Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice

Thisis a hopeful but complicated era for those with ambitions to reform thejuvenile courts and youth-serving public institutions in the United States. As advocates plea for major reforms, many fear the public backlash inmaking dramatic changes. Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justiceprovides a look at the recent trends in juvenile justice as well as suggestionsfor reforms and policy changes in the future. Should youth be treated as adultswhen they break the law? How can youth be deterred from crime? What factorsshould be considered in how youth are punished?What role should the police have in schools?This essential volume, edited by two of the leadingscholars on juvenile justice, and with contributors who are among the keyexperts on each issue, the volume focuses on the most pressing issues of theday: the impact of neuroscience on our understanding of brain development andsubsequent sentencing, the relationship of schools and the police, the issue ofthe school-to-prison pipeline, the impact of immigration, the privacy of juvenile records, and the need for nationalpolicies—including registration requirements--for juvenile sex offenders. Choosingthe Future for American Juvenile Justice is not only a timely collection, basedon the most current research, but also a forward-thinking volume thatanticipates the needs for substantive and future changes in juvenile justice.

After two decades of & get-tough policies that repudiated the original idea that & children are different, Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice provides an important and timely antidote. The essays examine both how politicians forgot juvenile courts founding principles and explore policy directions for the future. This outstanding collection by leading scholars examines important, but seldom addressed issues and concludes with a course of action for sensible policy reforms., This is an extraordinary volume. The contributors do more than remind us of the importance of the juvenile court to jurisprudence in America and elsewhere in the world. They give us nuanced directions on how to re-establish a juvenile justice system that is effective, fair, rational and developmentally appropriate., Zimring and TanenhausChoosing the Future for American Juvenile Justiceis a significant contribution to the study of adolescents. It provides a wealth of data and sharpens the argument for the immediate need to enact progressive reforms in the juvenile justice system., Categorized as a volume addressing criminology and law, this book has value beyond so narrow a scope. Indeed, it should be required reading for school administrators and board members, teachers-in-training, and youth advocates of all stripes, that these professionals might reconsider the implications of such practices as policing schools with school resource officers and feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

Franklin E. Zimring is William G. Simon Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley Law School. He is the author of several books, including The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control and American Juvenile Justice. David S. Tanenhaus is Professor of History and James E. Rogers Professor of History and Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of The Constitutional Rights of Children and Juvenile Justice in the Making. He is also co-editor, with Franklin Zimring, of the series Youth, Crime, and Justice for NYU Press.