Phyllida Parsloe - Juvenile Justice in Britain and the United States: The Balance of Needs and Rights

Routledge Revivals

This study, first published in 1978, compares the ways in which the systems in England, Scotland and the United States balance the necessity of meeting childrens needs against the protection of their rights. Three approaches to juvenile justice are identified; the criminal justice, the welfare, and the community approach. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, criminology and social work.

The Balance of Needs and Rights

Phyllida Parsloe

Many people made this book possible although none can be blamed for its shortcomings. I am grateful to my personal travel agent, Kevin Leddy, who made my visit to Indiana School of Law a possibility. In Indiana I was helped by many of the faculty but especially by two deans, Burnett Harvey and Douglas Boshkoff and by three professors, Dan Hopson, Edwin Greenebaum and Bill Popkin. They are responsible for my interest in many legal matters but not for my failures in understanding. In Britain so many social workers and teachers have helped me that they defy naming. Finally my thanks go to my family; my father who reversed roles and became my research assistant, my mother who, with Ena Rae, Mary Dinnie, Irene Strachan and Claudia Duncan, typed and re-typed my many drafts and my lawyer brother, John, who put his logical mind at my service and - so far as I would let him - edited my manuscript.

The purpose of this book is to explore the ideas which led to the establishment of systems of juvenile justice in the US, England and Wales, and Scotland and which affect their continued existence. Three sets of ideas can be distinguished, and these I am calling ideas of welfare, ideas of criminal justice and ideas of community concern and responsibility. Each set of ideas would, were it implemented alone, lead to very different systems of juvenile justice. However, it is a feature of the three systems with which we are concerned that ideas of welfare, criminal justice and community concern co-exist, and it is the balance between them which determines the actual form of the system of juvenile justice. This balance is created, maintained and changed by a number of different factors. First the history of the systems will be explored, since their nineteenth-century beginnings are a powerful determinant of their twentieth-century form. Chapters four, seven and eight will consider the statutes and rules which provide the framework within which the present systems operate. Despite the influence of history and control provided by law, the way the balance between the three sets of ideas is held seems ultimately to rest with the people who work in the juvenile justice system. A large part of their behaviour is not the result of rules but of the way they exercise their discretion. The factors which influence the nature and use of this discretion by judges, magistrates and panel members, probation officers and social workers and by prosecutors, police and defence lawyers will be considered.