Greenwood (2008) posits that it would be more economically practical if the focus was placed on preventing juveniles from becoming adult criminals. It appears that some efforts have been made in the most recent years to decrease the number of youth cases processed in the juvenile justice system however, this may be done by processing cases more informally or transferring cases to adult court. Although there was an intermediary increase, 31% of all delinquency cases resulted in either adjudication or waiver to criminal court in 2013, much similar to the 30% of all cases in 1985. According to the NJJC, despite the decrease in the volume of delinquency cases involving detention, the proportion of cases detained was larger in 2013 (21%) than in 1985 (19%).Between 19, the likelihood that a delinquency case would be handled informally (without petition for adjudication) decreased. The number of delinquency cases involving detention peaked in 2002, but decreased 44% through 2013 to the lowest level since 1985. More specifically, delinquency caseloads involving drug offenses, person offenses, and public order offenses increased, while property offense cases decreased between 19. The National Juvenile Justice Council (NJJC) estimates that the number of delinquency cases increased 30% between 19, however there was a 9% decrease between 19. In 1960 approximately 1,100 delinquency cases were processed daily, while in 2009 juvenile courts handled about 4000 delinquency cases daily, and in 2013, approximately 2900 delinquency cases were processed daily. Although youth have committed violent and nonviolent crimes at a lower rate in the past few decades, Harms (2002) posits that the number of youth processed via the juvenile justice system has increased. made revisions that allowed for juvenile offenders to be easily prosecuted in the adult criminal court and began to pass more punitive laws to address adolescent crime. Similar to the zero-tolerance attitude of the education system, in the early 1990s more than half of the states in the U.S. Consequently, the juvenile justice system developed an approach that uses a punishment/criminalization perspective over a rehabilitative/medicalization perspective. Prior to the 1980s, juveniles were seen as rehabilitative however, due to a short-lived surge in violent delinquency, protecting the community became the primary goal. The 1980s to the 1990s presented an interesting shift in the justice system’s treatment of juvenile offenders. This in turn resulted in the use of community-based programs rather than large institutions. In accordance with The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, the ultimate goal of juvenile justice was to divert youth from the formal, punitive processing of the adult justice system.
According to Garascia (2005), the juvenile justice system was originally both a rehabilitative and preventative approach, emphasizing the needs and rights of children over the appeal to punish them. The juvenile justice (detention, probation, youth corrections facilities, etc.) system is currently faced with the task of providing mental health assessments and treatment services for its youth, as there is greater reliance on the juvenile justice system to do so.
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