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.
Juvenile and Criminal Justice Systems' Responses to Youth Violence
Within the past decade, nearly every state has amended its juvenile code in response to perceived increases in serious, persistent, and violent youth crime. These changes diminish the jurisdiction of juvenile courts as judicial decisions and statutory changes transfer more youths from juvenile courts to criminal courts so that young offenders can be sentenced as adults. Amendments to juvenile sentencing laws increase the punitiveness of sanctions available to juvenile court judges. Other strategies attempt to "blend," or merge, juvenile and criminal court jurisdiction and sentencing authority over violent young offenders. These "get tough" policies affect the numbers and types of youths confined in adult and juvenile correctional facilities and pose fundamental problems for administrators in both systems; accelerate procedural, jurisprudential, and substantive convergence between the juvenile and criminal justice systems; and erode the rationale for a separate juvenile court.
Prosecuting juveniles as adults: The quest for "objective" decisions
VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Osbun and Rode was to evaluate the effect of Minnesota's revised waiver statute. The intent of the statute was to limit judicial discretion by defining a class of juvenile offenders presumed on the basis of age, alleged offense, and record of prior felony to be unfit for treatment in the juvenile court. METHODOLOGY: A quasi-experimental design was employed to assess the statute. Demographic and case history data were obtained from juvenile court files in Hennepin, an urban county located near Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to the authors, Hennepin is the most populous county in the state, has the largest juvenile court caseload, and transfers more juveniles to adult court than any other county in Minnesota. Data were collected according to two categories: (1) cases in which the juvenile's age, alleged offense, and prior record were sufficient to satisfy the presumptive criteria of the statute and (2) cases where the waiver procedure was actually initiated by the prosecutor. Each case was followed from initial court petition through final disposition because, according to the authors, it was the judge who ultimately had the decision of whether or not to transfer the juvenile to adult court. Data on the date of birth, sex, race, date, type and outcome of all prior and present offenses as well as all previous dispositions received by the juvenile court were obtained by court records. Data were obtained from three six-month time periods: 1/1/79 to 6/30/79; 1/1/80 to 6/30/80; and 1/1/81 to 6/30/81. The last six-month period of data collection occurred after the implementation of the statute. Tables were constructed to examine the data, however, no statistical analyses were performed. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The authors reported that the number of waiver motions filed remained fairly constant over the 18-month period. However, the percentage of waivers granted increased during the first six months of 1991, the period immediately following the implementation of the statute. The authors stated that the increase in transfers granted could not be attributed primarily to the implementation of the statute because the percentage of waiver motions granted was the same for cases that did not satisfy the presumptive criteria as it was for cases that did. The authors also found that most juveniles transferred to adult court as well as those for whom waivers were requested did not belong to the class offenders who were presumed by law to be unfit for juvenile court. It was also found that about two-thirds of the juveniles transferred to adult court did not have records sufficient enough to warrant transfer. Additionally, the authors reported many juveniles who met the statutory requirements for transfer were not considered for transfer. Similarly, it was found that after the implementation of the statue, prosecutors had chosen to file waiver motions for only about half of the juveniles who met the statutory criteria. It was also reported that about 33% of the cases that had waiver requests filed failed to satisfy the objective, statutory criteria. The authors claimed that the above findings indicate that prosecutors and judges were not provided with clear-cut, objective, criteria for considering motions of waiver. The authors also reported that juveniles who satisfied the presumptive criteria for waiver, had less serious records than those who became involved in the waiver process. Less than half of those identified by the objective criteria had been charged with violent or multiple felonies. The authors also reported that cases that had been accepted for waiver were more serious than cases that were rejected. The authors concluded that objective criteria laid out by the statute failed to provide an adequate means for selecting juveniles for transfer to adult court. Similarly, the authors stated that the traditional discretionary process used by criminal justice agents for making waiver decisions may be more successful than the objective criteria. The authors noted that discretionary tactics may take into account a more complete profile of the juvenile than the statute allows. The authors concluded by stating that the objective selection formulas offer no simple solution to the complex problem of discretion in waiver decisions. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) 1970s 1980s Juvenile Violence Juvenile Offender Legislation Juvenile Court Juvenile Justice System Criminal Justice System Judicial Transfer-Waiver Correctional Decision Making Juvenile In Adult Court Minnesota Offender Prosecution Justice System Evaluation 12-04