Youth on Trial: A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Mental Health and ... Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice)

By Robert G. Schwartz

Book Overview

It is often said that a teen "old enough to do the crime is old enough to do the time," but are teens really mature and capable enough to participate fully and fairly in adult criminal court? In this book--the fruit of the MacArthur Foundation Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice--a wide range of leaders in developmental psychology and law combine their expertise to investigate the current limitations of our youth policy. The first part of the book establishes a developmental perspective on juvenile justice; the second and third parts then apply this perspective to issues of adolescents' capacities as trial defendants and questions of legal culpability. Underlying the entire work is the assumption that an enlightened juvenile justice system cannot ignore the developmental psychological realities of adolescence.

Not only a state-of-the-art assessment of the conceptual and empirical issues in the forensic assessment of youth, Youth on Trial is also a call to reintroduce sound, humane public policy into our justice system..

Contributors: Richard Barnum, Richard J. Bonnie, Emily Buss, Elizabeth Cauffman, Gary L. Crippen, Jeffrey Fagan, Barry C. Feld, Sandra Graham, Thomas Grisso, Colleen Halliday, Alan E. Kazdin, N. Dickon Reppucci, Robert G. Schwartz, Elizabeth Scott, Laurence Steinberg, Ann Tobey, Jennifer L. Woolard, Franklin E. Zimring

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226309126
• ISBN13: 9780226309125
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 472 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Once Again, the Grisso Approach is Most Thoughtful

Read this book. Change the system.

A Valuable Collection

For anyone interested in how courts deal with juvenile crime, and for anyone who thinks there must be a better way, read this book. Drawing upon the simple, yet profound idea that children do not turn into adults on a single day, the authors elaborate on the deficiencies of a legal system that is, in fact, largely based upon just that notion. The chapters help us to envision a legal system that would see adolescent development as a gradual and continuous process, and that would not allow prosecutorial ambition alone to determine which young offenders should be held criminally responsible for their actions.