Legal, Psychological, and Behavioral Outcomes

Abstract

States have responded to the public's outrage at rising juvenile crime by revising their transfer statutes to make it easier to transfer juvenile offenders for trial and sentencing in criminal court and possible incarceration in adult prisons. These changing trends in juvenile justice raise three questions about what actually happens to juveniles once they are in the adult criminal justice system. To what extent does trial in adult court and/or incarceration in adult prisons promote or retard community protection, juvenile offenders' accountability, and the development of competencies in juvenile offenders? This article discusses state transfer laws and the legal consequences of criminal court prosecution, and analyzes current research on deterrence effects of transfer laws, conviction and sentencing in juvenile versus criminal court, recidivism rates in juvenile versus criminal court, and conditions and programming in juvenile versus adult correctional facilities. The research findings have two important implications for juvenile justice policy: the number of juvenile cases transferred to criminal court should be minimized, and imprisonment of juveniles in adult facilities should be avoided whenever possible. These implications are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.

Reconsidering Child Saving

“…Feld (1997) is perhaps the most vocal advocate of abolishing the separate juvenile system and has argued in favor of handling all juveniles in the adult criminal justice system, with youthfulness to be used as a mitigating factor during sentencing. Others have argued in favor of eliminating transfer and adjudicating all juvenile cases in the juvenile justice system (Bishop, 2000;Redding, 1999). The final perspective falls somewhere in between, urging the judicious use of transfer for only the most chronic and serious juvenile offenders (Butts & Harrell, 1998;Merlo, Benekos, & Cook, 1999;Van Vleet, 1999).…”