Delinquency and Social Policy: A Historical Perspective

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Abstract
The American belief system has traditionally emphasized the ideals of liberty, justice for all, and freedom from arbitrary authority. An examination of our response to delinquent youth, from a historical perspective, reveals a profound discrepancy between these ideals and our societal practices. The issue of liberty is related to the traditional overreach of the A merican definition of delinquency. The issue of justice is related to the American failure to specify a correspondence between degrees of delinquency and degrees of correctional response. Restraint from arbitrary authority is related to the broad discretion that permits more youth to be detained than to be adjudicated in a court of law. An examination of recent data and trends indicates that the American system can be characterized more accurately as a juvenile social control system than as a justice or correctional system.

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