Book Review: Aaron Kupchik: Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts. New York: New York University Press, 2006, 224 pp. $22.00 (pbk). ISBN 0814747744
| Author | Jamie J. Fader |
| DOI | 10.1177/13624806080120020504 |
| Date | 01 May 2008 |
| Published date | 01 May 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
233
Aaron Kupchik
Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts
New York: New York University Press, 2006, 224 pp. $22.00 (pbk). ISBN
0814747744.
• Reviewed by Jamie J. Fader, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Just over a century ago, reformers established the juvenile court to address
a relatively new class of citizens: children. To that point, childhood had not
been viewed as a distinct developmental phase. With the family as the basic
unit of economic production, children worked alongside their parents, and
fathers were responsible for meting out discipline. In the late 19th century,
however, Progressives began to attribute special significance to children as
essentially pure and malleable. Determined to address what they viewed as
the interlocking problems of urbanization, immigration, poverty and vice,
‘child savers’ sought to intervene in the lives of young people before they
encountered the slippery slope of immorality (Platt, 1969).
In Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile
Courts, Aaron Kupchik argues that the parens patriae philosophy born dur-
ing the child-saving movement is still alive and well, despite widespread
calls for juveniles who commit adult crimes to ‘do adult time’. In this work,
he explores the previously unexamined link between contemporary cultural
notions of childhood and the increasing popularity of juvenile transfer
policies. He asks two key questions: Is the shift toward punishing young
people in adult courts in line with how society constructs childhood? And
are the juvenile and adult courts as fundamentally different as policy
makers, voters and even scholars assume?
On both counts, Kupchik’s answer is no. In this important, clearly
written and well-researched book, he argues that treating juveniles as
adults conflicts with cultural ideas about youthfulness, resulting in an
ambivalent and contradictory response by the court. At stages in which
criminal justice decision-makers...
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