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The Effect of Labeling Upon Youths in the Juvenile Justice System: A Review of the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Anne Rankin Mahoney
Anne Rankin Mahoney*
Affiliation:
University of Denver and IJA-ABA Juvenile Justice Standards Project
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The avoidance of the stigma accompanying court appearance was one of the reasons for the development of a specialized court for children. Treatment-oriented reformers had been concerned for many years about the potentially harmful effects upon individuals of arrest, court appearance, and incarceration. As a result, they made efforts in the juvenile court to minimize stigmatization by having informal procedures, hearings closed to the public and press, and limited access to court records. More recently the avoidance of stigma has been used to rationalize the diversion of youths away from the juvenile justice system before they have any contact with it. This heightened concern about stigmatization through juvenile court exeprience flows in part from a growing interest in labeling theory among social scientists.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Summer 1974 , pp. 583 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1974.

Footnotes

AUTHORS NOTE: This essay is drawn from work prepared for the Institute of Judicial Administration — American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Standards Project. The Project is supported by funds from the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Bar Endowment, the Vincent Astor Foundation and the Herman Goldman Foundation. The latter, in particular, provided support for social science input into the Project.

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