The Decision to Incarcerate in Juvenile and Criminal Courts

Abstract

Despite a recent proliferation of laws transferring adolescents from juvenile court to criminal court, no research examines whether these transfer policies subject adolescents to a different set of evaluative criteria in criminal courts than in juvenile courts. Prior literature and political rhetoric suggest that a criminal justice model of offense-based evaluative criteria would apply in the criminal court, in contrast to an offender-based juvenile justice model. Yet this hypothesis remains untested by prior research. In response, this article tests whether legal and case-processing factors have a relatively greater influence in criminal than in juvenile court, as the literature and political rhetoric would predict. To do so, the author uses comparable samples of cases, matched by age and offense, from two adjacent jurisdictions with different thresholds for criminal court eligibility. By finding no differences among factors predicting sentencing across the two legal forums, the results challenge widely held assumptions about the distinctions between juvenile and criminal courts.