- Block Quotation.
By the mid-1990s, despite the diverse and autonomous entities of juvenile justice across states, the federal legislature created laws that changed juvenile justice institutions across the country. In 1996, the US Legislature passed the ”Violent Youth Predator Act” offering millions of dollars to states implementing harsh juvenile justice policies. Starting with the sentence ”Today, no population poses a larger threat to public safety than young adult criminals,” the Violent Youth Predator Act pushed for lowering the adult court waiver age from 16 to 14; federal prosecution for serious violent offenders; and mandatory and minimum sentences for violent youth offenders among other harsh measures. Essentially, this act set the stage for the passage of Proposition 21 in California.
A combination of political, intellectual, and media exaggeration of the youth crime crisis developed into a national juvenile crime agenda. For example, in the 1990s, the media increased its reports on juvenile crime – on televised news, 68% of all stories on violence involved youth and 53% of all stories that discussed youth were about violence; a four-fold increase from the previous decade. (Rios 103).
- Paraphrasing of the above Excerpt
The juvenile justice institutions experienced major changes countrywide as a result of the creation of laws by the federal legislature in the mid-1990s. Also, there were harsh juvenile policies that were implemented across the states in America (Rios 103). Under the Violent Youth Predator Act, the adult court waiver age was pushed to 14 years old from 16 years. Thus, younger people of 14 years of age could be charged in a court of law, which shows the harshness of this act (Rios 103). It makes it possible for federal prosecution to charge minors of as young as 14 years old for violent offenses. The media also increased its coverage of youth crimes with major exaggeration in stories involving youth violence (Rios 103).
