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This is the first book to provide an in-depth study of the juvenile transfer process. Criminal justice's get tough policy has led to greater use of this process which, on the surface, transfers persistent juvenile offenders to criminal court jurisdiction in order to impose more serious penalties. The implications of this growing phenomenon are increasingly important for both the juvenile and criminal court systems. Champion and Mays' analysis includes descriptions of juvenile courts, types of offenders processed by these courts, and characteristic outcomes of transfers. Examining the transfer process in detail, they explore social and legal definitions of delinquency; goals and functions of transfers; legal rights of juveniles; and the implications of possible penalties, such as the death penalty. Questions such as whether transfers necessarily result in harsher punishment are discussed at length. Transferring Juveniles to Criminal Courts is designed for students majoring in criminal justice, public administration, political science, sociology, and psychology. Examining the transfer process, Chapter One provides a thorough discussion of the social and legal definitions of delinquency. Chapter Two is an overview of juvenile options, juvenile punishments, public policy, and the theme of deterring juvenile offenders. A description of transfers in different jurisdictions, including their goals and functions, is provided in Chapter Three. Chapter Four then explores the various implications of these transfers. Public policy is examined as it relates to the prevalent get tough policy. Chapter Five describes the criminal court and some of the varied functions served by these courts. Finally, Chapter Six summarizes several important trends relating to juvenile transfers. It includes male/female juvenile comparisons, the issue of selective certification, implications of prison overcrowding, and the emergence of a unified court system. An up-to-date bibliography is provided for further research.
Since the 1960s, recurring cycles of political activism over youth crime have motivated efforts to remove adolescents from the juvenile court. Periodic surges of crime—youth violence in the 1970s, the spread of gangs in the 1980s, and more recently, epidemic gun violence and drug-related crime—have spurred laws and policies aimed at narrowing the reach of the juvenile court. Despite declining juvenile crime rates, every state in the country has increased the number of youths tried and punished as adults. Research in this area has not kept pace with these legislative developments. There has never been a detailed, sociolegal analytic book devoted to this topic. In this important collection, researchers discuss policy, substantive procedural and empirical dimensions of waivers, and where the boundaries of the courts lie. Part 1 provides an overview of the origins and development of law and contemporary policy on the jurisdiction of adolescents. Part 2 examines the effects of jurisdictional shifts. Part 3 offers valuable insight into the developmental and psychological aspects of current and future reforms. Contributors: Donna Bishop, Richard Bonnie, M. A. Bortner, Elizabeth Cauffman, Linda Frost Clausel, Robert O. Dawson, Jeffrey Fagan, Barry Feld, Charles Frazier, Thomas Grisso, Darnell Hawkins, James C. Howell, Akiva Liberman, Richard Redding, Simon Singer, Laurence Steinberg, David Tanenhaus, Marjorie Zatz, and Franklin E. Zimring
Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.
A separate juvenile justice system was established in the United States in 1899 with a goal of diverting juvenile offenders from the harsh punishments of the adult criminal court, and encouraging rehabilitation based on the individual needs of the offender. This new juvenile court was set up as a civil or chancery court with informal proceedings and discretion left to the juvenile court judge. Furthermore, juvenile court proceedings were closed to the public and juvenile records were to remain confidential. However, as the decades progressed juveniles became increasingly involved in more serious crimes. This generated a growing fear among lawmakers, educators, and the public which resulted in a number of “get tough” policies and strategies. By the 1990s the most popular approach in dealing with violent juvenile crime was for states to make it easier or to require the prosecution of juveniles as adults in criminal court. Research demonstrates that such policies may be counter-productive, increase rather than decrease recidivism, and cause harm to offenders, their families, and the community. This volume provides a comprehensive historical review of knowledge surrounding the transfer of American’s youth from the rehabilitative, individualized treatment of the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal justice system.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
In recent years the number of juvenile offenders transferred into the adult criminal justice system has increased. This report addresses the need to take into account the nature of the offenses triggering such transfers & the various mechanisms used to effect them. It delineates the distinctions among discretionary, mandatory, & presumptive waivers. Direct file provisions, which typically authorize the prosecutor to determine the jurisdiction based on age/offense categories, are described, as are statutory exclusions, which remove certain offenses or age/offense categories from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court.
Despite inventing the juvenile court a little more than a century ago, the United States has become an international outlier in its juvenile sentencing practices. The War on Kids explains how that happened and how policymakers can correct the course of juvenile justice today.