Juvenile Courts: Reformers in Crisis

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Impressive Future. Meanwhile, good juvenile courts are striving to set a reforming example. The problem, though, is to work out an effective compromise. Can a court really be half constitutional and half therapeutic? The very notion that juvenile courts can "change" errant kids may be a false piety. Judge Ketcham, for one, would prefer a new kind of family court that retains informal procedures only for children under 16, while applying criminal-law rules as well as training-school treatment to youths between 16 and 21.

Whatever the ultimate model, it had better be working by 1975—the date; according to present population trends, when roughly 40% of all Americans will be aged 21 or under. In a decade, juvenile courts may well be handling almost as many cases as the nation's adult criminal courts.