Bad Kids Race and the Transformation of the Juvenile Court

by Feld, Barry C.

• ISBN13: 9780195097870
• ISBN10: 0195097874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Written by a leading scholar of juvenile justice, this book examines the social and legal changes that have transformed the juvenile court in the last three decades from a nominally rehabilitative welfare agency into a scaled-down criminal court for young offenders. It explores the complex relationship between race and youth crime to explain both the Supreme Court decisions to provide delinquents with procedural justice and the more recent political impetus to "get tough" on young offenders. This provocative book will be necessary reading for criminal and juvenile justice scholars, sociologists, legislators, and juvenile justice personnel.

Author Biography

Barry Feld is Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is the author of five books and more than three dozen law review and criminology articles on juvenile justice administration with special emphases on serious offenders, procedural justice, and youth sentencing policy.

Table of Contents

Figures and Tables	xv
Introduction	3	(14)
ONE The Social Construction of Childhood and Adolescence	17	(29)
TWO The Juvenile Court and the "Rehabilitative Ideal"	46	(33)
THREE The Constitutional Domestication of the Juvenile Court	79	(30)
FOUR Procedural Justice in Juvenile Courts: Law on the Books and Law in Action	109	(57)
FIVE Social Control and Noncriminal Status Offenders: Triage and Privatization	166	(23)
SIX Delinquent or Criminal? Juvenile Courts' Shrinking Jurisdiction over Serious Young Offenders	189	(56)
SEVEN Punishment, Treatment, and the Juvenile Court: Sentencing Delinquents	245	(42)
EIGHT Abolish the Juvenile Court: Sentencing Policy When the Child Is a Criminal and the Criminal Is a Child	287	(44)
Epilogue	331	(12)
References	343	(24)
Index	367