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"The Contradictions of Juvenile Crime & Punishment"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of a new piece by Jeff Fagan, which appears in the terrific recent issue of Daedalus concerning mass incarcertation and is available here via SSRN. Here is abstract: This essay explores the contradictions and puzzles of modern juvenile justice, and illustrates the enduring power of the child-saving philosophy of the juvenile court in an era of punitiveness toward offenders both young and old.  The exponential growth in incarceration in the U.S. since the 1970s has been more restrained for juveniles than adults, even in the face of a youth violence epidemic that lasted for nearly a decade. Rhetoric has grown harsher in the wake of moral panics about youth crime, juvenile codes now express the language of retribution and incapacitation, yet the growth in incarceration of juveniles was attenuated and declined more responsively to declining crime rates...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 13, 2010 (boomark / email).