Judge William Hitchcock, Author at Juvenile Justice Information ExchangeJuvenile Justice Information Exchange

Judge William Hitchcock

William Hitchcock served as the presiding judicial officer for Children’s Court in the Superior Court in Anchorage, Alaska for nearly three decades until his retirement in September 2011. His jurisdiction encompassed juvenile delinquency, child protection and civil domestic violence protective order proceedings. Judge Hitchcock served on a number of projects and committees including the Alaska Governor’s Conference on Youth and Justice. He was one of the founders of the Alaska CASA program and was selected in 2009 as the National CASA Association Judge of the Year. He led the Anchorage Reclaiming Futures program for the past 10 years, part of a national initiative that works to integrate services in juvenile justice for substance abusing youth.

Reclaiming Our Children’s Futures

By Judge William Hitchcock | January 9, 2013

The juvenile justice system in America has endured many trends and survived numerous attacks from its critics over the decades. From the paranoia about “super predators” in the 1990s that pushed an inordinate number of young people into adult jails, to the slow but steady decline in juvenile crime throughout the last decade, it has maintained its unique position in the criminal justice system. In my estimation, it is still running shy of its credo of being a “balanced and restorative” system of justice for today’s youthful offenders. Part of the reason for this is that in many jurisdictions it is still mired in an old theory of behavior management that employs negative reinforcement as the chief means of managing delinquent misconduct. Despite the fact that the vast majority of offenders commit nonviolent property crimes, we still detain too many of these youth in the guise of managing misbehavior by consequences. Most of the disposition reports that I would read as a juvenile court judge contained only references to the negatives, rarely highlighting the assets that the young person may have.