Prosecuting Adolescents in Criminal Courts: Criminal or Juvenile Justice?

Abstract

Previous sociological research on courts has studied how court actors mobilize models of to shape court proceedings, yet no research examines how court actors approach cases of adolescents who are prosecuted in (adult) courts. These cases raise a potential incongruity between a traditional 20th century justice model that focuses on rehabilitating individuals, and a traditional criminal justice model that focuses on punishment in proportion to severity of offenses. Drawing on observational research in a specialized court that prosecutes adolescents, and on interviews of courtroom decision-makers, this article finds that court actors settle this incongruity by bifurcating court proceedings into two phases. They follow a model during the initial phase of court proceedings, and a juvenile model during the latter, sentencing phase. They thus create a hybrid form of by implementing a sequential model, rather than relying solely on either a juvenile or a model of throughout case processing. The results suggest that categorizations often applied to the contrast between juvenile and courts may be misleading.