Juvenile courts are found in different court locations. Most frequently they are located within a general trial court, which is the upper-level court or the only trial court within a state. Within this court they may be structured as a juvenile division, as in California; sometimes as part of a family division that hears both juvenile and domestic-relations matters, as in New Jersey; and other times without a specialized division as when cases are randomly assigned to the different judges of this court, as in Montana. 

In a small number of states, juvenile courts are organized as a separate statewide structure. There is a separate juvenile court in Utah, but the juvenile court could be part of a separate statewide family court, as in Rhode Island, Delaware, and South Carolina.   

In a few states, juvenile courts are found within the limited-jurisdiction trial courts, which are the lower-level trial courts. North Carolina and Maine are examples of this type of organization. 

Some states use a combination of structures. For example, Nebraska maintains separate juvenile courts in several counties, with the jurisdiction elsewhere in the lower courts. There is a separate juvenile court in Denver, but this jurisdiction is placed in the general trial court elsewhere in Colorado. The juvenile jurisdiction in Oregon is part of a family division in several judicial circuits but is a juvenile division or is shared among circuit court judges elsewhere. 

Juvenile courts have two primary workloads: 1) juvenile delinquency and 2) child abuse, neglect, and dependency. A third type of case, status offense, is an additional jurisdictional category, but in a small number of states this is included within child-abuse, neglect, and dependency cases. Some juvenile courts handle such other matters as juvenile traffic offenses, guardianships, commitment procedures for juveniles with mental illness or developmental disabilities, cases involving contributing to the delinquency of a minor, consent to an abortion or marriage, and paternity and child-support proceedings.   

Although all but a few states have long had provisions for a juvenile court judge to transfer or waive certain more serious or repetitive older offenders from juvenile court to a criminal court, numerous policy makers proposed and enacted procedures that now eliminate any juvenile court consideration and instead authorize direct case filings into a criminal court. There is consensus that criminal court handling is needed for some very serious, older, and violent juvenile offenders. There is less consensus as to the sweep of this change.  

There is a belief on the part of many observers that society and numerous criminalized juveniles will be less well off due to their having been handled as adults. They cite their belief that retention in the juvenile justice system, and its use of juvenile incapacitation and both tightened and enriched community-level resources, is the better approach. 

The consequence of direct filing is that many criminalized juveniles now serve very lengthy incarceration times, sometimes starting in a state juvenile facility until they are transferred to an adult prison on their 18th birthday. Some are placed on probation, as a criminal court judge does not view incarceration as appropriate. Some are transferred back to juvenile court handling in those states, such as Maryland and New York, that have authorized a reverse-waiver hearing whereby a criminal court judge can consider which will be the better forum. For many, the wait until a criminal court disposition is far lengthier than for this decision to be made in the juvenile court process. Most waived juveniles are in custody pending the criminal court disposition.

In general, reservation-based Native Americans caught offending on a reservation are handled in tribal courts for misdemeanors but in federal courts for what U.S. law terms major crimes. However, prosecution of felonies, or major crimes, by juveniles or adults that take place on Indian reservations is often not pursued in the federal courts.  

An offense that takes place off-reservation is processed in a state juvenile court. Native American youths who live off-reservation are also handled in state juvenile courts. 

Tribal courts, historically and today, are invariably underfunded and understaffed. Probation personnel typically lack the resources to make a sizable impact on  a juvenile’s problems. Juvenile offenses pursued in tribal courts tend to be of modest severity. The Navajo Nation’s court system is generally regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated, but it, too, is severely lacking in rehabilitative intervention capabilities. (See H. Ted Rubin. “Visiting Native American Juvenile Justice,” Community Corrections Report (September/October 1994), and “Peacemaking: From Conflict to Harmony in the Navajo Tradition,” Juvenile Justice Update (February/March 2001).

A status offense is a type of misbehavior best described as conduct illegal only for children. It has had a very interesting history in juvenile codes and juvenile court doorways. There are juvenile courts today that hold this doorway wide open for this type of matter, while other juvenile court doorways allow little space for entry. 

The three primary types of status offense are runaway, incorrigibility or beyond parental control, and habitual truancy. Other status offenses are curfew, tobacco use, and alcohol use. Adults who perform these same acts or have similar problems are not subject to court sanction. It is the status of childhood, in combination with this misbehavior, that may subject a child to court review. 

Judges become judges either by popular election or by appointment. An election may be partisan or nonpartisan. Generally, appointment is by a state governor, as in Colorado, though the state senate in some states, such as Delaware, must confirm an appointment. In a few states appointment may be by a legislature or by the judges of the general trial court. Where appointment is exclusively to a juvenile court, as in Utah, or to a family court, as in Rhode Island, the judges are specialists and hear only this workload throughout the durations of their terms. 

Appointment or election to a court is normally for a four- or six-year term. Most often, judges are elected or appointed to the general- or limited-jurisdiction trial court and then assigned to a juvenile division, where one exists. New judges often receive this assignment, an assignment that is not always regarded as one of high esteem. Increasingly, juvenile court judges have had extensive experience as lawyers or as magistrates or other judicial officers in this forum. The duration of this assignment varies; terms often last one year, but are increasingly for two years. There is growing judicial interest in assignments of indefinite duration to a juvenile division. 

See also, the Judicial Selection and Retention module.

Other law-trained officials assist judges and serve as judicial officers in numerous juvenile courts. This has long been the practice in some courts but is relatively new to others. State legislatures, in general, authorize the number of judges that can serve a particular judicial circuit or specialized court. In general, the appointment of subordinate judicial officers does not require legislation and can be more readily accomplished when funds can be obtained for this position. These judicial officers are paid less than judges and, typically, have fewer staff assistants and less elaborate courtrooms and chambers.

This greater workload, joined with a legislative preference to defer additional judicial appointments and, presumably, depend more heavily on other judicial officers, has led to the significant growth in the number of nonjudge hearing officers in this court.  These nonjudge hearing officers are called referees in Michigan, masters in Delaware, commissioners in Missouri, and magistrates in Colorado and hear certain types of cases or stages of proceedings on behalf of a judge. Usually, the chief judge of the court or the court’s full bench appoints them. Typically, they have limited authority and are prohibited by statute from conducting waiver hearings or jury trials in those limited number of juvenile courts that have authority to conduct a jury trial. Some courts prohibit them from conducting felony trials, hearings that may result in the commitment of a youth to the state, or terminations of parental rights.  

There are juvenile courts that prefer judges and do not allow the number of other judicial officers to exceed the judicial complement. There are other juvenile courts where there are three times the number of nonjudge hearing officers as judges.

With aggressive advocacy on behalf of delinquent youth, the overall policy response was to break out these youth from the delinquency category and insert them most frequently into their own status-offense category or less frequently into the dependency/neglect category. This separation action became known as decriminalization. Status offenses were recategorized by different labels and names in different statutes: person in need of supervision, PINS (New York); minor otherwise in need of supervision, MINS (Illinois); juvenile in need of supervision, JINS (New Jersey); child in need of supervision, CHINS (Colorado); youth in need of supervision, YINS (Montana); a child of a family in need of services, FINS (New Mexico); unruly child (Georgia, Ohio); section 601 juvenile (California); and undisciplined juvenile (North Carolina). 

An enormously influential and very significant response came when the U.S. Congress enacted Public Law 93-415, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. The act, in establishing a federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to assist the states in better accomplishing juvenile justice system objectives, authorized grants to states contingent on averting placement of status offenders in detention and correctional facilities (Public Law 93-315, Section 223(a) (12)). A supporting regulation permitted 24-hour pretrial detention under certain conditions. Alternatives to secure detention were increased, such as staff-secure shelter facilities and hotlines to counsel runaway youth. State statutes were then tailored to federal requirements. 

The different stages in the juvenile court process for delinquency cases consist of the offense, the apprehension, the detention-center admission, a detention hearing, and finally a trial. 

Juvenile offenses, like adult offenses, often fail to result in apprehension. The juvenile justice process begins, generally, with a law-enforcement apprehension and decision to move a case further by delivering a youth to the detention center with a request for admission, or by delivering a paper referral that asks probation intake or the prosecutor to consider formal charges. 

The detention-center-admissions decision is usually made by a probation-department intake officer or a designated detention-center official and is based upon statutory admissions criteria and, increasingly, upon risk-assessment instruments that best guide this decision. Admitted juveniles are detained until a detention hearing is held within 24 to 72 hours of admission. The hearing is conducted by a judge or other judicial officer and is held either at a hearing room at the center or at the court. Those held further at detention hearings are processed more speedily than juveniles released at detention hearings or those who have been petitioned following a police paper referral. 

A large number of juveniles, particularly those never detained and those released at detention hearings, may be handled informally, either dismissed following a warning; supervised on informal probation with conditions to meet, such as restitution or community-service hours; or diverted to a community agency for services. 

Formally processed juveniles officially enter a plea admitting or denying the offense. Denials result in a scheduled trial, though few trials actually take place as plea and sentence bargains are often reached. Dispositional hearings take place either immediately following entry of an admission to an offense or a trial finding that an offense was proven, or four weeks or so later to enable probation staff to prepare a predisposition report for the judge or judicial officer. 

Some more serous and repetitive juvenile offenders become subject of a special transfer or waiver hearing whereby a juvenile court judge determines whether a particular juvenile is amenable to rehabilitation with the juvenile justice system or should better be transferred to criminal court handling. Significantly fewer of these hearings are now conducted due to legislative changes that place many of these offenders directly into a criminal court. 

See also Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickmund, Chapter 4, "Juvenile Justice System Structure and Process,” from Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report (Washington, DC: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 1999).

Numerous juvenile justice officials prefer that community agencies other than the court handle and manage minor offense matters, that intake or prosecution officials also shortstop the penetration of next-level-up violations, and that considerable noncourt interventions should be applied by probation units, often in concert with community agencies. 

Quite commonly, informal probation services are provided in lieu of court.  This may be done by probation intake officers or by community agencies upon referral from these staff members.  Other promising options are neighborhood accountability boards, which use community citizens to hear lesser juvenile cases and determine suitable sanctions and reintegrating services, and teen courts, which use high-school-age youth to hear these matters in a more educationally structured way.  Vermont community reparations boards are a well-known example of the former.  There are hundreds of teen or peer courts.  

Intake practices and the use and range of diversion resources vary from community to community. 

See also Megan Kurlychek et al., "Focus on Accountability: Best Practices for Juvenile Court and Probation,  JAIBG Bulletin (August 1999).

Balanced and restorative justice (sometimes referred to as just restorative justice) is seen by many as the most positive development to emerge in juvenile justice during the 1990s and one that continues to expand notably.  Its premises are that 1) crime causes harm and is a violation of individuals, communities, and relationships; 2) the harm that was done needs to be ascertained; and 3) the justice system should repair or ensure the harm is repaired to the extent possible and that the wounds that crime causes are healed. 

Justice, then, should expand its focus and methods beyond punishment or treatment of offenders, and, in turn, facilitate and accomplish restorative justice.  Further, the community needs to be an active partner with the justice system, and a community justice mission is necessary where outcomes or goals include joining with communities to strengthen their capacities to prevent and control crime and to support and reintegrate both victims and offenders. 

Applications include restitution, community service, victim-offender mediation, victim services, neighborhood accountability boards, victim-impact classes and panels, and decentralization of probation services into neighborhoods. 

See also "Guide for Implementing the Balanced and Restorative Justice Model," OJJDP Report, NCJ 167887.

Law enforcement, pretrial-detention centers, prosecution offices, public defenders, and probation agencies all collaborate with the court in handling delinquent juveniles. 

Law-enforcement agencies refer 85 percent of delinquency cases to juvenile court.  In making referrals of apprehended youths, law-enforcement officers choose whether to remand a youth to his or her parents, remand to the parents and send a paper complaint to the probation intake or prosecutor’s office, or bring the youth to a pretrial-detention center and request admission (following a screening process). 

Pretrial-detention centers receive juveniles screened into these facilities following a delinquency apprehension. 

Prosecution offices, most frequently a county office but sometimes a local office of the state attorney general, have a primary concern to look after the safety and welfare of the community, and, quite particularly, of victims of juvenile offenses. They assert differing levels of responsibility in the juvenile justice process depending upon state statute and the local court and prosecutor culture. Their most important responsibilities are deciding whether a law-enforcement referral shall become a formal case, along with the specifics of the charges; controlling the nature of pleas to these charges or any trial that ensues; and performing a forceful role in advocating a particular case disposition. 

Public defenders provide the basic defense representation in many juvenile courts. Where they do not, the fundamental representation is usually by private attorneys appointed and paid by the court. Sometimes an attorney or law firm holds a contract to provide this representation. Infrequently, families will retain attorneys privately. In public-defender systems, private attorneys are appointed when there is a “conflict of interest”; for example, when the defense attorney cannot represent codefendants with conflicting defenses or interests. Some states and local courts require all delinquent youths to have an attorney, but the majority of states allow juveniles to waive their right to counsel. 

A probation agency is the fifth major collaborator in the juvenile justice process and is the most important agent in many juvenile courts. Juvenile courts often are the employers of probation officers, and judges rely heavily on the professionalism and advice of their employees. These probation officers are to serve the court exclusively. Elsewhere, executive agency probation officers serve the court as well as their own administrative organization, and there is a certain trend to move probation organization from the courts to an executive agency. Some probation agencies administer pretrial-detention centers. Some probation agencies dominate the decision of whether a police referral should become a formal case. Some are the most forceful influence on judicial dispositions.

For information on open hearings for juvenile-dependency hearings can be found in a recent NCSC Government Relations Issue Brief (July 2003) by Kay Farley, “Public Access to Child Abuse and Neglect Hearings.”  

Laws and statutes on juvenile-records privacy vary a great deal between states.  See State Statutes on Juvenile Interagency Information and Record Sharing from OJJDP.  A state-by-state list is provided with statutes.