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.
Violent Youth in Adult Court: Process and Punishment
Despite the widespread transfer of violent youth from juvenile to criminal court, there is little empirical knowledge of the transfer process, rate of transfer, or of case outcomes, sentences, and placements of transferred juveniles. This study examines these issues for 177 violent youths considered for transfer in four urban areas, comparing court outcomes for youths transferred to criminal court with those for youths retained in juvenile court. Varying procedures, criteria, and court rules result in case processing time averaging 2.5 times greater for transferred youth. Most spend this time in detention. Violent youth considered for transfer are adjudicated at a high rate for the offenses as charged in both juvenile and criminal court. Plea bargaining for charges rarely occurred. Youth considered for transfer but retained by the juvenile court received maximum commitments and placements within the jurisdictional limits of the juvenile justice system. Transferred youth convicted in criminal court received even more severe sanctions both in nature and length. Alternatives to incarceration were rarely used by either the juvenile or criminal court.
The Role of the District Attorney in Juvenile Court: Is the Juvenile Court Becoming Just Like Adult Court?
California juvenile law has changed dramatically in the past two years. Dissatisfied with the statutory law created in the early 1960s, legislators made significant modifications in the law in both 1975 and 1976. Much of the legislative focus has been on the socalled status offenders and the sixteen and seventeen-year-old youth accused of hard core criminality and his relationship to the courts of criminal jurisdiction.