An Evolving Standard of Decency: Examining the American Juvenile Justice System and the Constitutionality of Youth Incarceration

<p>The United States incarcerates more children and adolescents than any other developed nation in the world. Studies have shown that juvenile detention is generally ineffective at rehabilitating delinquent youth, which places the practice at odds with the stated intent of modern juvenile justice. Similar to the adult criminal justice system, there is a significant and widespread disparity in the incarceration rate between that of minority youth and their white counterparts in the juvenile system. Finally, a substantial and growing body of medical and behavioral research concludes that trauma associated with juvenile detention can cause long-term or even lifetime negative neurological and developmental outcomes. Building on previous research, this dissertation applies prison abolition and critical race theories to youth incarceration to examine two constitutional questions: 1) Do the potentially permanent adverse neurological effects of trauma caused by non-therapeutic juvenile detention confirm that the practice of incarcerating youth is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment?, and 2) Does the stark racial disparity among America’s incarcerated youth reflect intrinsic structural features of the juvenile justice system that are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Relying on thematic, legal, and legislative content analysis, I submit that past Supreme Court opinions in Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment-related cases provide a compelling national interest rationale for Congress to ban non-therapeutic detention of youth offenders by amending the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 .</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Political Science, PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Mark S.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Carlos Algara
• Michael Fortner

• Carceral-induced trauma
• Cruel and unusual punishment
• equal protection
• Juvenile justice
• Racial disparity
• Youth incarceration

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/971

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-1993