Beyond the Adversarial Rivalry: A Developmental Rights-Based Model for Minor-on-Minor Crime, Part 2

When children harm children, the conventional victim-perpetrator framework is ill-equipped to address the developmental, relational, and institutional complexities involved. While juvenile justice scholarship increasingly emphasizes rehabilitation, and victims' rights literature has advanced child-sensitive protections, minor-on-minor offending remains underexplored across legal and social science disciplines. Part 1 of this two-parts project developed a four-pillar theoretical framework integrating therapeutic justice, developmental principles, relational procedural justice, and children's rights norms. The present Article considers the implementation of the proposed model through two paradigmatic case studies, concerning victim impact statements and the handling of sensitive disclosures. Through these scenarios, the Article addresses possible critiques against the model and illustrates how it can protect minor victims' rights, foster rehabilitation for juvenile defendants, and mitigate secondary trauma for both parties. Building on the theoretical model and case-study analysis, we offer some guiding principles for promoting a developmentally informed and rights respecting juvenile justice system.