Juvenile Delinquency, Health Law - Mental Health Law, Juvenile Law, Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, Criminal Psychology, Adolescent Psychology & Psychiatry, Criminal Law, Courts & Trial Practice - General & Miscellaneous, Developmental Psychology

Youth on Trial : A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice

Name: Youth on Trial : A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice
Author: Thomas Grisso, Robert G. Schwartz
ISBN: 9780226309132

by Thomas Grisso, Robert G. Schwartz

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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

Synopsis

Youths are on trial today in two ways. In the first sense, whereas youths once faced delinquency hearings in juvenile courts, now with increasing frequency they stand trial in criminal courts. In the second sense, recent reforms in juvenile justice have placed the notion of youth itself on trial. Society's trend toward responding to adolescent offenders as adults asks that we set aside traditional presumptions about adolescence as a condition of immaturity that warrants mitigation. The ensuing debate highlights the need for evidence to address whether youths' capacities are sufficiently different from adults to warrant different legal responses to their transgressions.

About the Author, Thomas Grisso, Robert G. Schwartz

Thomas Grisso is a professor of psychiatry (clinical psychology) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Robert G. Schwartz is the executive director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

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Editorials

VOYA

Are adolescents capable of standing trial in a courtroom? Are they developmentally ready to understand the Miranda warning, legal processes, and the Fifth Amendment? Are teens accused of a crime treated fairly by the legal system compared with the way adults are treated? How many adolescents accused of a crime suffer from mental problems, and should these problems be considered during sentencing? What are the developmental differences between adolescents of varying ages, and how do those differences influence their ability to understand right from wrong and consequences of crime? These questions and many others are answered by psychology and law experts in this collection of research findings by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Most argue that the current legal system does not give much thought to the developmental aspects of adolescents. The authors intersperse stories about both troubled teens and unfair adults, such as a Texas legislator who "advocated executing eleven-year-olds because 'some of the kids that are growing up today... just aren't the Leave It to Beaver kids that I grew up with.' " This well-written, well-organized book flows easily and will be useful for scholars, young adult librarians who want to learn more about juvenile justice processes, and librarians collaborating with juvenile justice systems. For a more generic resource for teens themselves, refer to What Are My Rights? 95 Questions and Answers about Teens and the Law by Thomas A. Jacobs (Free Spirit, 1997/VOYA June 1998). Index. Illus. Charts. Source Notes. 2000, University of Chicago Press, 425p, Ages Adult. Reviewer: Sheila Anderson SOURCE:VOYA, June 2001 (Vol. 24, No. 2)