Winner, 2020 ACJS Outstanding Book Award, given by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences

A major statement on the juvenile justice system by one of America’s leading experts
The juvenile court lies at the intersection of youth policy and crime policy. Its institutional practices reflect our changing ideas about children and crime control. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court provides a sweeping overview of the American juvenile justice system’s development and change over the past century. Noted law professor and criminologist Barry C. Feld places special emphasis on changes over the last 25 years—the ascendance of get tough crime policies and the more recent Supreme Court recognition that “children are different.”
Feld’s comprehensive historical analyses trace juvenile courts’ evolution though four periods—the original Progressive Era, the Due Process Revolution in the 1960s, the Get Tough Era of the 1980s and 1990s, and today’s Kids Are Different era. In each period, changes in the economy, cities, families, race and ethnicity, and politics have shaped juvenile courts’ policies and practices. Changes in juvenile courts’ ends and means—substance and procedure—reflect shifting notions of children’s culpability and competence.
The Evolution of the Juvenile Court examines how conservative politicians used coded racial appeals to advocate get tough policies that equated children with adults and more recent Supreme Court decisions that draw on developmental psychology and neuroscience research to bolster its conclusions about youths’ reduced criminal responsibility and diminished competence. Feld draws on lessons from the past to envision a new, developmentally appropriate justice system for children. Ultimately, providing justice for children requires structural changes to reduce social and economic inequality—concentrated poverty in segregated urban areas—that disproportionately expose children of color to juvenile courts’ punitive policies.
Historical, prescriptive, and analytical, The Evolution of the Juvenile Court evaluates the author’s past recommendations to abolish juvenile courts in light of this new evidence, and concludes that separate, but reformed, juvenile courts are necessary to protect children who commit crimes and facilitate their successful transition to adulthood.

"Its about time someone wrote a book that informs readers about the unadulterated truth of how we treat kids in America. It isnt flattering, and worse, the future doesnt look promising despite reform movements peppered across our nation." - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

"Feld has delivered an important book that will enrich scholars understanding of race and juvenile justice in the recent American past. Though the work might have more closely examined the tensions within, and failures of, the US juvenile justice system since its inception-not just in the & Get Tough era-Feld nonetheless makes a compelling case for reform and restitution." - Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth

"For readers interested in policy, this book highlights how economic and public policy decisions that disproportionately affected minority groups created many of the disparities that are seen in the juvenile justice system today... For other readers, this book is critical in educating them on the decisions and events that have shaped the juvenile justice system thus far, to ensure that there is a shift to the creation of a more effective justice system for children in the United States." - Journal of Youth and Adolescence

"The book holds the juvenile court as the dependent variable and aims to examine the influence of social and political contexts, as well as perspectives on race, class, gender, age, and crime, on the changes to the juvenile system. [...] [It is] extremely effective in bringing attention to the influence that outside factors have on the juvenile justice system" - Journal of Youth and Adolescence