are for juveniles who commit adult-like crimes. These categories are criminal offenders and juveniles remanded to superior court. The other categories, informal probationers and status offenders are for youths who have committed less serious offenses or offenses unique to juveniles, like curfew violations.Teenagers commit the largest portion of all violent crime in America. Juvenile courts in the United States processed an estimated 1,555,200 delinquency cases in 1994. More murders and robberies are committed by 18-year-old males than by any other age group. More than one-third of all murders are committed by offenders under the age of 21. The number of 13- to 15-year-olds arrested for murder jumped from 390 in 1982 to 740 a decade later. Juvenile arrest rates for heroin and cocaine rose more than 700 percent between 1980 and 1990. There are currently about 70 death row inmates (all male) sentenced as juveniles, about 2% of the total death row. 12 men have been executed for crimes committed as juveniles since 1976 and since 1985 there are documented executions of juvenile offenders in eight states worldwide.With such alarming statistics, what then can be done to deter juvenile crime. If the experts are right, there will be a devastating rise in juvenile crime, plus on ongoing problem with the current offenders as they move into adulthood. There is no way to tell how juvenile crime will shrink or expand in the coming decade. However, victims of juvenile offenders are demanding changes in the juvenile justice system and challenging the long-standing belief that juveniles who kill, rob or rape should be treated in different ways than adult criminals. They want them prosecuted and sentenced as adults and put into maximum security prisons or executed and this has provoked a campaign against juvenile courts.Juvenile courts were created to give juveniles a combination of punishment, treatment and counseling to straighten out thei...
