Juvenile law

Criminal procedures against juveniles are different from criminal procedures against adults in a lot of ways.

Criminal trials against people who were at least 14 years old and not yet 21 years old at the time of the act take place in juvenile courts.
In juvenile court there are some special procedural features like the involvement of the youth welfare service.

Another big difference is that penalties according to juvenile law don‘t focus on the severity of guilt, but on trying to make sure that the young human beings don‘t commit any new criminal offences. This means that there are a lot more varieties of possible sanctions for criminal behaviour than there are for adult defendants.

In juvenile law it‘s especially important to be represented by a lawyer, because young people have a heightened need for protection. For this reason they‘ll often get a court-appointed defense lawyer.