Juvenile Justice

“The investment in educating offenders is a pittance compared with the social cost of fighting a generation of violent incorrigibles.  And make no mistake: An illiterate without a trade or skill will probably return to a life of crime.  Rehabilitation is important for humanitarian reasons, to bring the juvenile or first or second offender back into society as a contributing citizen.” (Passion for Truth, 288)

Senator Specter believed in a fair justice system for children and youths.  He felt that in order to effectively combat juvenile crime, one needed to determine the root cause for criminal action and take steps to correct that, rather than simply punish children for their actions.  As he saw it, victims of crimes were more likely to commit crimes themselves.  Specter, himself the father of two boys, brought these beliefs to his political career, when, shortly after being elected to the Senate in 1980, he joined the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice and served as its chairman.  Though funding for the subcommittee was often tight, Specter fought to keep money available for important juvenile justice programs.  He focused his work on two major areas: protecting children from violence and treating juvenile criminals properly. 

Throughout his career, Specter was a champion of protecting children from violence.  When he held subcommittee hearings, he frequently requested to have actual victims flown out to provide their testimonies and act as examples of why reform was necessary.  One group he strongly advocated for was child abuse victims, as those individuals were raised by violence, and were therefore prone to enact similar violent acts towards other people as they grew up.  To protect children from entering this abusive cycle, Specter drafted bills like the Juvenile Detention Employees Clearance Act of 1983, which required criminal background checks for individuals who acted as caretakers for children.  He also worked to address problems with violence in schools, child kidnapping, gang violence, and child pornography.  His legislation assured children the right to safety and provided them with outlets to get help if needed.

In addition to these reforms, Specter also worked to change the way juveniles were treated when they committed a crime.  He argued that automatically throwing children into prison for small crimes did more harm than good; instead, he suggested making use of educational facilities as a way to redirect youths into more productive pastimes and teach them skills to help them succeed as law-abiding citizens and stay off the streets in the future.  Specter also stressed the importance of maintaining separate prisons for adults and juveniles.  Pennsylvania already had laws in place to prevent adults and juveniles from being imprisoned together, but he believed it was important to implement that regulation on a national level.  Research on incarceration of adults and juveniles together showed terrible consequences for the youths, including sexual abuse, physical injury, and sometimes even death.  Specter also believed that exposing juveniles, whose crimes were likely not comparable with those of their fellow adult inmates, to such violence increased their likelihood of committing future crimes.  He proposed the Juvenile Incarceration Protection Act of 1983, as well as many other amendments, to provide safe and constructive treatment centers and prisons for juvenile criminals.

Specter made juvenile justice a permanent element of his Senate work.  Though he was most active on the committee in the early 1980s, he participated in reform on gang violence, child gun safety laws, and more into the late 1990s and early 2000s.  The Juvenile Justice series contains important documents from his work in this area, including testimonies of youths and parents, correspondence with other subcommittee members, and voting records.  Throughout all of the documents included, Specter’s dedication to improving the justice system for juveniles is profoundly apparent.