The Origin of Law
Law and legal justice is as old as civilization. In earlier societies, the system was run in a very simple and uncomplicated manner without the frameworks of written constitution and the complicated judicial system. Even during those days, where issues were sorted out from the experiences of daily life and collective wisdom of the society or group of people – often disposed off by a council of elders or by a single authority, who by his order was superior enough to provide justice or by his ranking, knowledge and wisdom was chosen to decide on matters where a moral or ethical question called.
The superiority of such systems is that it was always the human side of the argument that mattered and not much emphasis was laid on the technical aspects of the question in concern. Such systems were adequate and served well for small populations of people who were employed by nature as its servants and had no understanding of a complicated profession or by the nature of their life and learning had the requirement to do so. The broken fragments of such early systems are still found in the ruined gatherings in the settlements of rudimentary people in the depths of continents untouched by modern life. No court of law existed in those days, but all members of the society were afraid of or rather respected the code of decency and the unwritten law. In most cases, justice was believed to be disposed off by the lord divine and thus had much more implications than that of something that was merely legal. Whether or not God acted as a judge, is a question better left to be answered by philosophers and religious thinkers; but social discipline was a factor that has helped mankind survive thus far. All during the course of history, it can be observed that law, the people who handle them, their nature and the nature of authority has changed with the evolution of political and trading institutions. From being simple hunter gatherers to being the most successful species on the face of this planet, law and legal institutions have played a vital role in the evolution of modern society and in many ways influence our progress as well.
One of the most complicated legal systems of the ancient world known to man was the Pax Romana or the law of ancient Rome. The system co-existed with the rudimental democratic institution and played a vital role in the management of the state. Though equal rights for all was not guaranteed by the system, it brought about law and order in a nation that was constantly gathering military triumphs and was conquering new lands thereby expanding the reach of the empire. History shows that anarchy played an important part in the destruction of the vast empire. In fact the anarchy that prevailed was a product of the failure of the legal system to address the increasing requirements of a growing state. This led to the failure of the democratic environment and people – especially those of the higher ranks were taking law in to their own hands.
Ancient political systems lacked one vital component – the existence of an independent ‘executive’ fro the government: a function that the modern day police department handles in a 21st century state. It was only after the introduction of a sub-military force that law could be established as all prevailing. In most countries, the police force is seen as the arms of the law. Though justice as such is seen as a function of the court of law, the police force that is part of the system is considered as an important tool by the state to enforce law and order. The ‘justice imparting’ court has hence moved far away from the people and is today seen as a place of intense arguments within the framework of codified laws – a place too complicated for the common man to comprehend and be recognized by him as a part of his society.
This is an evolution that has helped the judiciary evolve itself in to a powerful pillar that sustains the democratic system in most countries. But due to the very evolution, the judiciary and the law has lost its human touch. Judgments are today delivered in the basis of legal merits rather than on moral merits. This explains in part the moral failure of the justice system and its loss of social confidence. The case that I wish to put up as a failure of the justice system is that of juvenile criminals.
Juvenile Crime in the US
Our world is constantly evolving in terms of the complexity of our social relationship and our economic engagement with society is increasing day by day. New born babies that come in to this every day face a large number of challenges. Since human childhood is much longer than that of other mammals, these children are dependent on their parents for their survival and development. Modern psychologists are of the opinion that growth, development and maturity are not only functions of the gene, but also that of the environment. Their character develops according to the environment they live in.
Though living conditions have vastly improved over the previous decades, the size and scale of juveniles living in poverty is still far more than two decades ago. Teenage births have declined, but even today, the incidence of children being brought up by both parents is dwindling across all states. The high school drop out rate has dropped, but even the present rates are too high for a country of our size. The scale of this ‘disaster in the making’ is much more visible when we take in to account the fact that the job market for the unskilled laborer is also dwindling rapidly. Such factors increase the stress levels of juveniles living in the US and hence as a matter increase their exposure to criminal ventures. I do not intend to prove that these are the causal factors of juvenile crime, but even then, these are the factors that augment the juvenile crime rate of our society. These factors don’t produce the crocodiles we fear, but give them the body of water to pose a significant threat to civilized society.
The Juvenile criminal justice system is one example where the US Federal Justice system is buckling under sheer social pressure. Lack of social initiatives to provide social security to young people in the country is one of the main reasons why this growth is taking place year on year. The FBI crime records bureau consider this growth to have stabilized in the years since 2000. That is good news for the entire country. However single parent upbringing of youngsters and their exposure to violence at an early age make criminals out of young souls. They figure in almost all crimes – drugs, property, homicides, car theft, and house breaking… The social pressures put these kids in to all the places that they should never have been.
The incidence of drug trafficking involving juveniles had soared 77% between 1992 and 1997. They contribute a significant part of the total number of car thefts in the country. They participate in looting and street violence. And often the most depressing factor is that juveniles themselves form victim to juvenile crimes and adults are unlikely to be affected. The incidence of women victims in the crime is very low or lower when compared to adult crime and the representative population of both whites and blacks among juvenile criminals are the same. While males are highly more likely to end up in correctional facilities since the number of cases petitioned against males are significantly higher than that of females, females contribute no less to the share of crime on the surface. Once the juvenile is placed in a correctional facility, they graduate to become adult criminals. Street gangs refer to prisons as their schools and universities. The judicial intervention here compounds the problem rather than complements the effort to bring a solution to the crisis.
The above table shows the significant effect of juvenile crime on juveniles themselves. Statistics compiled by other university bodies and NGOs corroborate the findings of the FBI. The clearances in the FBI report give an indication of the incidence of juvenile crime. The juvenile share of violent crime remains above the levels of the 1980s The FBI’s Crime in the United States series shows that the proportion of violent crimes attributed to juveniles declined somewhat in recent years—but is still above the levels of the 1980s. The juvenile proportion of Violent Crime Index offenses cleared by arrest (or exceptional means) grew from an average of 9% in the 1980s to 14% in 1994, then fell to 12% in 1997, where it remained through 2003.
Based on this information, it is right to infer that a juvenile has committed 1 in 8 violent crimes known to enforcement authorities in the year 2003. All the four Violent Crime Indexes showed an increase in the number of juvenile arrests and crime. While the juvenile arrest for murder peaked in the year 1994 and stood at 10 per cent and fell subsequently to 5 per cent in the years 2000 and 2003, their proportion of forcible rapes still remain at 12 per cent – higher than their 1987 proportion. The juvenile proportion of robbery clearances also peaked in 1995 (20%); it fell substantially by 2003 (to 14%) but was still above the average level of the 1980s (12%). The trend in the juvenile proportion of aggravated assault clearances differed from the others. In 2003 (at 12%), it was slightly below its peak in 1994 (13%) and substantially above the average level of the 1980s (9%).
Juvenile Crime Statististics
- From 1993 to 2002 the number of juveniles murdered in the fell 44%, to the lowest level since the mid-1980s.
- On an average day in 2002 about four juveniles were murdered, roughly 2 white and 2 black youth.
- Between 1980 and 2002, at least 3 of every 4 murder victims ages 15–17 were killed with a firearm.
- Persons ages 7–17 are about as likely to be victims of suicide as they are to be victims of homicide. In most States juvenile suicides are more common than juvenile homicides.
- Between 1980 and 2001, for every 10 white juveniles murdered, 26 were juvenile suicide victims. In contrast, for every 10 black juveniles murdered, there was one black juvenile suicide victim.
- For every 10 Hispanic juveniles murdered, there were three juvenile suicide victims.
- One of every four violent crime victims known to law enforcement is a juvenile, and most of these victims are female.
- Over a third of juvenile victims of violent crime are below age 12 and over two-thirds of juvenile victim-violent crimes occur at home.
- Over 95% of juvenile rape victims were females – most under age 14.
- A third of all kidnap victims were juveniles. The peak age for kidnap was found to be 20 for females and 2 for males.
- Almost 19 in 1,000 children below the age of 18 are missing from caretakers, a small fraction of whom were abducted, mostly by family members.
- Runaway youth account for nearly half of all missing children.
- Child protective services agencies received an estimated 2.9 million referrals in 2003, alleging that children were abused or neglected.
- 5.5 million children were included in these referrals, translating into a rate of 39 referrals for every 1,000 juveniles in the U.S. population.
- Neglect was the most common form of maltreatment for victims in 2003. Law enforcement/ justice system personnel accounted for substantial proportions of victims reported to CPS for neglect (26%), sexual abuse (26%), and psychological maltreatment (30%). Medical personnel reported 27% of medical neglect victims. Nearly half of all physical abuse victims were reported by education (22%) or law enforcement/justice system (21%) personnel.
- One in twelve murders in the U.S. involved a juvenile offender in the year 2002 and a third of them had adult co-offenders.
- The decline in the incidence of minority males killing minority males account for the decrease in the murder rates over the nineties. These figures do not indicate a decline in the number of family murders though.
- Thirty-two percent of youth ages 12 to 17 who report recently using alcohol also report using marijuana while in comparison, just 2% of youth who report no recent use of alcohol reported using marijuana.
- Six percent of high school students claimed they carried a weapon to school within the past 30 days – declined from 12% in 1993.
- The proportion that carried a weapon to school was about one-third of those who said they had carried a weapon anywhere in the past month. In addition, 6% of high schoolers reported carrying a gun anywhere in the past month, down from 8% in 1993.
The Justice Systems and Judicial Hearings for Juvenile Crimes
The first juvenile court in the US was found in Chicago in the year 1899. The attempt to create an entirely new system to try juvenile cases is a arelatively new development while compared to the ancient history of the entire judicial system. The American system has undergone massive transformations since 1960 as a result of Supreme Court decisions and federal legislations. Public opinion has also played an important parting formulating the development of the juvenile justice system. With public perception catching fire at the enormity of juvenile crime figures in the 1990, the states opted for numerous legislative changes in an effort to fight juvenile crime efficiently.
In most states across America, the legal age for a juvenile court to cross examine a victim is 17 years. In some states, it is 16 (10) and in the remaining three states, the age is fixed at 15. Another problem is the fact that most of the states keep the proceedings as closed and un accessible to the public. This leads to the misconception that these victims or offenders often are of no consequence to crime in the society and the public see this as an unimportant event, while the real statistics show a different truth. A laated effort shows here. Most often, even schools are not informed of such charges and the mental health expert is not called in until the last straw on the camel’s back brings it down. By then it is too late.
Justice to the juvenile criminal is more that an act of punishment. There should be an effort to correct the offender and give him a chance to relive his life. No such integrated efforts have been reported to have been undertaken on a large scale. Society will have to pay a heavy price for this. For any nation, their young people are the most important assets. It is the young people who are the most important part of the population. It is on their shoulders that the future of the nation rests and hence they should be moulded in to responsible citizens who run the state. The failure of an integrated judicial-correctional intervention in modern day America will become an pandemic in the days to come. When these large numbers of individuals remain unskilled and thereby unemployed, they will bring down the economy of most cities in the US. On a national scale, this would mean that America will have to import the most expensive commodity on the planet – talent.
While judicial activism itself is visible on a large scale in most matters, it is yet to happen in the juvenile crime scenario. The alarm bells have been ringing loud for quite some time. Schools and universities across the country report more crimes than in the third world. While mandatory mental health professional services can bring down deviant behavior at the point of perpetration, a larger counseling measure would be required to keep the crime levels really low. State-wide surveys say that the incidence of cheating in schools and colleges is on the rise. The tendency to do so should be curbed by introducing healthy competition, team building and communicative skills and more respect for the law and existence of the social code of conduct. While most juveniles have been convicted of small offences including drug overdose and alcohol abuse, they are quite significant by itself. They give the opportunity for the person to believe that he or she is ‘watched’. In the company of other deviant juveniles, they get the opportunity to show off their new identity and they build on it. The law enforcement has made 2.2 million juvenile arrests in the year 2003 – the latest statistics available while during the previous year, juvenile courts handled over 1.6 million delinquency cases.
Edward Humes in his book ‘No Matter How Loud I Shout’ published in 1997 points out the urgent need for reform in the juvenile justice systems in the United States. He states with figures that too many good youngsters with a good chance of rehabilitation are send to an adult court for a crime they committed as youngsters without proper knowledge and maturity to understand the implications of their actions. He points out that over 57 % of juvenile criminals are never arrested after their first crime while 27% get up to three arrests and another 16% gets arrested up to four times. While the truth of state remains hidden in large voluminous reports published by law enforcement agencies giving figures divided in to races, ethnicity, minority, majority, and language the truth of the fact remains that they are all the next generation of the country. Most people recline to the comforts of their studies while declaring that the occurrence of juvenile crime in a particular population is below average or over average. In fact, the truth of the matter is that it is not dealt with the way it should be and no statistics is appealing enough when taken in totality.
Robert Merton proposed the Strain theory that there is a relationship between poverty and crime. He talks about institutionalized happiness in our society and expounds the society of equilibrium where ‘goal’ is equal to ‘means’. Merton further describes five states of a young adult’s efforts to align himself with the state of disequilibrium. They are
- Innovation. They are individuals who subscribe to socially acceptable goals whose means are not socially acceptable.
- Retreatism. These youngsters have an aversion towards all things socially acceptable – both the goals and the means.
- Ritualism. They confirm to socially approved means, but in the process of sticking to them, they lose sight of their goals. Merton classifies drug users into this category.
- Conformity. People who confirm to the socially acceptable means and their goals without any deviant behaviour.
- Rebellion. These people while neglecting the means and the goals, create their own
Social Intervention in the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency
While the problem has been lingering on and fails to fade away, the incidence of juvenile delinquency has been gaining momentum on the ground. The failure of the law enforcement and the judiciary in handling this grave social issue is quite evident from the fact that such incidents are predicted to double by the year 2010. The demographic trends in the US is also frightening that there are more children going to be born in the US when the baby boomer’s children become adults. The situation will then spiral out of control. Emerging trends in social security impairment including the increasing exposure of children to poverty and social negligence is another catalyst that will add to the conundrum. Hence there is an urgent need to fight the problem with all the might. The primary objective will be to identify the individuals and the environment at risk and isolating them to be cleaned of the pain points and remove incidents that will lead to the higher risks of juvenile crime. The impact of this approach will be determined by the depth of our understanding of the risk factors and the points at which these factors touch the population in question. This understanding will further refine and focus active intervention to where it is needed most.
Family based intervention models
Families across the US are the most logical places to start the intervention process to prevent juvenile crime. Looking at the demographic trends and revelations by other social scientists, the family happens to be the most culpable place that breeds a juvenile offender. Target families should be identified according to the psychological assessment of the environment and its potential to incubate antisocial and deviant behavior in children. Early family interventions may also be a risk as it will isolate the family as an epicenter for a problem and this will heighten the cause of deviant behaviour in the kids. Hence all such efforts should be carefully handled by a social psychologist through counseling of various family members at various points so that in totality, the entire family benefits as a group of individuals. Otherwise, instead of the desired results, these interventions will bring about negative effects which will again complicate matters. The interventions here can take the form of parent training programs across a wide spectrum as well as student counseling in schools and community development centers.
Parent Training interventions were experimented early in the 1960s when the importance of child behavior mentoring was recognized and their management at home became important. While this is still regarded to be an important way of preventing the incidence of juvenile crime, altering parent behavior proposes to be a tough challenge that cannot be sustained in the long-term and hence their effectiveness over several years have been found to be very poor. The most consistent failure is the lack of parental interest in the long term participation in such programs.
School-Based Preventive Interventions
The most important thing that formulates a generation of children and young people is the school environment. In fact in many cases, it has been observed that the school is often more important than the home for early identification of potential deviant behavior. Psychological analysis has also shown that a large number of personality traits such as IQ, learning disability and attitude problems often precede delinquent behavior. Hence proper monitoring and evaluation programs at schools are one of the most important aspects fro prevention of deviant behavior.
Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions
Cognitive behavioral interventions are based on the assumptions that in most cases, juvenile delinquency erupts from the factor that the youngster is not able to arrive at any good decisions by himself. In such cases, the behaviour modification intervention can give the right direction to deviant youngsters and there by help them make the right decisions by which they can bring their lives back to normalcy. The evaluation of these activities in the past has shown considerable short-term results while long term studies have not been so conclusive.
Social Process Interventions
A few scientists have also attempted to alter the social structure and the schooling process to facilitate better adjustment of young people to the stresses in the environment. Changing teaching practises that result in less competitive environments in the class room is one way to bust stress right at the place where it is induced.
Community Based Preventive Efforts
It erupts from the fact that juvenile delinquents used to belong to the lower income group population and the high-risk areas are characterized by the neighborhoods. High levels of unemployment, poverty, lack of financial resources to ensure a stable and sustained life. The Chicago experiment in the early 1920s and 30s had brought down the delinquency rates by over 50%. Despite this success, these efforts were not maintained in the long term and hence their effectiveness dwindled down with the quality of intervention. But the intervention stands to prove that community disorganization contributes to crime in a massive way.
Youth Recreation
Most efforts in this regard have been highly successful in the past. Sports is an important means of recreation and stress buster in its own way. This provides an opportunity for the youth to excel in areas that are more fruitful and they can focus their attention to things that are positive. Participation in athletic programs bring down the chances of delinquency in youth population.
The Way Ahead
While the failure of judiciary in juvenile delinquency has been established beyond doubt, it is also tough to implement an alternate model for the preventive intervention of juvenile violence. A concerted effort has to be put in place at the federal level to ensure that a long standing programme is implemented by all states. The pain points here can only be addressed by active social intervention – a part of the job that is far from the judicial court-room processes of this day. Active implementation of a combined programme together with the judiciary is a necessity of our times. While codification of procedures to be followed has to be mellowed down, the plough to find a solution to the menace should be removed from the law to the more human sciences and social observers.
The judiciary should become a part of the massive effort to deal with the crisis situation rather than be a kingdom on its own. While the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies should work in tandem to dismantle the existing infrastructure of organised crime, the social interventions can ensure that there are no more new members introduced in to the existing system of criminals. This bi-pronged approach would ensure that there are no new recruits in the crime scenario. The lack of new recruits in crime would ensure a crime free society and thereby relieve the judiciary itself of great pressure.
References
Catalano, S. 2004. Criminal Victimization, 2003. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. 1999. Arrest data for 1980 through 1997. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2003.
National Incident-Based Reporting System master file for the year 2001 [machine-readable data files]. Washington, DC: FBI.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Various years. Crime in the United States for the years 1980 through 2003. Washington, DC: FBI.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan. 2004.
Uniform Crime Reporting Program data [United States]: County-level detailed arrest and offense data, 2002 [machine readable data file]. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation [producer].
E. Mulvey, MW Arthur, ND Reppucci, “The prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency: A review of the research”, Clinical Psychology Review, 1993.
Edward P. Mulvey, Michael W. Arthur, & N. Dickon Reppucci, “Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency: A Review of the Research”, The Prevention Researcher, Volume 4, Number 2, 1997, Pages 1-4.
Regoli, Robert M. and Hewitt, John D. “Delinquency in Society”, 6th ed., 2006.
Siegel, J Larry. “Juvenile Delinquency with Infotrac: theory, practices and law”, 2002. United Nations, Research Report on Juvenile Delinquency.