ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the experience of African American children in the juvenile justice system. It provides an overview of the early juvenile court—its structural origins, philosophical underpinnings, historic mission, and discriminatory practices. The chapter examines the Warren Court’s due process revolution of the 1960s—its response to racial inequality, its decisions to grant delinquents some procedural safeguards, and its intended and unintended consequences. It explains why and how perceptions of youth and crime changed during the Get Tough Era of the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter also examines adolescent culpability and competence through the lens of Supreme Court decisions reaffirming that “children are different.” The Supreme Court developed its jurisprudence of youth—“children are different”—in response to get-tough laws that ignored adolescents’ reduced culpability. The political and legal responses to African Americans provide the connection between the Warren Court’s emphases on civil rights and procedural justice and subsequent efforts to get tough on youth crime.
