California Code, Welfare and Institutions Code - WIC § 500

The Legislature hereby finds that a substantial and disproportionate amount of serious crime is committed by a relatively small number of chronic juvenile offenders commonly known as serious habitual offenders.  In enacting this article, the Legislature intends to support increased efforts by the juvenile justice system comprised of law enforcement, district attorneys, probation departments, juvenile courts, and schools to identify these offenders early in their careers, and to work cooperatively together to investigate and record their activities, prosecute them aggressively by using vertical prosecution techniques, sentence them appropriately, and to supervise them intensively in institutions and in the community.  The Legislature further supports increased interagency efforts to gather comprehensive data and actively disseminate it to the agencies in the juvenile justice system, to produce more informed decisions by all agencies in that system, through organizational and operational techniques that have already proven their effectiveness in selected counties in this and other states.