Modernity In Criminology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Modernity In Criminology - Essay ExampleThese alone-important(a) and procedural reforms have converted the historical ideal of the youthful tap as a public assistance agency into a quasi-penal system that provides young offenders with neither therapy nor justice.The positivists who executed the juvenile court conceived of it as an informal well-being system in which judges made dispositions in the best interests of the child. In 1967 the Supreme Court in In re Gault granted juveniles some constitutional procedural rights in delinquency hearings and provided the impetus to vary juvenile courts procedures, jurisdiction, and purposes. (Feld, 1999, 24-25) The ensuing procedural and substantive convergence between juvenile and criminal courts eliminated virtually all the conceptual and operational differences in strategies of social soften for youths and adults. Even proponents reluctantly acknowledge that juvenile courts oft fail either to save children or to reduce youth crime . In short, the contemporary juvenile court constitutes a conceptually and administratively bankrupt institution with neither a rationale nor a justification. concord to Paul (2002, 69-70) social structural and cultural changes fostered both the initial creation and contemporary transformation of the juvenile court. Ideological changes in cultural conceptions of children and in strategies of social control during the nineteenth century led positivists to create the juvenile court in 1899. ... s combined new theories of criminality, such as positivism, with new ideas more or less childhood and adolescence to construct a social public assistance alternative to criminal courts. They designed juvenile courts to suffice flexibly to youths criminal and non-criminal misconduct, to assimilate and integrate poor and immigrant children, and to expand control and supervision of young slew and their families. (Tanenhaus, 2004, 111-112)The juvenile court positivists removed children from the criminal justice and corrections systems, provided them with individualized treatment in a separate system, and substituted a scientific and preventive alternative to the criminal laws punitive policies. By separating children from adults and providing a reconstructive alternative to punishment, juvenile courts also rejected criminal laws jurisprudence and its procedural safeguards, such as juries and lawyers. new-fashioned courts flexible and discretionary strategies enabled its personnel to differentiate and discriminate between their own children and other peoples children, those of the poor and immigrants. (Duffy, 2004, 39)A century later, social structural changes have modified the cultural conceptions of young people and the strategies of social control that juvenile courts employ. These changes leave the juvenile court, as an institution, searching for a new policy foundation and healthy rationale. (Kittrie, 2000, 156-157) Since Gault, social structural, demographic, and l egal changes have altered dramatically juvenile courts structure and functions, the characteristics of their clientele, and the crime and social welfare issues that they confront. The social construction of adolescence as a developmental stage distinct from adulthood and new sensibilities most children began to pose