In September, 1975, Chief Justice Robert J. Sheran of the Minnesota Supreme Court appointed a panel of seventeen persons to serve on a Commission to examine the role of the juvenile courts of Minnesota in the prevention and control of delinquency, to make recommendations toward increasing their effectiveness in this role, to state the reasons and findings which support each recommendation and to report back to the Supreme Court within a year.
The Commission released findings and recommendations in the areas of court intake and diversion, the use of procedures for referring juveniles for criminal prosecution, and the meaning and implications of the juvenile's right to treatment in November 1976. A follow-up to the 1975-76 study was undertaken in 1978, and the Commission was officially reactivated in 1980. Funding in both 1975 and 1978 came from the Governor's Commission on Crime Prevention and Control.
Upon its reactivation, the Commission assumed two major tasks: (1) the drafting of uniform rules of procedure for state juvenile courts; and (2) the formulation of policy recommendations concerning several significant issues of juvenile court jurisdiction. Their March 1982 report (see below) presents the findings and recommendations resulting from the Commission's attention to jurisdictional issues; the proposed rules of procedure are presented in a separate document.