The Development of Juvenile Justice
Throughout the development of juvenile justice, there have been many important cases that have improved the process of the juvenile justice system and safeguarded the rights of the juvenile’s going through it. However, the three cases that I believe to be the most important in the development of juvenile justice are the In re Gault or the Gault decision, the In re Winship or the Winship decision, and the case Breed v. Jones. Each of these three cases that I chose all improves juvenile justice process by safeguarding a juvenile’s rights.
To begin, the most important case in the history of the juvenile justice is the case In re Gault. Gault was a 15-year-old boy who was accused of making a lewd phone call to a neighbor and taken into custody where he was held in a detention home. Even from the start, certain rights were not granted that normally would have been if Gault had been 18 years old. His mother was never officially notified of his detainment, during his first hearing there were no specific facts stated, no witnesses, no …show more content…
The only evidence the court had was from a store employee who claimed he had seen Winship “running from the scene just before the women noticed the money missing” (NCJRS, 1999). However, other people who were in the store at the time claimed that the “witness” was in no position to have actually seen the money taken. Nonetheless due to New York’s “preponderance of evidence” ruling, Winship was sentenced to 18 months in a training school with the possibility of a total of six years. The Supreme Court overruled this decision and as a result made it necessary for all juvenile justice proceedings to have proof beyond reasonable doubt. Which therefore eradicated previous standards such as “preponderance of evidence” and “reasonable proof” that Winship was unfairly faced