The long reach of juvenile and criminal legal debt: How monetary sanctions shape legal cynicism and adultification

Leslie Paik, Andrea Giuffre, Alexes Harris and Sarah Shannon

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 154, issue C

Abstract: Previous research has established the deleterious long-term effects of juvenile legal system involvement such as increased risk of criminal legal system involvement as adults. This paper examines retrospective accounts of how that process occurs by exploring the following research question: how does one’s involvement in the juvenile legal system, which includes monetary sanctions, shape peoples’ views of law and legal institutions and with what consequences? Based on 19 interviews with adults who have legal debt from both juvenile and criminal legal systems, the paper focuses on four aspects of the long-reaching effects of juvenile legal involvement and juvenile monetary sanctions: legal socialization, adultification, legal cynicism, and future aspirations. In all these aspects, we show the organizational constraints that shape individuals’ perspectives about the law and the impact of monetary sanctions on their lives. In doing so, the paper shows how monetary sanctions associated with juvenile cases add to the cumulative disadvantage of legal system involvement.

Keywords: Juvenile justice; Monetary sanctions; Adultification; Legal cynicism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019074092300316X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:154:y:2023:i:c:s019074092300316x

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107121

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().