Crossing Over or Crossing Out America's Youth? Specialized Courts, Specialized Justice, and the Realities of Dual-Involvement in the Child Welfare and Juvenile Delinquency Systems

• In Event: The Same but Different: Examining Underexamined Types of Problem-Solving Courts

Abstract

Specialized justice via specialty courts is one mechanism by which citizens should be able to access justice and community resources in the United States. Currently, there are 2 million children in the U.S. who have been identified as “crossover youth,” those simultaneously involved with the child welfare system, such as dependency and foster care, and the delinquency and criminal justice systems. The temporal ordering of system involvement is unclear, however, regardless of youths’ entry points into both systems, crossover youth are at a heightened risk of mental illness, substance abuse, teen pregnancy/parenting, and long-term adult criminality (Daining and DePanfilis 2007; Chino, Personius-Zipoy, and Tanata 2004). They are often overlooked in our focus on social control, but warrant greater attention in part because the consequences of dual-involvement are now being articulated as justification for creating specialized courts designed to address crossover status. This paper examines the challenges of crossover youths’ access to justice and how this rationale given by court administrators conflicts with the extension of the criminal justice system to address dual-involvement. Further, the conflicting logics provided by stakeholders about the governance of families and the protection of children are presented in light of recently developed specialized justice models.

Author

• Amy M. Magnus, University of California, Irvine