Entry Into The Court System, By Craig Hemmens, Benjamin...

The reading I chose to reflect on was chapter three,† Entry into the Court System† from the book â€Å"Criminal Justice Case Briefs, Significant Cases in Juvenile Justice† by Craig Hemmens, Benjamin Steiner, and David Mueller. I chose to write about the process of the pretrial or â€Å"intake† phase because it has not been determined by the Supreme Court as critical in juvenile proceedings. Consequently juveniles do not have the right to be represented by counsel during this meeting and if they chose to participate, any statements made to the probation officer during the conference are to be solely admissible for a placement decision, not for prosecution or adult criminal court. In this paper I will reflect and analyze some of the cases detailed in the chapter that discuss whether or not statements made during intake can be used against a juvenile who has no right to counsel during this time. Intake of Juveniles The main purpose of the intake process for juveniles is to aid in the determination of when a child is in need of help from the juvenile court. Additional benefits to this process include; controlling of the use of detention, reducing the court’s caseload, keeping inappropriate cases out of the system and directing juveniles to the appropriate community services if needed. The normal process of intake begins after an arrest of a juvenile has been made and a police officer concludes that an offender warrants the attention of the juvenile justice system. While most referrals