ABSTRACT
The juvenile justice system in the United States was created well over one hundred years ago as an informal system that focused on the best interests of the child. As a consequence, procedural safeguards were not paramount, as the prevailing philosophy was one of rehabilitation rather than punishment. Beginning in the early part of the last century, juvenile courts “viewed children as more malleable and more amenable to rehabilitation than adults and believed that they were not solely responsible for their criminal conduct, which was thought to be due to poverty and parental neglect” (Redding, Goldstein, & Heilbrun, 2005, p. 7). This benevolent philosophy was dominant for decades but began to change in the 1960s, owing in part to legal decisions extending the rights of adults to adolescents and in part to changing attitudes that youth should be held more accountable and punished for delinquent and criminal behavior. OwenKostelnik, Reppucci, and Meyer (2006) note that “the characterization of young people has shifted between paternalistic logic models, which portray youths as children in need of protection and thus deprive them of certain rights when being questioned, and liberationist logic models, which depict youths as autonomous individuals entitled to the same rights as adults when being questioned” (pp. 287-288).
