Youth discounts, or “a proportional reduction of adult sentence lengths based on the youth of the offender” (Feld) are discussed throughout chapters 5 through 9 of Scott and Steinberg’s Rethinking Juvenile Justice. Critics such as Feld argue that the juvenile court should be abolished. They believe that a system that “employs a ‘youth discount’ in sanctioning young offenders will serve the interests of young offenders and society better than the current bifurcated system”. Scott and Steinberg express their disagreement with this idea, stating that an integrated justice system, “even one with sentences subject to a ‘youth discount,’ would offer few benefits to juveniles charged with crimes“ . They argue that an integrated justice system would likely provide juveniles with less experienced representation, less access to treatment, and would cost a substantial amount greater “than the cost of making needed adjustments in the juvenile system”.
Putting juveniles in criminal court further restricts them from being able to access treatment and instead focuses on punishment. An integrated justice system with youth discounts would not solve the many issues plaguing the justice system at large. The separation of a juvenile justice court from the criminal court “signals that adolescents and adults involved in criminal activity are different and therefore should be subject to different treatment” (229). There needs to be this separation in order for adolescent offenders to get the sentencing and the treatment that is best for them. I agree with Scott and Steinberg‘s argument that integrating the two systems would allow for adolescent offenders to receive less benefits and even be harmed. Simply giving youth offenders a “youth discount,” or taking away a certain amount of punishment from their sentence, is not the solution.
This fails to take into account the differences between adolescents and adults. Simply lessening the sentence based on the youth of the offender misses many important factors. As I discussed in my paper about binary legal categories, youth offenders and adult offenders have many differences such as ability to recognize consequences, risk assessment, and susceptibility to peer influence Youth discounts seem like an easy way of sentencing offenders based simply on age, but but in actuality it fails to recognize the differences between the two categories of offenders beyond just that number. Youth discounts are an oversimplified way of dealing with young offenders. Would an integrated system with a youth discount work in our society?
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I believe that a youth discount is too simple of a way of dealing with adolescent offenders. Reducing sentences in proportion to an offender’s age fails to recognize the differences between youth offenders and adult offenders. The justice system, while still with its faults, works better when separated into a juvenile justice system and a criminal justice system. Integrating those two systems would be expensive and would not benefit the adolescent offenders who are in need of treatment. On paper, it may seem as though adolescents simply need to be sentenced to less than adults, but there are many differences between these groups that the nuances in the separate systems are better equipped to deal with. Juvenile offenders need the various benefits from the juvenile justice system, such as more access to treatment and intervention, that the criminal justice system would not offer them.
