Achieving Juvenile Justice through Abolition: A Critical Review of Social Work’s Role in Shaping the Juvenile Legal System and Steps toward Achieving an Antiracist Future

Abstract

The first juvenile court was created in 1899 with the help of social workers who conceptualized their actions as progressive. Youth were deemed inculpable for certain actions since, cognitively, their brains were not as developed as those of adults. Thus, separate measures were created to rehabilitate youth who exhibited delinquent and deviant behavior. Over one hundred years later, we have a system that disproportionately arrests, confines, and displaces Black youth. This paper critiques social work’s role in helping develop the first juvenile courts, while highlighting the failures of the current juvenile legal system. We then use P.I.C. abolition as a theoretical framework to offer guidance on how social work can once again assist in the transformation of the juvenile legal system as a means toward achieving true justice.

Keywords

• juvenile justice
• abolition
• antiracism
• social work history
• juvenile courts