Crime & Delinquency

The Gault decision and the report of the President's Commis sion on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice have called attention to the longstanding failure of the juvenile court to carry out its stated purpose and have initiated major changes. From a place where attorneys were unwelcome, where probation officers tried to combine the roles of prosecutor and friendly advocate, where judges read probation and social study reports before hearing any evidence—and sometimes sought to make examples of juveniles for publicity purposes—the juvenile court is being transformed into a forum for a fair and impartial hear ing. This article describes some of the changes that have taken place and discussès the roles and responsibilities of those involved in the juvenile court process.

This article discusses the decision-making process of juvenile court judges and, more specifically, the factors associated with judicial decisions. Data were gathered over a three-year period on 1,210 adjudicated delinquents and included social background and delinquency history information, as well as scores on a stand ard personality inventory. The correctional facilities to which boys were assigned represent a rough continuum ranging from the minimal supervision of probation to the full confinement of a state reformatory. The general pattern of distribution is one in which the proportions of boys who are likely to be more disad vantaged, more delinquent, and more psychologically atypical increase from probation to the reformatory. To the extent that the programs are organized progressively to treat youths increas ingly more delinquent or possessing characteristics usually associ ated with delinquency risk, the court appears to be making effec tive dispositions.

This article discusses the relationship of child neglect and de linquency to poverty. A majority of neglect and delinquency cases can be attributed to economic stress. Yet the magnitude and nature of poverty in America are largely ignored by the social- work professions. Sociologically research has, for the most part, treated poverty as a dependent variable or a secondary influence on family social functioning. What is required, however, is to treat it as an independent variable or determinant factor. The failure to do so has created an educational vacuum on the subject of poverty in most social-work schools and in public agencies serving the poor.

The Gault decision has provoked extended discussion and de bate because of its revolutionary impact on juvenile justice. Every facet of the juvenile justice system, from police to institu tions, has been affected. This paper discusses the application of the decision to the pre-adjudication stage of the juvenile court proceeding. It shows how one court has made practical adjust ments at this stage and has found the guidelines established by Gault to be reasonable and workable.

The decision to confine a child in a juvenile hall is one of great responsibility. It requires that the law, the necessity for de tention, the protection of both the child and the community, and the ultimate effect of detention on the child himself all be con sidered. Who makes such a decision, and how is it made?

This study shows that the juvenile court hearing has a signifi cant impact on the child involved (particularly if it is his first hearing), rendering at least some children more capable of change during this phase in the delinquency pattern than during any later phase. This change capability seems to decrease markedly with the passage of time. It is suggested that if the change capability is not utilized the child's delinquent tendencies may be strengthened, rendering him less capable of change after the hearing than he was before it. Fear was the dominant emotion experienced by the children both before and during the hearing. The children felt most hostile toward the police and least hostile toward the judge, probably because (1) the children come to the hearing with a more negative stereotype of police than of the judge, (2) the police are more directly involved in uncovering the offense than is the judge, and (3) the judge is less directly accessible to the children and their parents, giving his role a greater aura of mystery than that of the police. Finally, it was found that during the interviews most children experienced difficulty in using abstractions, suggesting that delinquent children may learn to deal with abstractions at a later age (if at all) than non- delinquent children.

On the basis of data collected through a questionnaire from a sample of social workers and lawyers in a midwestern state, this study identifies the areas and extent of congruity and in congruity between the mutual expectations and perceptions of the two professions.

This study began with 179 elementary school children in 1954 and followed 151 of them to the end of the juvenile jurisdiction period. It succeeded for about three out of four cases in predict ing which boys would become known to juvenile court on a delinquency complaint by age seventeen.. These results were sur prisingly similar to those of the original retrospective study by the Gluecks, who devised the main prediction instrument. Pre dictions on a small sample of nondelinquents were not as ac curate as those reported by the Gluecks, but no generalizations are offered because of the sample's smallness.