SOC-3360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Juvenile Court
Document Summary
Police discretion: the choice a police officer makes between two or more possible means of handling a situation: discretion needs to be both professional and personal, only 10-20% of police juvenile encounters become official contacts. 4/5 of the delinquency cases handed by juvenile courts: detention: the police officer can issue a citation, refer the youth to the juvenile court, and take him or her to a detention center. An intake worker at the detention center then decides whether the juvenile should be returned to the parents or left at the detention center. A juvenile is left in detention when he or she is thought to be dangerous to self or others in the community or has no care in the home. Placing youths in detention facilities clearly must be a last resort. Brown v. mississippi (1936): confessions cannot be extracted by police violence. Haley v. ohio (1948): methods used in obtaining juvenile"s confession violated the due process.
