BOOK REVIEW By GARY A. STORM
Assistant professor of social justice professions at Sangamon State University, he received his education at Antioch College and the University of Illinois.
Murphy's conclusion: in Illinois juvenile system
Patrick T. Murphy, Our Kindly Parent . . . The State: The Juvenile Justice System and How It Works. Viking Press, 1974. 190 pp. $8.95
AFTER reading Patrick T. Murphy's revealing study of the juvenile justice system in Illinois, the dominant questions in this reviewer's mind concern the meaning of "juvenile justice" itself and the effectiveness of the institutions which are responsible for administering it. Murphy is quick to point out that the original purpose of the Juvenile Court, while salutary in theory, has often proved harmful in practice. The combined effect of developing special laws, judicial procedures, and social service agencies to serve "the best interests" of children and youth has been to make young people highly dependent on the discretionary judgments of the many professionals responsible for "helping" them.
Because intervention by juvenile justice personnel is supposedly designed to help rather than punish young people, almost any behavior or condition judged harmful can result in court involvement and, subsequently, the in-stitulionalization of these young people. These conditions include neglect or dependency (which often stem from the mere fact of poverty, not from any lack of love or concern from parents); lack of control by parents, teachers, and other adults; truancy; running away; breaking curfews, etc.
New rights for youth
The injustice of the system stems from abuse of discretion on the part of
institutional personnel who are supposedly helping young people. Murphy takes to task the Juvenile Court, the Department of Children and Family Services, private childcare agencies, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Mental Health. The major value of Murphy's book lies in its documentation of serious child abuse by these institutions (misuse of long sentences, corporal punishment, solitary confinement, tranquilizing drugs, and placement powers) and the espousal of measures that can be taken to correct these abuses (legal, political, journalistic, and others). The book points up the need to define new rights and responsibilities for youth and suggests what some of these might be.
A major conclusion of the author is that the jurisdiction of the Juvenile C'ourl should be reduced to dealing only with youngsters who are charged with serious criminal offenses or those who are victims of serious physical or emotional abuse. He concludes that, "When the state's educational and public assistance establishments do not resolve the problems caused by poverty (and indeed often compound them), and the problems are tossed into the juvenile justice system, it is clear we must look beyond the system itself in considering ways to reform it."
Among the needed reforms Murphy identifies are community-based programs and services for delinquency prevention, diversion from the courts, and juvenile corrections. He hopes that with active legal and other forms of child advocacy, communities can become more kindly parents than the state.
Murphy is a lawyer who serves as a consultant to the Juvenile Litigation Office of the Chicago Legal Assistance Foundation. He is also Chairman of the Illinois Governor's Commission to Revise the State Mental Code.
84 /Illinois Issues/March 1975