MEDIA CONTACT: Pat Vaughan Tremmel at (847) 491-4892 or at p-tremmel@northwestern.edu

October 1, 2002

Juvenile Experts Discuss Children, Crime

CHICAGO --- Headlines about children and crime continue to play out in the news --- whether about fresh-faced kids convicted of killing their parents or about confused youngsters confessing to terrible offenses they did not commit.

Leading authorities will gather Oct. 17 at an all-day symposium, titled "A Century of Juvenile Justice," to put such news stories into perspective and offer expert analyses about issues related to juveniles and crime.

Based on a recently released book of the same name, "A Century of Juvenile Justice" (University of Chicago Press), the symposium will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Northwestern University School of Law, Thorne Auditorium, 375 E. Chicago Ave.

Free and open to the public, the symposium is co-sponsored by the Children and Family Justice Center of the Bluhm Legal Clinic of Northwestern University School of Law and the School of Social Service Administration of the University of Chicago. It is supported with a generous grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Panelists will elaborate on the issues captured in "A Century of Juvenile Justice," a comprehensive and comparative look at the history and current state of juvenile justice. They will discuss the historic legal institution known as Juvenile Court; the nature of adolescence; the impact of adolescent institutions on youth and society; juvenile rehabilitation; and lessons from youth policy.

Norval Morris, Julius Kreegar Professor of Law and Criminology Emeritus, the University of Chicago Law School, will be the keynote speaker. He will be introduced by Judge David Mitchell, executive director of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

Panelists include Franklin E. Zimring, professor, University of California at Berkeley School of Law; Bernardine Dohrn, director, Children and Family Justice Center of Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law; Steven Schlossman, professor and chair of history, Carnegie Mellon University; Emily Buss, professor, University of Chicago Law School; Anthony N. Doob, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto; Peter Edelman, professor, Georgetown University School of Law; and Mark Testa, Office of Research, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Panel moderators include U.S. District Judge Reuben Castillo, Arthur M. Sussman, vice president, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Adele Simmons, Chicago Metropolis 2020.

Whether juvenile courts protect delinquents from the destructive punishment suffered in the criminal justice system, as they were intended, will be among the topics addressed at the symposium.

A nationally recognized expert on criminal violence, Zimring will offer scarce analysis on the subject with statistics that show incarceration rates between 1971 and 1991 doubled for young adults while staying the same for juveniles. The soaring gap, he said, reflects the dominant punitive policies of criminal courts.

"The larger the punitive bite of the criminal court system, the more likely a separate court for the youngest offenders takes some of that bite out of state sanctions the youngest offenders receive," Zimring said.

"The attack on the juvenile court in recent years is, thus, really a result of changes in what criminal courts are doing, not any failure or change in the system of juvenile justice."

The book, "A Century of Juvenile Justice," was co-edited by Margaret K. Rosenheim, the Helen Ross Professor Emeritia, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago; Zimring; David S. Tanenhaus, assistant professor of history, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and Children and Family Justice Center’s Dohrn.

The book offers a comprehensive look at the juvenile justice system, with a focus on the first Juvenile Court in the world, established here in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. The book provides a history of the ideas around which the system was organized and the institutions and practices that resulted; an understanding of the ways in which those institutions and practices interact with other aspects of government policy toward children in the United States and other nations; a look at how the changing social and legal meanings of childhood and youth have continued to influence juvenile justice; and comparisons of the doctrines and institutions of juvenile justice in Europe, Japan, England and Scotland.

For more information, contact Children and Family Justice Center Administrator Toni Curtis at (312) 503-0396.