Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law
Abstract
The Juvenile Justice Standards Project volumes were publicly discussed for months prior to their publication. Unavoidably, much of the discussion was based upon rumor regarding their contents. In that context, critics charged that the proposed Standards would destroy the nation\u27s juvenile court system and replace it with a \u27junior criminal system\u27 1 and claimed that the Standards substitute the philosophy of just deserts for the traditional rehabilitative goals of juvenile justice.\u27 The news media described the Standards on disposition of delinquents as designed to fit the penalty to the crime, no matter what the age of the perpetrator. \u273 I do not intend in this writing to argue the merits of these changes-other contributors to this volume have done so. 4 Rather, I wish to describe the extent to which the Standards have attempted to move away from traditional goals and to evaluate the internal consistency of the Standards in accomplishing any such movement
