CJ ST 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Juvenile Court, The Bronx
18 Nov 2018
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Proposal from james q wilson and barbara boland. The most severe criminals will have multiple arrests in childhood and teens. The sealing of juvenile records gives young career criminals a clean slate upon entering adulthood. It will take a few more years for the offender to accumulate enough arrests, convictions and failures before he or she can be stopped and labeled as a chronic adult offender. Incarcerating offenders in their mid-to-late 20s captures a group whose offending is already waning. Aka no juvenile court, just one big system. Juvenile records should not be sealed but utilized and considered part and parcel of the offender"s entire criminal career. Because most adolescent criminals grow out of it and never offend again as adults, they do not deserve to have their record ruined for being young and dumb. The absolute claim that criminal justice agencies ignore juvenile records is not true. Officers are aware of history even if it is recorded/available.
