ABSTRACT
In Britain and the United States juvenile justice systems have recently attracted public, political and scholarly attention. In the United States, where juvenile courts have no criminal jurisdiction, there is movement away from the informality, which often amounted to procedural sloppiness and arbitrariness, towards a more legalistic approach. The juvenile courts in the United States were established as civil courts offering a gateway for children to welfare services. To understand the present trends in juvenile justice it is necessary to consider what functions the system fulfils for society and what different sets of ideas meet and influence the decisions and actions of the people in the systems. The types of behaviour which bring children within the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system are similar in Britain and the United States, although there is some difference in legal groupings. The community approach serves to check the emphasis on the individual, which can distort both the criminal justice and the welfare approach.
