ABSTRACT
Apparently those responsible for juvenile justice policy have learned little from the history of juvenile justice. Many contemporary interventions for juvenile offenders are in most respects indistinguishable from those that existed over a century ago. Indeed, the history of juvenile justice policy development is one of resistance to fundamental change. In fact, the resistance of the juvenile justice system to alternative responses to the “delinquency problem” has led a number of writers to suggest a cyclical pattern in juvenile justice policy development (e.g., Albanese, 1993; Bernard, 1992; Ferdinand, 1989; Finckenauer, 1982; Gilbert, 1986; Miller, 1979; Schultz, 1973; Schwartz, 1989), where the same sequence of policy responses to juvenile crime are repeated during different historical periods (Bernard, 1992).
