The Juvenile Justice System – Is it Working? The American juvenile justice system was designed over 100 years ago to reform kids who were found guilty of minor crimes such as petty theft and truancy. Today, the system is becoming overwhelmed by crimes of violence. Stealing and skipping school have been replaced by rape and murder. The juvenile justice system was never meant to deal with these kinds of problems. Juvenile delinquency describes the antisocial behavior of many different types of youth who are in trouble, or who are on the brink of trouble with the law. In general terms juvenile delinquency means different things to different people. By law, a juvenile delinquent is a person under the age of eighteen who is found guilty in a court of law for committing some sort of crime. Children are not just born delinquents; they are products of circumstances, chance, culture and environment. A youth named a delinquent by circumstance and chance is a youth who has been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Usually, the juvenile who commits a delinquent act by chance is a part of a gang that takes part in unlawful behavior. Most juveniles however become delinquents because of the culture and environment that surrounds them. Juveniles who are in an area of violence and crime learn to defy authority and engage in crime because it is the acceptable thing to do. The juvenile justice system originated around 1819, and on July 1, 1899 the first juvenile court in the United States was set up in Cook County, Illinois. It represented a dramatic change in the way the criminal justice system and all of the American society viewed criminally involved youth. The new court was founded on the principle of “parens patriae”, the idea that children should not be treated as criminals, but as wards of the state. Parens patrae tried to show that children were not fully responsible for their conduct and could be rehabilitated....
