1.1 Concept and Rationale of Juvenile Justice

The concept: juvenile justice is the specialised system of laws, procedures, institutions and dispositions for children in conflict with the law — separate in aim and method from the adult criminal process: not a small criminal court, but a different court for a different person. The rationale (the three pillars — learn them): Diminished culpability — the developmental science: the young offend with immature judgment (the adolescent brain's control-system maturing into the twenties) — retributive equivalence is unjust; Greater malleability — the same plasticity that risks also heals: the juvenile is corrigible — the reform wager the adult system's pessimism denies; The label's danger — the stigmatising process itself criminogenic (the "delinquent" label becoming the self) — the system must save the child from the system.