ABSTRACT
Although there are substantial differences between the juvenile court systems of the United States and the United Kingdom, some of the inherent dilemmas of juvenile courts are in their nature universal. Progressively, as the aim shifts from punishment to reformation, problems of conflicting purposes stand out more sharply. Our juvenile court systems are in one sense experimental laboratories in which we try to discover, empirically for the most part, the things we need to know in order to achieve the objectives of the system. Some juvenile delinquency also appears to be primarily caused by the intolerable boredom and frustration for some young people of life in big cities. The new kind of juvenile court has a much more difficult task for the very reason that we begin to conceive of its function in terms of improving people rather than punishing them.
