Provides a comparison of criminal justice and juvenile justice systems across the world, looking for points of comparison and policy variance that can lead to positive change in the United States. Contributors discuss important issues such as the relationship between political change and juvenile justice, the common labels used to unify juvenile systems in different regions and in different forms of government, the types of juvenile systems that exist and how they differ, and more. Furthermore, they use data on criminal versus juvenile justice in a wide variety of nations to create a new explanation of why separate juvenile and criminal courts are felt to be necessary. --From publisher description.

American Juvenile Justice is a definitive volume for courses on the criminology and policy analysis of adolescence. The focus is on the principles and policy of a separate and distinct system of juvenile justice. The book opens with an introduction of the creation of adolescence, presenting a justification for the category of the juvenile or a period of partial responsibility before full adulthood. Subsequent sections include empirical investigations of the nature of youth criminality and legal policy toward youth crime. At the heart of the book is an argument for a penal policy that recognizes diminished responsibility and a youth policy that emphasizes the benefits of letting the maturing process continue with minimal interruption. In this updated and expanded second edition, Zimring has included four new chapters with examinations on important topics including, US Supreme Court decisions of life sentences for minors, the elected use of juvenile courts over criminal court, punitive sex offender registration for juveniles, and appropriate tactics for juvenile justice reform.

Juvenile Justice is designed for undergraduate students studying juvenile justice systems, juvenile justice process, juvenile delinquency, and law enforcement in the departments of Administration of Justice, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Political Science, Sociology, and other disciplines in the social sciences.

This popular book provides a compelling introduction to thinking about childhood in rigorous and critical ways. Karen Wells offers a unique global perspective on children’s lives, showing how the notion of childhood varies widely and is continuously being radically re-shaped. Taking children seriously as active participants in society, the book explores key social issues such as how children are constituted as raced, classed and gendered subjects; how school and work operate as sites for the governing of childhood; and how children both shape and are shaped by politics, culture and the economy. Taking an engaging historical and comparative approach, the book discusses wide-ranging topics including children’s rights, the family, play, labour, migration and trafficking. In addition to updated literature throughout, this revised third edition includes extensive new material on children’s activism, politics and war, and a whole new chapter on juvenile justice. The book will continue to be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, geography, social policy and development studies. It will also be a valuable companion to practitioners whose work involves or impacts children, as well as to anyone interested in childhood in the contemporary world.

This book explores the principles, practice and challenges in determining justice system responses to serious offending by children globally. Divided into four parts, the book provides a balance of theoretical and empirical insights. Anchored in a theoretical framework based on the human rights of children, as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it considers the relationship between scientific evidence (such as brain development) and the human rights framework, before going to explore the diversity of responses to children who are found responsible for serious offences. It brings together experts from various disciplines to fill a gap relating to serious offending by children in the literature. Scholars from Africa, Latin America and Asia, as well as Europe, North America and Oceania provide perspectives from legally, socially and culturally distinct jurisdictions. The first part focuses on the theoretical framework and explores the applicable standards and principles, including the relevant human rights framework and penological approaches to sentencing children for serious crimes. The second part analyses available empirical evidence, including evidence relating to the profiles of children who commit serious crimes, child and adolescent development, effective sentencing approaches and evidence of disparities in responses to serious offending by children. The third part provides a discussion of justice system responses to serious offending by children in a range of jurisdictions or regions with diverse and distinct legal, social and cultural contexts. Finally, the book uses the theoretical framework, empirical evidence, and case studies of jurisdictions to reflect on how principles relating to responses to serious offending by children can be translated into practice, and to highlight key debates and issues that will need to be explored into the future. Adding much-needed international perspectives to the scholarship addressing the issue, this book will be of great interest to academics, students, legal practitioners and social work professionals working on youth justice and children’s rights across the globe.

Annotation By the year 2000 more than 50% of the world population will be under the age of 15 (9th UN Congress, 1995) Youth crime is increasing around the worl d(9th UN Congress, 1995) In September 1997, Canadian Justice Minister, Anne McLellan, declared youth justice as a top priority. These and similar facts speak to the urgency for society to study youth crime and examine youth justice systems from a comparative perspective. As our world gets smaller, we discover the urgency and importance of sharing and learning at a global level. This collection offers a unique opportunity to examine six different juvenile justice systems and youth crime around the world. All eleven articles are original contributions from a distinguished set of experts on juvenile justice in their respective countries. Each contribution examines a set of common elements: defining delinquency, describing the nature and extent of youth crime, examining the administration of youth justice, and discussing issues confronting youth crime. This groundbreaking book will be of interest to students, criminologists, and criminal justice policy-makers who are interested in improving the intervention, treatment, and prevention of youth crime, and the administration of youth justice.

Revisiting Juvenile Justice in India analyses the challenges and issues involved in the study of juvenile justice in India. The book compares the juvenile justice systems of the USA, the UK and China with India to identify causes of juvenile delinquency and the measures to curb it. It traces the origin of juvenile justice in India and its evolution through landmark judgments. The book critically analyses the Nirbhaya Rape Case of 2012, analyzing the age of criminal responsibility for juveniles and the need for new juvenile justice laws which lead to the passing of the Juvenile Justice (Care of Protection of Children) Act, 2015. The book studies international conventions upholding the rights of children i.e., UNCRC, Beijing Rules, Riyadh Guidelines, etc. and the legal framework for child protection in India and its relevance to juvenile justice. This book will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate law students, advocates, criminal law practitioners, officers/staff of the correction homes, Judges of the Juvenile Justice Board, and research scholars.

With contributions from leading experts in the field, this timely Research Handbook reconsiders the theories, assumptions, values and methods of comparative criminal justice in light of the challenges and opportunities posed by globalisation, deglobalisation and transnationalisation.

Children's rights law is a relatively young but rapidly developing discipline. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the field's core legal instrument, is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Yet, like children themselves, children's rights are often relegated to the margins in mainstream legal, political, and other discourses, despite their application to approximately one-third of the world's population and every human being's first stages of life. Now thirty years old, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) signalled a definitive shift in the way that children are viewed and understood--from passive objects subsumed within the family to full human beings with a distinct set of rights. Although the CRC and other children's rights law have spurred positive changes in law, policies, and attitudes toward children in numerous countries, implementation remains a work in progress. We have reached a state in the evolution of children's rights in which we need more critical evaluation and assessment of the CRC and the large body of children's rights law and policy that this treaty has inspired. We have moved from conceptualizing and adopting legislation to focusing on implementation and making the content of children's rights meaningful in the lives of all children. This book provides a critical evaluation and assessment of children's rights law, including the CRC. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, it aims to elucidate the content of children's rights law, explore the complexities of implementation, and identify critical challenges and opportunities for children's rights law.

Juvenile Justice: A Social, Historical, and Legal Perspective, Fifth Edition is the most comprehensive reference on the juvenile justice system available