CHALLENGES TO THE MODERN JUVENILE COURT

1. CHALLENGES TO THE MODERN JUVENILE COURT

2. Homicides by Very Young and Older Juvenile Offenders • The Jamie Bulger Homicide • Ryan Harris • Nathaniel Abraham • Sentencing options? • Lionel Tate • Sentencing options? • Lee Boyd Malvo

3. Competency • The Central Park Jogger Confessions • The Case of Eva Peña • Tate v. State (Section 985.225) • Which standard ?

4. Juvenile Sex Offenders • The Case of J.G. • Eight Boys and a Girl in Berkeley

5. The Schoolhouse and The Jailhouse • Zero Tolerance in Toledo • Drug Testing for the Debating Team • Vernonia School District v. Acton, 115 S.Ct. 2386

6. Lessons of Paradigm Cases • Are these cases appropriate for the juvenile court? By what theory of adolescence? • What challenges do they pose to the juvenile court? • How would the theory of the juvenile court be modified to accommodate these cases, and avoid their treatment as adults? As infants?

7. Why a Separate Court? • Adolescence as a Time Moral, Social and Physical Development • Psychosocial Development • Brain Development • Legal Socialization • Principles of (Re)habilitation • Avoidance of Social Stigma • Avoidance of Psychological Stigma

8. Challenges to the Modern Juvenile Court • Expressing and safeguarding the principle that children who break the law are different from adults (who break the law? From all adults?) and deserving of special treatment and a “discount” on punishment • What to do when the criminal is a child and the child is a criminal • Explicit integration of youth policy into law

9. Adhering to constitutional principles of procedural rights • for minors • When “best interests” supersedes “reasonable doubt” • Discovering the boundaries of penal proportionality for young offenders • Shaping jurisprudence to guard the Juvenile Court from political attack by those whose primary concerns are public safety, social order and retributivism • Reaffirming principles of juvenile law over expediency for “special populations” • Reducing racial disparities