THE ADULT CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM VERSUS THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM
This chapter examines what might happen in cases that the police have solved by arresting an adult. As the fate of the accused person is determined by the criminal justice system, victims will interact with prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and—if the defendant is convicted—corrections officials. Cooperation is the desired outcome, but conflict might erupt over certain divisive issues
with these criminal justice professionals and the agencies that employ them.
Note that this chapter focuses on how cases are processed by the legal system when adults are arrested by the police. Each state has the authority under the constitution to determine at what age adulthood begins and for which crimes this distinc- tion applies. For example, in New York, state legis- lators decided that persons as young as 16 might be considered as adults, and their cases could be pro- cessed in the adult system. When the police arrest a suspect as young as 13 for murder, he could be con- sidered as sufficiently mature to face adult penalties, such as a life sentence, if the prosecutor chooses to pursue this get-tough option. In nearly all the other states, the age when individuals can be held fully responsible for their criminal behavior is 18.
In each state, arrestees who are not old enough to be considered adults are handled by its juvenile justice system. The nation’s first juvenile court was set up in Cook County Illinois (covering Chicago) in 1899. Most states quickly followed suit. Consequently, ever since the early 1900s, a “double standard of justice” has prevailed. Almost everyone feels that a double standard based on the defendant’s—or the victim’s—race or social class is not fair, but most peo- ple will agree that handling a case differently because the suspect is young and immature is justifiable. For example, if a youngster steals a car, drives off, and later wrecks it and then abandons it, this vehicle theft ought to handled differently than a case in which a grown- up steals a car and drives it off to a chop shop where it is dismantled so that its sheet metal parts can be sold on the black market to repair crash damaged vehicles. Yet, in both cases, a motorist has lost a car to a thief. Similarly, if a 14-year-old breaks into a house to steal things, the authorities will view the crime in a differ- ent light than if an adult burglarized the dwelling, even though the losses experienced by the home- owner might be identical.
This separate system is supposed to operate according to a different set of principles (which in many states emphasize treatment over punishment, and sometimes, “restorative justice,” which is analyzed in Chapter 13). Consequently, not only arrestees but also their victims are handled