raises questions concerning its authenticity. While this article is indicating that less research has been on the intersection of the victim rights and the juvenile justice system, more studies have been done after its publication. Therefore, this statement cannot be true. Thus, relying on this article as a source by the future scholars can be misguiding.

Lehmann, P. S., Chiricos, T., & Bales, W. D. (2017). Sentencing transferred juveniles in the adult criminal court. Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice, Apr 2017; 15(2): 172-190. 19p.

This article is based on the comparison of the criminal court sentences given to the transferred juveniles with those assigned to the adults. No study has been conducted to explore the disparities in the sentencing of the juvenile criminals who have been moved to adult court. Most of the researchers have been based on the race and ethnicity which is related to harsh punishment outcomes amongst adult defendants. This is an indication that this article can be relied upon in future studies because it is based on the research of new things. The outcome of this study shows that black transferred juveniles are more likely to face sentences or be imprisoned. They also serve longer sentences than the whites. However, the Hispanic are penalized in the sentence to jail. Authors of this article are professionals in the areas in which this study is based. For example, Ted Chiricos is a professor of criminology and hold a postgraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts. This increases the authenticity of this article. This article was also produced recently thus making it be more reliable.

Mack, J. W. (1909). The juvenile court. Harvard Law Review. Dec 1909, Vol. 23, Issue 2, p104-122, 19p.

In this article, the author states that the court was formed because of the general societal questions of why the state is not bound by the duty to secure and guard, and afterward care for and guide the children that are living within its borders when they have been involved in the violation of the law or even violating the social, moral behavior. There is a need for formalized procedures to uphold fair and justifiable sanctions as the informal settings are being maintained. Author of this article discusses the effectiveness of personality of the judge and why it is crucial to preserve the legal and natural rights of males and kids. The date of publication of this article makes it be unreliable source even though it might be useful in some cases. More researchers have been conducted concerning the same topic, and probably those willing to study the same topic are likely to rely on recent sources. There are no graphs, numerical figures and table to explain the trend in the juvenile court system.

Mears, D. P. Cochran, J. C., Stults, B. J. et al. (2014). The 'true' juvenile offender: Age effects and juvenile court sanctioning. Criminology: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 52(2), May 2014, pp. 169-194.

In this article, authors were much concerned regarding a little study which has been aimed at examining how age guides the juvenile court in the determining which youth in the legal justice system merit specific disposition more so those which reflects the court's emphasis on the rehabilitation. This study hypothesized that court put much focus on the youth in the middle range of the court's age of jurisdiction. This study relied on the data from Florida. This study relied on the secondary sources by using data from Florida juvenile court. Reliance on the secondary sources makes the article to be built on so much by the future scholars. Secondary sources can be some cooked data, and they can produce results that are different from the known trend. This article does not have a numerical figure, tables, and percentage to explain the pattern concerning what is being discussed. This, therefore, makes it an authentic article.

Paulsen, M. G. (1966). Juvenile courts, family Courts, and the poor man. California Law Review. May 66, Vol. 54, Issue 2, p694. 23p. 

This piece of writing presents an argument on the issues of the juvenile court, family court, and miserable man. Young people are brought to court, and some of them are poor. These children would hardly benefit when taken to tribunal handling adult offenders. Juvenile courts prevent harm doing less damage than the criminal courts would to the children when they reach the middle age. The author of this article has relied on the past outside sources to support his arguments. The work is also not supported by evidence of numbers, percentages, and charts as well as graphs thus making it be an unauthentic and unreliable article. Most of the reference works used in this article are based on the past studies that any scholar willing to undertake the same topic of the study cannot be ready to depend on in the development of his or her research. Useful study must be having evidence of graphics to make the reader to be more attentive and to compare the trend on what is being discussed.

Peck, J. H., Leiber, M. J. & Brubaker, S. J. (2014). Gender, race, and juvenile court outcomes: An examination of status offenders. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Vol 12(3), Jul 2014, pp. 250-267.

This article attempted to understand the individual and the joint impacts of gender and race on the treatment of status criminals at two decision making stages of the juvenile justice system. Results from this study show that gender and race as single and when combined affect the case outcomes regarding severity and leniency. Jennifer Peck is who is one of the authors of this article is from the school of criminology and criminal justice at the department of criminology at the University of Florida. This, therefore, makes this article to be authentic. However, the reliability of this source is in question. The reason being that most of the sources used in referencing this article are not from the recent works. Information changes with time and relying on the past sources can be unsuitable for the future scholars. Another thing is that there are no percentages, graphs, and tables to illustrate what has been discussed in this article. The authenticity of this article is therefore reduced.

Petitclerc, A., Gatti, U. & Vitaro, F. (2013). Effects of juvenile court exposure on crime in young adulthood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 54, n3 p291-297 Mar 2013.

This piece of writing presents a study on the impact of the court exposure on crime in young children. Authors of this article employ a longitudinal study of 1,037 boys coming from low socioeconomic areas of Montreal. This research indicates that juvenile courts have failed to minimize adolescents' criminal behavior. The authors of this article employed the propensity score matching for the assessment of the effect of juvenile court processing into the young adulthood. The outcome of this study indicates that the risk of conviction for an adult offense was 50 percent of the court-processed subjects in comparison to the 24.3 percent of their matched counterparts. The outcome also shows that there were 0.39 violent crimes compared to the 0.15 for the matched peers. Authors of this article have used numerical figures, tables, and percentages. Also, the sources used in referencing this article are a recent one, and this increases the authenticity and reliability of this article. Authors of this article have recommended for more research and knowledge transfer on the effective interventions to minimize recidivism amongst youths committing crimes.

Ross, Daniel A. (2012). Rethinking the road to gault: Limiting social control in the juvenile court, 1957-1972. Virginia Law Review. Apr 2012, Vol. 98, Issue 2, p425-477. 53p. 

Even if most of the present scholarship consider the Supreme Court's decision of the year 1967 in re Gault that offered some procedural rights to juvenile to act as the starting point of the juvenile justice reform, this view has ignored the substantive argument and the legislative transformation in preceding the rules made by the courts. Authors of this article relied so much on the pats archival sources to evaluate the beliefs as well as the achievements of the lawyers, judges, probation officials, and the professors who contributed to the resisted change in the administration of juvenile justice before and after Gault. Revising of substantive law and the formalization of the procedure, reformers can transform the juvenile court to an institution that treats young law offenders with dignity as well as permitting the non-violent offenders to live their lives free from social controls of other people. During this age of incarceration, this paper could have reconsidered juvenile court's purposes.

Stein, D. M., Homan, K. J. & DeBerard, S. (2015). The effectiveness of juvenile treatment drug courts: A meta-analytic review of literature. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse. Mar/Apr 2015, Vol. 24, Issue 2, p80-93. 14p.

This study was based on the determining the effectiveness of the juvenile treatment drug courts. This was a meta-analytic review of the literature using 31 past studies that have evaluated recidivism rates from juvenile drug treatment courts relative to the randomly assigned group. The result of this study indicates that young drug court treatment program youths, relative to controls recorded a slight gain than short-lasting pre-to-post program evaluation. Authors of this article concluded that the presently available studies do not support the view that juvenile drug courts are used for the minimization of the recidivism than the traditional court processing. This study showed a variation in the effects of juvenile drug courts in the outcomes examined. This indicates that the sources used were inconsistent. Only one, i.e., Michael Scott is known to be working in the department of psychology at Utah State University. This, therefore, leads to the questioning of the authenticity of the source because of the author if a given article must be having some experience in that particular field.

Zan, J. & Dannerbeck, A. (2011). Exploring the relationship between gender, mental health needs, and treatment orders in a metropolitan juvenile court. Journal of Child & Family Studies. Feb 2011, Vol. 20, Issue 1, p9-22. 14p.

Authors of this study explored personal, social, and the legal factors that are connected with various types of mental health treatment orders in Missouri metropolitan court which hosts a majority of African-American youths. This study aimed at knowing whether judge’s order mental health treatment based on the indicators of the requirements or whether they stick to the pattern in other research where the demographic and legal variables are the key indicators. The outcomes of this study reveal that while men and women are similar in mental health status, they vary regarding the psychological needs and the criminal patterns. Authors of this article are working in the Supreme Court of Missouri, office of state courts administrator. Therefore, this means that they understand well about the relationship between gender, mental health needs, and the treatment orders within the court. This, thus, makes this article to be authentic. Also, the used sources are from the recent works which contain current information. However, there are neither figures nor graphs that have been used in this article. This, therefore, makes the reliability of this article to be in limbo.

Zottoli, T. M.; Daftary-Kapur, T. & Zapf, P. A. (2015). We don’t always mean what we say: Attitudes toward statutory exclusion of juvenile offenders from juvenile court jurisdiction. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, Vol 15(5), Oct 2015, pp. 423-448.

This study was based on the fact that human does mean what they say. This was the attitude towards the statutory exclusion of the Juvenile offenders from the court jurisdiction. The hypothesis tested in this study is that beliefs are supporting regulatory exclusion laws measured in the absences of particular case-specific details are unlikely to be the perfect indicator of agreement with such rules in practice. Authors of this study discovered that support of the statutory exclusion is affected by the exposure to information on the extraordinary offender condition and by the exposure to general scientific information on the adolescent development. Tina Zottoli is working at Montclair State University at the psychology department while Patricia Zapf is working at the City University of New York at John Jay College of criminology in the department of psychology. This, therefore, implies that this article is authentic and can be relied upon for further studies.