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Helpless Children or Predatory Delinquents?: Differential Backlash to ‘Get Tough’ Trends in Juvenile Justice

My interest in juvenile justice began in the 1970s when, as an undergraduate, I interned in a New York family court. There I observed a rather complex mix of official efforts to “rehabilitate” and punitively control troubled children and families. After writing my doctoral dissertation on historical trends in the problematic and proverbial “punishment-treatment dichotomy” in one state’s juvenile court system, I wrote Crimes Against Children (1989) and more recently co-edited American Juvenile Justice: Cases, Legislation, and Comments (1995). Both books address the ostensibly contradictory inclinations towards benevolence and punishment in juvenile justice; the former from a professional domain perspective and the latter from a legalistic orientation. This article examines the disparities in social reactions to“get tough” policies in the areas of juvenile delinquency and child maltreatment from a social constructionist perspective.