Reasons for failure in the California Juvenile Justice system

The Failures of California Juvenile Justice System

Introduction

This study is aimed at getting into the underlying reasons that have brought about inefficiency in the juvenile justice system of the state of California . To achieve this various persons will be interviewed for their opinions and various publications be reviewed

This research will intend to demystify questions like what indeed are the legal failures of the California Juvenile Justice System what are the social failures of the system and the persons responsible for both the social and legal failures of the system

p Literature Review

The primary goal for justice systems is to offer rehabilitation to the people found culpable of crimes they are accused of and the same time offer deterrent measure to the society in to stop an occurrence of the same

Crime whether committed by adults or juveniles has its cost . In fact crime costs billions of dollars each year . There are two major types of costs : monetary and human . Monetary costs can be estimated by identifying criminal justice system operating costs and offender-processing costs . Human costs refer to the lost lives and unused human potential of the thousands of the homicide victims each year . The billion annually . Several components of the criminal justice system can be fairly accurately measured . These include tangible police corrections , and court budgets . Other component costs are more difficult to measure accurately . These include net losses from robbery , burglary and larceny e .t .c (Roberts 2003 :8 . These human and monetary costs negatively affect the society at large , hence the need for effective justice systems

The juvenile justice system is therefore , expected to cushion society from criminal damage caused by minors by rehabilitating the offenders in what has come to be referred to as restorative justice . In essence according to the restorative justice paradigm , the function of (juvenile ) justice should not be to punish , not even to (re )educating but to repair or to compensate for the harm caused by the offense (Bazemore and Walgrave 1999 : 131

As if not enough , recent debates on juvenile justice policy and larger concern about crime have focused on whether to pursue a `get tough policy as opposed to the traditional rehabilitative approach to juvenile justice . Proponents of `getting tough ' with violent juvenile offenders see the juvenile justice system as `the first revolving door ' in the American criminal justice system . In a January 1996 report of the Council on Crime in America , the council maintained that ' stronger laws enforcement and incarceration can work to restrain violent juvenile and adult criminals , enhance public safety , and restore public trust in the justice system - and in representative government itself (Lawrence Moore 2003 : 97

While talking about violence as punishment , Senator Tom Hayden noted that there is evidence that we are permitting punishment - both psychological and physical - to be part of serving time for one 's crimes . It is apparently not sufficient for individuals to merely serve their sentence for crimes committed . Beyond the punishment imposed by the judge , their time...