Judging Children As Children: A Proposal for a Juvenile Justice System

by Michael Corriero

Overview

At a time when America's court system increasingly tries juvenile offenders as adults, Michael Corriero draws directly from his experience as the founding judge of a special juvenile court to propose a new approach to dealing with youthful offenders. Since 1992, Judge Corriero has presided over the Manhattan Youth Part, a New York City court specifically designed to discipline teenage offenders. Its guiding principles, clearly laid out in this book, are that children are developmentally different from adults and that a judge can be a formidable force in shaping the lives of children who appear in court. Judging Children as Children makes a compelling argument for a better system of justice that recognizes the mental, emotional, and physical abilities of young people and provides them with an opportunity to be rehabilitated as productive members of society instead of being locked up in prisons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592137848
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	11/20/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	290 KB

About the Author

Michael A. Corriero is a Judge of the New York State Court of Claims, and he sits by designation in New York City's Supreme Court and is the Presiding Judge of Manhattan's Youth Part.

Table of Contents

Preface                                                                                                  
Acknowledgements                                    
Prologue                                                   
Chapter 1     The Proposition                                  
Chapter 2     The Nature of Adolescence                           
Chapter 3     The Criminal Responsibility of Juveniles     
          
Chapter 4     Sentencing Children Tried in Adult Courts                
Chapter 5     Our Hardest to Love Children                

Chapter 6     Interactive Justice                      

Chapter 7     Fridays in the Youth Part

Chapter 8     The Experiment that Failed                       
Chapter 9     Creation of the Youth Part                        
Chapter 10     The Youth Part Model                            
Chapter 11   A Model Juvenile Justice System                    
Chapter 12   Juvenile Justice Policy Reform                   

Editorial Reviews

Corriero is well placed to comment on the state of juvenile justice in the U.S.; for over a decade he has presided over a groundbreaking Manhattan courtroom dedicated to handling crimes committed by children under the age of 16. Corriero employs his experience to good effect in outlining the challenges of balancing society's interest in being safe with the desire to avoid transforming a youthful offender into a career criminal. He notes that the recent shift in local legislation toward a less tolerant approach has restricted the ability of judges to tailor punishments that fit not only the crime but the criminal. Corriero's text is readable; drawing on actual cases, he covers both the psychological and legal aspects of judging juvenile defendants. Law-and-order types are likely to view Corriero as too soft, while liberals will find little to disagree with in the judge's approach, though some may note the absence of discussion of defendants who in retrospect were treated too leniently. Skepticism may also be warranted for the claim of sociology professor Caroline Joy DeBrowner (who wrote one chapter about observing Judge Corriero in his courtroom) that the methods he proposes would work "irrespective of the judge's personality." (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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