Our Court systems have always upheld the ambition to reach just
outcomes, but justice is not always served, especially in cases involving
juveniles. The United States’ judiciary process initially did not consider
juveniles. But it has developed to a system where youth have their own court
proceedings, services, and laws. The youth system has come a long way, since
its first court in Illinois in 1989, people have worked tirelessly to have a
just system for young children and young adults. A juvenile is considered to be
an individual, under the age of 18, resembling an adult. However, resembling an
adult does not always mean that juveniles will have an adult mindset. Thus,
juveniles may need extra attention to help get their lives on track. Different
court cases analyze various ways involving youth and corrections on facilities
and programs that made it seemed to have dictated unjust rulings for youth.
Initially in Ex Parte Crouse case, the court practiced and elaborated the
doctrine of Parens Patriae, where the state indicate that it had the right and
obligation to remove children from improperly supervised households to justify
the effort to protect the youth from the harsh criminal justice system and
parental abuse or neglecting. Although the courts may have been to protect
youth from the harsh criminal justice system, Commonwealth v Fisher stated
otherwise. A youth was given a seven-year sentence to a minor crime that would
have received a far lesser sentence if he were judged in an adult court.
Nonetheless, the courts explanation relied on the necessity of the long
sentence for the best interest of the child that would fall under the doctrine
of parens patriae. Through my perspective I come to believe that the court was
too harsh on its sentence to a youth, of which would be addressed and corrected
in In re Gault.
In
re Gault, a major court decision addressed many of the issues and flaws in
the court system that served the youth. This subsequent decision to Ex Parte Crouse, gave juveniles accused
of crimes in a delinquency proceedings many of the due process rights as
adults. The Juvenile court systems did not seem to be just with the procedures and
penalties with long prison sentences. Addressing that these sentences were
essential procedures to be clinical rather than punitive, through the courts
lens. I concur with the stated passage that comes to state that, “The failure
to observe the fundamental requirements of due process has resulted in
instances, which might have been avoided, of unfairness to individuals and
inadequate or inaccurate findings of facts of fact and unfortunate
prescriptions of remedy. Due process of law is the primary and indispensable
foundation of individual freedom(Reader 63).”
I do attest that In re Gault
has modified and addressed many of the infrequencies that the juvenile justice had initially began.
In regards to the essay, “Modifying Justice”, I feel that Jose Bonilla did a good job in pointing out the idea that, although we have made some progress when it comes to the juvenile justice system, we are still far from having a perfect system. I also liked how he gave summaries of the cases we reviewed in class in order to point out how the system changed after each case.
ReplyDeleteThe overall argument of the essay, however, was slightly unclear due to insufficient explanation of some of his opening claims. For example, in the first paragraph, Jose makes the claim: “But it has developed to a system where youth have their own court proceedings, services, and laws.” This makes it seem as though he is going to talk about more recent cases and recent law. I would have loved to see more information on the claims made in the opening paragraph (current law, age of the people in each case, current cases that have benefited from the old cases mentioned, etc.)
All in all, I thought that the claims in the opening paragraph showed that he was thinking of the subject very critically (which was great), but since there was a lack of information, it was difficult to identify the argument clearly.
Jose Bonilla in his essay, “Modifying Justice”, clearly outlined the transition of the juvenile system from one which deprived youth of due process to one which gave juveniles certain adult rights. One of the strengths in this paper is that Bonilla acknowledges the limits in the evolution of youth justice and does a great job summarizing key cases. On this note, though Bonilla did a great job summarizing the readings in some instances I felt it was more summary than analysis. Assuredly, giving the reader background context is a great way to introduce the reader into the topic the author plans to address; however, we have all done the readings, thus from my perspective, too much summary is not necessary and in fact can weaken the analysis. For instance, in the last paragraph the author inserts a quote from the text yet he failed to expand on it. He states he concurs with stated passage, but he does not state why he chose this particular quote. Had the author expanded on his ideas his paper would have been strengthened greatly.
ReplyDeleteThis essay generally summarizes and outlines the development of the Juvenile legal system. While Jose Bonilla draws a very helpful chronological guide of the development in juvenile legal affairs, I would offer to look deeper into the concept of “best-interest,” or in this case—with a similar context— “Parens Patriae” Firstly, it is important to note that the “best-interest” view is still used in family law (e.g. the best interest of the child in custody disputes) However, both in the juvenile and custody cases the suitability of the judge to make such decisions is brought to question. Putting aside the harsh punishment minors faced before the 20th century developments, the “Parens Patrae” was doomed to fail from the very beginning. “Improperly supervised households” is a broad term. In fact, It can be expected that many children who were being raised in improperly supervised households never encountered a judge. Yet, in many cases, including the ones discussed in class, the judge was responsible for deciding what was in the “best-interest” of the minor in question. Today this same “judge as the head of the family” exists. Is it correct for a judge to decide what is in the “best interest” of a minor?
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ReplyDeleteI think that my colleague did a great job summarizing the main points of these three cases, which show the great strides juvenile law has hanged. However, I believe there is a long way to go in terms of fair use of the law throughout the United States. For example, even looking at current affairs within the last few years, it can be seen that juveniles still have their rights taken away in extremely similar ways that replicate many of these court cases. One of the examples would be the suspension of students for wearing anti-war shirts which is very similar to the Tinker case. There are many more cases where the state also takes guardianship of a minor even though they technically have a parent still (a same sex partner is not legally considered the parent). In many of these cases depending on the state, the law is inappropriately abused and children don't receive their full rights. There is also the issue of looking at children as "rights holders" because they are still young and naive, but by seeing children as "rights holders" one must assume that they have the appropriate amount of knowledge to make the best decisions for themselves. Like another colleague mentioned, an example of such a decision could be a child custody hearing where the child essentially must live with which parent based on the testimony of the child. In this sense, the question that formed in my mind after reading this post was what if by giving the power to the juvenile, at some point, it ends up becoming not in the best interest of the child.
ReplyDeleteThis essay does a good job of explaining and summarizing these historically important cases about juvenile justice, and how these cases exposed certain flaws in the juvenile justice system. One interesting point that could have been elaborated on a bit more is the statement that juveniles don't really have an adult mindset. Adults lack insight when it comes to youth mindset, and as adults play a major role in forming youth laws, this may cause problems and misunderstandings in certain laws developed and court decisions.
ReplyDeleteThis essay may have also been improved if it explained more as to why it supports the arguments made and certain case decisions. For example, explaining why the court was too harsh in its early decisions in the Crouse and Fisher cases would make the argument clearer and stronger. Overall, however, it was a good summary and explanation of the development of the youth justice system.
Sam Thomas
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis essay did a god job of showing how the juvenile justice system has evolved throughout the years. The main things it outlined was the perception of youths over the last 100 years, and how they were not considered right holders, were subject to harsh punishments, and were not entitled to due process until the Gault case. Overall this is a large leap as it paved the way for youths being considered as right holders later on. Considering what we have learned so far, I think the writer did a good job of giving us the events that have shaped our juvenile justice system in chronological order.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not feel that giving youths due process is enough to consider the juvenile courts functioning properly or if they are just, but it is nonetheless true that without due process we would not be able to tackle the problem at all. Hopefully as we go forward we can do a better job of remedying and rehabilitating the youths that find themselves in these types of situations.
"Modifying Justice" by Jose Bonilla, does a great job creating a chronological summary of cases that have developed the juvenile justice system. For the most part, the essay is created in a manner reinforcing the progress of the juvenile system, but does not clearly explain the faults that led to the changes. It's pointed out that the punishment for juvenile crimes was more punitive compared to that of adults, however one could argue that this was due to the importance of "extra attention" (Bonilla) that juveniles needed due to their lack of a fully developed mental capacity as stated in his argument. I feel as though the essay could include more of the issues within the cases, in order to better understand the results of the cases. In terms of explaining the results and in effect that changes that took place, Jose did a great job summarizing the outcomes.
ReplyDeletePersonally I agree that sentences for juveniles were unreasonable, but I feel that the logic behind them was reasonable. However, I feel that system in place for rehabilitation was the issue, and in effect that cause of the long term sentences. If the rehabilitation locations were better able to understand the issues at hand and how to deal with them, shorter sentences would have possibly been the norm.
I agree and disagree on whether or not a sentence such as the one given in Common v. Fisher is too harsh for a youth. Although I agree that resembling an adult does not always mean that juveniles will have an adult mindset, I disagree that juveniles can not understand the consequences of their actions. Giving long sentences under parens patriae to prevent a youth from engaging in risky behavior makes sense. But in the other hand I also disagree since long sentences may seem too harsh however depending on the situation.
ReplyDeleteAdults may not be able to understand a youth mindset and neither may a youth understand an adult's, but adults I believe make judgements not based on the needs of the youth but in societal terms. Overall the colleague did a good job summarizing.