It has been a long-standing practice in the court system to treat juveniles differently from adults – and for good reason. While they may be physically mature, adolescents are not miniature adults; their brains are still developing in areas such as impulse control and judgment.

In most cases, juveniles are not subject to the adversarial court system of adults and are treated as developing individuals in need of rehabilitation rather than retribution. Yet some judges, such as Louisiana Judge Mark Doherty, believe that denying a jury trial to a juvenile who is facing a confinement of greater than six months is a violation of due process.

The question is: Does the juvenile justice system function as it was intended – a rehabilitative system to keep adolescents from becoming adult violators? Or is it simply a miniature adult prison system? Perhaps it is something in between.

Yesterday, the Louisiana Supreme Court decided they are not yet ready to give up on the current juvenile justice system. In a unanimous decision, the Court upheld the current system’s denial of jury trials for juveniles in favor of a system that allows the judge to act as “finder of fact” and take into consideration social, behavioral and environmental factors when determining whether or not an adolescent is delinquent and what rehabilitative measures are appropriate.

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