Juvenile Justice

Words: 1435
Pages: 6

Topic : Comparative Study of Juvenile Justice in China and US
Introduction
In the 1899, the first juvenile court was established in US, delinquency, status offender, criminal, civil, and administrative cases committed by juveniles are all under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court. The juvenile justice in US contains the main ideas of the state acting as the legal guardian for the juveniles who are in need of protection, proper education, and emphasizes the individualized correction and rehabilitative justice. For the rights and interests of the juveniles, the states try to achieve a non-criminal procedure so as to avoid stigmatizing juveniles and help them reintegrate into society, thus the operation of community correction and diversion
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Behaviors reaches a certain degree of seriousness is defined as crimes, while minor delinquent acts is defined as “violation of law” and managed by administrative regulations. According to the Criminal Code in China, a juvenile between the ages of 14 and 16 committing a serious crime needs to bear criminal responsibility, such as homicide, explosion, etc. And the juvenile aged between 14 and 18 is subject to lighter degree of punishment(Krohn& Lane,2015). This means that juvenile can not be prosecuted for criminal offenses if they have not reached the age of 14.While the minimum age for criminal responsibility in US is much more stricter than China, most of the states in US regulates that the juvenile can be held criminal responsibility at any age, of the states that do set the minimum age is not less than ten years old(Minimum Ages of Criminal Responsibility in the Americas,2018). And juvenile justice in US treats the offenders younger than 18 years old different from the adult (Krohn& …show more content…
It can reflect that the juvenile justice in China heavily aims at juvenile prevention through legal and moral education (Krohn& Lane,2015). On the other hand, according to the Chinese constitution, the power of the procuratorate is huge; they can decide whether the arrest warrant can be issued to the police department before the police can take action of filing charge against the juvenile suspects and send them to juvenile court. While the high rate of arrest can elevate the performance evaluation of the police. Juvenile court proceedings in China are considered as criminal proceedings, while in US, these are considered as civil proceedings (Liu, Zhang, & Zhao, 2014).But the juvenile courts in China are not a separated court from the normal courts, and the unity of three traditional trials in juvenile court, which are traditional civil, criminal and administrative cases(Tian&Yang, 2017), leads to the ambiguous operation of juvenile justice in China, since there is no any uniform or specific legislation in China regarding the establishment of juvenile courts(Tian&Yang, 2017). However, the core purpose of juvenile justice