A movement has taken hold nationally to undermine the juvenile justice system, and erase any distinction between younger offenders and adult criminals. In the past years, nearly all 50 states have overhauled their juvenile justice laws, allowing more youths to be attempted as adults and scrapping long-time protections to help rehabilitate delinquent kids and prevent future crimes. On the federal level, participants of Congress have proposed rules designed to intestine crime prevention applications and use the expiration of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 this September as an opportunity to dismantle the preventive and rehabilitative desires of the nation's juvenile justice device. The juvenile justice system has its roots within the beginning of the century, whilst the mistreatment of juveniles became a focus of the Progressive Movement. By 1925, nearly every country had adopted legal guidelines presenting for separate juvenile court cases that focused on prevention and rehabilitation, in preference to retribution and punishment. Now federal and country lawmakers are rushing to show the juvenile justice device completely upside down. If this backward trend isn't halted, the consequences will be disastrous -- not most effective for a whole generation of our nation's teens who will be condemned to prison, however for all of us who may be left with a greater violent society. Today’s juvenile justice gadget still maintains rehabilitation as its primary goal and distinguishes itself from the crook justice device in critical ways. With few exceptions, in maximum states delinquency is defined as the fee of a crook act with the aid of a baby who was under the age of 18 at the time; maximum states also permit teenagers to remain beneath the supervision of the juvenile court docket until age 21. In lieu of prison, juvenile courtroom judges draw from more than a few legal alternatives to satisfy both the protection desires of the general public and the treatment wishes of the teenagers, even though teens can be confined in juvenile correctional centers that too frequently resemble grownup prisons and jails, routinely implementing correctional practices consisting of solitary confinement, strip searches, and the usage of chemical or mechanical restraints. Even though youngsters crime fees have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the problem have heightened. The Columbine shootings and different sensational incidents add to the furor. Often omitted are the underlying issues of toddler poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to teens crime. From a coverage standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught inside the crossfire between nurturance of teenagers and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps ahead with an authoritative evaluation of the first-rate available statistics and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's teenagers crime problem.