Juvenile Sentencing the Issue of Term Paper

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According to Lawlor, Connecticut has "developed a flexible approach geared toward immediate intervention and proven results" (Lawlor). He explains that not every teenaged car thief with a record of several arrests should be sent to prison, just as not every 10-year-old first time truant needs to be simply sent home to his parents (Lawlor).

The state of Connecticut has sole responsibility for all probation, adult and juvenile, and all graduated sanctions programs are operated by the state or by private, non-profit organizations funded by the state (Lawlor). For more than twenty years, the term 'juvenile' in the state of Connecticut refers to only youths under the age of sixteen; youths who are sixteen years and older are treated as adults for all crimes (Lawlor). In 1995, before the graduated sanctions were implemented, the most serious violent juveniles were the focus of the juvenile court, and all other cases were for the most part ignored. There were 222 offenders in Connecticut's secure juvenile facility, 356 in court ordered community placements, and 122 at home on parole supervision (Lawlor). In 1999, after the graduated sanctions network was in place, an additional 1,052 juvenile offenders were supervised in various programs through the state; 226 were in the state's secure juvenile facility, 454 in court ordered community placements, and 217 at home on parole supervision (Lawlor). According to Lawlor, these offenders would have been ignored by the system four years earlier. Connecticut is monitoring and evaluating its programs and soon expects to have the first longitudinal study of rates of recidivism and other success indicators for the programs and the youth offenders they supervise (Lawlor).

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In May 2002, a federal district court judge in Connecticut ruled that the state's neglect of mentally ill and traumatized children being held in its juvenile detention centers violates their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process (Hellwege). The decision marked the latest ruling in a decade-old class action civil rights lawsuit filed by several residents in Connecticut's juvenile detention centers, who claimed the centers were so overcrowded and understaffed that the youths were not receiving adequate protection, care, or medical and mental health treatment (Hellwege).

According to plaintiff attorney Martha Stone of the Center for Children's Advocacy, which is affiliated with the University of Connecticut School of Law at Harford, the three juvenile facilities were so overcrowded and understaffed that the youths lacked adequate medical care, sanitation, education, heath services (Hellwege). Under the order, the state's Department of Family Services agreed to improve conditions and to do so in a timely manner (Hellwege). One case heard concerned a 13-year-old boy who had tied a towel around his neck in a suicide attempt but was forced to wait seven weeks for admission to the state's psychiatric hospital (Hellwege). The lawsuit was filed in 1993, yet there had been little improvement made during the nine years (Hellwege).

Juvenile sentencing is a serious issue, however the debate over punishment verse rehabilitation is likely to continue for decades to come.

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