Violent Youth in Juvenile and Adult Court: An Assessment of Sentencing Strategies in Texas
This paper examines the effectiveness of two sentencing strategies for managing serious and violent juvenile offenders: judicial waiver to adult court and determinate sentencing in juvenile court. Corrections data were analyzed and it was found that both groups consistently receive longer terms of incarceration than are available through normal juvenile justice processing. However, this finding changed when actual time served was taken into consideration. A discriminant analysis showed that juveniles determin-ately sentenced in juvenile court are more likely to be younger and receive and serve shorter sentences than juveniles waived to adult court and sentenced to prison.
A Problem of Fit: Extreme Delinquents, Blended Sentencing, and the Determinants of Continued Adult Sanctions
One of the most significant changes to juvenile justice processing in recent decades has been blended sentencing. Unlike traditional juvenile court or adult court waiver processes, blended sentencing statutes provide authority to juvenile or adult court judges to sanction delinquent offenders with juvenile and adult dispositions. Although state variations abound, most blended sentencing schemes feature a fail-safe postadjudication stage where decisions are made to suspend or invoke the adult portion of the original blended sentence. Based on data from 1,504 serious and violent male delinquents sanctioned via a blended sentencing statute, this study explored the relationship of a battery of delinquent background, commitment offense, and postadjudication institutional misconduct variables on decisions to invoke or suspend the adult portion of a blended sentence. Results of the analysis revealed that commitment offense type, age at commitment and, to a lesser extent, institutional misconduct behavior weighed most heavily in decisions to invoke the adult portion of the blended sentence.
Behind the Black Robes: Juvenile Court Judges and the Court
A Day in a Juvenile Court Judge Regnal W Garff Jr Judicial Leadership Judge Romae Turner Powell Judicial Dignity Judge Seymour Gelber Judicial Realism Judge Edward J McLaughlin Judicial Literalism Judge James S Casey Judicial Responsibility eting en Banc