Adult Punishment for Juvenile Offenders: Does it Reduce Crime?

Abstract

The decade prior to 1994 saw a significant increase in violent juvenile crime, high profile cases of serious and violent crimes committed by juveniles and young adults, and the resulting perception that America was experiencing a juvenile crime wave unlike anything in its history (see Zimring, 1998). Based on the projected growth in the juvenile population during the early twenty-first century, some predicted a coming storm of youth violence (see Welch, Fenwick, & Roberts, 1997) and the emergence of young Asuper-predators@ (DiIulio, 1995). The public, and perhaps even more so policymakers, demanded action. There was a rough consensus among legislators that the juvenile court was too lenient, that serious offenders were beyond rehabilitation and must be incarcerated to ensure public safety, and that juveniles were as culpable for their crimes as adults (Redding, 1997). Thus, states passed legal reforms designed to Aget tough@ on juvenile crime. The most significant change was states= revision of their transfer laws to expand the type of offenses and offenders eligible for transfer from the juvenile court to the adult court for trial and sentencing. Changes also occurred at the federal level with the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Pub. L. 103-332, 108 Stat.1796), which allowed the transfer of 13-year-olds who committed crimes with firearms on federal property. Congressman Bill McCollum, a key sponsor of the federal legislation, said that A[I]n America today, no population poses a greater threat to public safety than juvenile criminals@ (see Lacayo & Donnelly, 1997, p.26). This chapter discusses the research on the general and specific deterrent effects of transferring juveniles for trial in adult criminal court, identifies gaps in our knowledge base that

Knowledgeable Judges Make a Difference: Judicial Beliefs Affect Juvenile Court Transfer Decisions

“…In addition to educating judges and prosecutors about research findings on the counter‐deterrent effects of transfer, a policy requiring judges to issue written opinions detailing their reasons for a transfer decision would add transparency to the process, allow the public and policy makers to compare decisions across cases (Arteaga, 2002), and provide lawyers and policy advocates a basis upon which to challenge decisions to transfer that are heavily premised on deterrence rationales. In arguing against transfer, lawyers must be equipped to provide the court with specific and detailed recommendations for effective dispositional alternatives that will ensure community safety while providing meaningful rehabilitation (Redding, 2006).…”

“…Recent social psychological research has found correlations between punitive attitudes toward juvenile or criminal justice, a low “need for cognition” (a disposition to engage in complex thinking), and political conservatism (see Davis et al., 1993; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Sargent, 2004). A large swath of policy makers and judges appear to be unpersuaded by the studies showing that transfer has counter‐deterrent effects, due to the somewhat counterintuitive nature of the findings (i.e, that punishment does not deter), the studies' inherent methodological limitations (i.e., the inability to control for all possible selection effects), and a general skepticism of social science research (Redding, 2006). As Latessa (2004) points out, when it comes to crime control, everyone thinks they are an expert.…”

Juvenile Justice Education For At-risk High School Youth: A Pilot Program

“…Prevention of crime, then, can be more effective through education at the source-the youth themselves, who, as research has illustrated, are in great need of knowledge about juvenile sentencing and the current laws (Miner-Romanoff, 2012;Redding, 2005Redding, , 2008. Such innovative outreach programs as the present one can provide youth with the knowledge, guidance, and means to weigh positive and negative consequences of their behavior and to make decisions that serve them positively.…”

Reimagining risk assessment: Comment on Viljoen and Vincent (2020).

“…The original juvenile courts, created at the turn of the 20th century, were explicitly rehabilitation-focused and dispositions were very flexible, with detention considered a last resort. In the 1970s and 1980s, lagging slightly behind the determinate sentencing movement in adult court, many juvenile court systems turned away from rehabilitation as a priority; transfer to adult court became easier and even dispositions in juvenile court were more focused on culpability rather than amenability to treatment (Redding, 2006). However, bolstered by recent Supreme Court decisions recognizing the malleability of juveniles as a constitutional matter (see, e.g., Miller v. Alabama, 2012), juvenile court sentences in every state remain much more open-ended than adult court.…”