Adult Court Research Articles

Association of Firearm Access, Use, and Victimization During Adolescence With Firearm Perpetration During Adulthood in a 16-Year Longitudinal Study of Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System

Preventing firearm violence requires understanding its antecedents. Yet no comprehensive longitudinal study has examined how involvement with firearms during adolescence-use, access, and victimization (defined as threatened with a weapon or gunshot injury)-is associated with the perpetration of firearm violence in adulthood. To examine the association between firearm involvement during adolescence and subsequent firearm perpetration and ownership in adulthood among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. This cohort study analyzed interview responses of 1829 randomly selected participants as part of the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a longitudinal study of health needs and outcomes of youth sampled from a temporary juvenile detention center in a large US city. Youth aged 10 to 18 years were interviewed in detention from November 1995 through June 1998. Participants were reinterviewed up to 13 times over 16 years through February 2015, for a total of 17 776 interviews. The sample was stratified by sex, race/ethnicity, age, and legal status (juvenile or adult court). Data were analyzed from April 2017, when data preparation began, through November 2020. Firearm involvement during adolescence: use (ie, threaten, shoot), access (ownership, ease of access, firearm in household, membership in gang that carries firearms), and victimization (gunshot injury, threatened with a weapon). Firearm involvement during adulthood: perpetration of firearm violence (ie, threatening with or using a firearm) and firearm ownership. Among the 1829 participants, 1388 had a 16-year follow-up interview: 860 males, 528 females; 809 were African American, 203 were non-Hispanic White; 374 were Hispanic; and 2 were other race/ethnicity; median (interquartile range) age of 32 (30-32) years. Eighty-five percent of males and 63.2% of females were involved with firearms as adolescents. Compared with females, males had significantly higher odds of every type of involvement except having a firearm in the home. In adulthood, 41.3% of males and 10.5% of females perpetrated firearm violence. Adolescents who had been threatened with a weapon or injured by firearms had 3.1 (95% CI, 2.0-4.9) and 2.4 (95% CI, 1.2-4.9) times the odds of perpetrating violence during adulthood. Similar associations were found for firearm ownership. Involvement with firearms during adolescence-including victimization-is a significant risk factor for firearm perpetration and ownership during adulthood.

Starosne granice krivično-pravnog maloljetstva u uporednom pravu

U radu je dat uporedno-pravni prikaz starosnih granica krivično-pravnog maloljetstva, kao dobnog okvira u kojem mlade osobe, zbog svoje nedoraslosti, uživaju posebni (povlašteni) krivično-pravni status. Kada je riječ o donjoj granici, kao granici nastupanja krivično-pravnog maloljetstva i odgovornosti, ona se kreće od šest ili sedam godina u pojedinim državama, pa sve do osamnaest godina. U većini evropskih država ova granica se veže za uzrast od 14 godina, što predstavlja minimalnu dob sposobnosti za kršenje krivičnog zakona koju predlaže Komitet UN za prava djeteta. U uporednom pravu značaj ove starosne granice je u pojedinim zakonodavstvima relativiziran propisivanjem dviju ili više takvih granica (u zavisnosti od težine krivičnih djela ili zbog primjene doli capax doktrine), kao i primjenom još nekih rješenja. S druge strane, u većini država krivično-pravno maloljetstvo traje do navršenih osamnaest godina, premda u pojedinim državama u SAD-u i nekim drugim vanevropskim državama ono prestaje i ranije. Značaj ove granice u pojedinim zakonodavstvima je relativiziran mogućnošću primjene maloljetničkog krivičnog prava i na (mlađe) punoljetne osobe, ali i mogućnošću upućivanja (transfera) maloljetnika na postupanje krivičnih sudova opće nadležnosti („sudova za odrasle“) i prije prestanka maloljetstva. U radu su analizirani međunarodni standardi koji se odnose na ova pitanja, kao i legislativna rješenja u državama iz regiona. Zaključno je konstatirano kako su rješenja koja sadrže maloljetnička krivična zakonodavstva država s prostora bivše SFRJ usklađena s međunarodnim standardima iz ove oblasti.

'Decidedly but Differently Accountable'? – Young Adults in the Criminal Justice System

Young adults are increasingly recognized as a distinct group, both in society and in the context of the criminal justice system. This article explores the evidence which highlights the distinct characteristics of young adults, and the principle supporting differential treatment of this age cohort. Consideration is given to the existing provisions that cater for young adults, including the newly established Young Adult List Court. Particular focus is given to assessing the efficacy of discounts provided for age under the Sentencing Act 2002. Two potential conceptual models for reform are canvassed. Processes and responses available under the current youth justice system may be extended where appropriate; such an approach has been adopted by several overseas jurisdictions. Alternatively, a distinct ‘third system’ may be established with procedures and outcomes developed specifically for young adults.

Trauma-Informed Courts: A Review and Integration of Justice Perspectives and Gender Responsiveness

ABSTRACT As researchers and practitioners begin to understand the complex relationship between victimization and offending, there is an increased need to address prior trauma in the court context. This includes in court processes themselves, as well as through offender supervision conditions in the form of treatment referrals. While not all offenders have been victims themselves, trauma-informed practices recognize the possibility of trauma history in the lives of court-involved individuals. Trauma-informed practices seek to address abuse and trauma and respond in a person-centered and supportive manner. When implemented in juvenile courts, there is potential for disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. This review seeks to understand how trauma-informed processes – already in use in juvenile courts – can be incorporated into adult courts to better address offender risks and needs, with the goal of facilitating rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the extent to which extant justice perspectives (i.e., procedural justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and restorative justice) and principles of gender-responsiveness are compatible with trauma-informed practices in adult courts. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are discussed.

Children, Accountability and Justice: Advancing Restorative Justice for Child Soldiers and Child Pirates

The variance in the international community’s approach to justice for child soldiers and child pirates is curious – why is it that child pirates are faced with impunity or, alternatively, harsh criminal sentences, sometimes in adult courts and prisons, while child soldiers are offered restorative justice with a focus on rehabilitation and reintegration? There are many commonalities in the role and experience of child soldiers and child pirates, most notably in terms of their indistinct role as victim and perpetrator. Nonetheless, the international conception of these children and the legal and policy responses to their crimes are vastly different. Restorative justice is widely accepted as an appropriate response to cope with child soldiers in post-conflict settings due to its ability to uphold the accountability of the child, prioritize rehabilitation, healing, and reintegration, and act as a prevention mechanism for re-entry into conflict. It seems the same should apply to child pirates – strangely, it does not.

Capacity evaluations for adult protective services: videoconference or in-person interviews

ABSTRACT The Geriatrician clinicians of the Texas Elder Abuse and Mistreatment Institute – Forensic Assessment Center Network (TEAM-FACN) in Houston, have many years of experience providing capacity assessment services for Adult Protective Services (APS) and Texas courts. A process has developed which is efficient, consistent, and evidence-informed. In the last two years, telecommunication has been added to this process to conduct assessments of APS clients in areas of Texas remote from the Houston area. Of the 545 capacity assessments TEAM-FACN has completed across the state of Texas over the first two years of adding telecommunication, 211 (39%) were conducted with in-person interviews and 334 (61%) were conducted using videoconference interviews. APS and the courts in remote areas of Texas have embraced the use of the videoconference assisted capacity assessments. This article describes this evidence-informed process and how telecommunication technology is incorporated to expand the reach of the service.

Early Childhood Trauma Impact on Adolescent Brain Development, Decision Making Abilities, and Delinquent Behaviors: Policy Implications for Juveniles Tried in Adult Court Systems

AbstractBy examining previous literature on the brain’s developmental process during adolescence, this paper aims to determine how early childhood trauma potentially effects decision making in adolescence through exploring self‐regulation theory. Through a self‐regulation framework, the hope is to determine the connection, if any, between early childhood trauma, delinquent behavior, and involvement in the juvenile justice system. The author insists that not only do adolescents have less culpability due to their brain developmental stage compared to adults, but also early childhood trauma puts adolescents at a greater risk of impaired self‐regulation which allows for more probable delinquent behavior. This paper also considers implications for social policy makers and youth advocates concerned with juvenile offenders tried in adult courts and existing racial disparities in the system.

The Drug Court Team and Discretionary Decision-Making: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Sanctioning Responses to Continued Participant Alcohol and Other Drug Use

Drug courts attempt to gain participant compliance and alcohol and other drug (AOD) use abstinence through a strategy of moderate and progressive sanctioning, but its discretionary application possesses the capacity for disparity across participants and behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine the drug court team’s (DCT) discretionary use of sanctions in response to continued participant AOD use. A mixed-methods approach was used for analyzing agency data ( n = 1,032) and interviews of five members of the DCT. Data were collected from an adult felony drug court over a 6-year period (2008–2013) and use to answer the following research question: “What participant characteristics and program performance measures affected sanctioning outcomes?” We found that offender attributes did play a role in the sanctioning decision, but program performance measures were stronger predictors of sanction type.

Improving responses to juvenile burglary offenders

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to make evidence-based recommendations for improving the responses of criminal justice agencies to juvenile burglary offenders. Design/methodology/approach The paper first analyzes what is known about factors relevant to young offenders’ initiation into burglary and subsequent persistence in that offense. It then evaluates research regarding juvenile justice interventions that can mitigate those factors in order to prevent youth from becoming involved in burglary or to encourage desistance in juvenile burglars. Findings Effective early intervention with juvenile burglars is vital, as burglars often begin committing this crime in their early teens and quickly develop expertise in the offense. Evidence supports the importance of positive mentoring, substance abuse programs, some forms of restorative justice and multi-modal interventions with education and employment components, while waiving these youth to adult court appears to offer little benefit over less punitive approaches. Originality/value This work delivers an original contribution by providing an analysis of existing burglary and juvenile justice research that may be useful to policymakers, law enforcement and other justice practitioners.

Childhood, impairment, and criminal responsibility

ABSTRACTThe justice of criminal punishment depends in part on the possibility of holding people accountable for their choices. There is a wide variation between nations on the age at which juveniles can be prosecuted in adult criminal courts. This variation reflects disagreement about the underlying logic of responsibility. This paper examines the philosophical difference between adults and children as agents. The paper argues that the moral status of children is importantly distinct from adults, specifically with respect to how responsibility should be mitigated. The paper explains this in terms of the developmental aspect of childhood. By considering empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience we can understand the mistakes that juveniles make as a form of developmental impairment. The paper shows why these findings lead to the conclusion that the practice of trying children as adults is immoral and should be eliminated.

Understanding the Subgroup Complexities of Transfer: The Impact of Juvenile Race and Gender on Waiver Decisions

While prior research has consistently found the presence of extralegal disparities in juvenile justice decision-making, less research has investigated the combined effects of a juvenile’s race and gender on the decision to transfer youth to adult court. The current study examines both the individual and joint influence of race and gender on transfer decisions of all judicial waiver-eligible youth in a Northeast state from 2004 to 2014. Results indicate that Black males had the highest likelihood of being judicially waived, followed by White males, then Black females. White females had the greatest chance of being retained in juvenile court. The findings have important implications for juvenile court processing by informing researchers, practitioners, and policyholders about potential reform efforts that target judicial waiver.

Validating Drug Court Collaboration Instrument: Differences in Model Adherence Between Adult and Juvenile Drug Courts

Drug courts aim to significantly address drug abuse and drug-related criminality. However, the effectiveness of drug courts varies from court to court. The variation of success demands insights regarding what is going on inside the "black box" of drug court practices. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate to what extent drug courts are operated in adherence with guiding principles and strategies. Using a national sample and validated measures, the current article examines the "black boxes" of adult and juvenile drug courts across the country. We found that, in general, adult drug courts face less model adherence challenges in comparison with juvenile courts, which may, in part, explain why adult drug courts perform better than juvenile drug courts overall.

Use of Manifest Injustice in the Washington State Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration.

In the Washington State Juvenile Code, the Manifest Injustice (MI) provision allows judges to sentence youth outside of the standard guidelines. We compared rates of Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration (JRA) involvement and MI between racial minority youth and Caucasian youth. Although not statistically significant, there was a trend toward African American and multiracial youth having MI used to decrease their sentence less frequently than Caucasian youth. African American youth were about half as likely to have MI used to intensify their sentence compared with Caucasian youth (rate ratio = .49, p = .002), whereas multiracial youth were 42 percent less likely (rate ratio = .58, p = .04). More African American youth reside in urban and liberal parts of the state where judges may be more progressive and less likely to use MI to intensify sentences. More diversion programs targeting minority youth exist in urban areas of Washington, and more African American youth are transferred to adult court; both reduce the likelihood of minority youth receiving MI. Judges in rural areas of the state, which have fewer treatment resources, may be using MI to access services only available to court-involved youth. It is imperative that community behavioral health services are available so that youth and families can be justly served.

Differences in Justice, Differences in Outcomes: A DID Approach to Studying Outcomes in Juvenile and Adult Court Processing

For almost half a century, there has been an ongoing philosophical debate regarding the appropriateness of processing youth in adult courts. Since the juvenile system was theoretically designed to rehabilitate and the adult system to punish, one could assume that there should be key differences in both experiences and outcomes across systems. Yet empirical findings remain mixed. However, almost all existing studies are plagued by issues of selection bias and examine only sentencing or recidivism outcomes. This study overcomes these limitations by addressing both sentencing and recidivism as well as capitalizing on a legislative policy change that increased the age of criminal responsibility for all youth in Connecticut. Using a difference in difference modeling strategy, we find that the system of processing matters somewhat for sentencing outcomes with youth in the juvenile system being more likely to receive probation. However, youth processed in the juvenile court also recidivated at a slightly higher rate, which is contrary to expectation. We explore several possible meanings for these findings and end with a call for future research to include qualitative analysis of actual youth experience—regardless of the system of processing—as more probable indicators of later life outcomes.

The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice by Barry C. Feld

Reviewed by: The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice by Barry C. Feld Paul M. Renfro The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice. By Barry C. Feld. New York: New York University Press, 2017. x + 397 pp. Cloth $35. Historians of the United States have recently taken a “carceral turn” to better understand life in “prison America,” in Naomi Murakawa’s formulation. [End Page 145] Yet in keeping with a broader historiographical tendency to overlook children and youth—to which many readers of this journal will likely attest—scholars of carcerality and policing have generally neglected the child. That may be beginning to change. New work by multidisciplinary scholar Erica Meiners and historians Elizabeth Hinton and Tera Eva Agyepong, plus forthcoming histories from Matthew Lassiter, Michael Stauch, and Scott De Orio, locate children and youth (and figurations thereof) firmly within the American carceral machinery. Though legal scholar Barry Feld has been writing about juvenile justice for “more than four decades,” The Evolution of the Juvenile Court makes a clear, timely intervention into the literatures of childhood/youth and carcerality (289). Feld demonstrates how judges, prosecutors, legislators, and other actors—across the career of the juvenile court—have “selectively” deployed competing conceptions of youth as either “immature” or “responsible” in order “to maximize social control of young people” (2). But Feld pays particular attention to the “Get Tough” era of the mid- to late twentieth century—during which, he insists, the juvenile court largely forsook its “diversionary function” in favor of a “lock ’em up” ethos (153). Feld traces the history of the American juvenile court across four periods. The institution took hold in the Progressive era; reform-minded “child-savers” envisioned “the juvenile court as a benign therapeutic agency” that would mitigate “the harms [of] processing children as criminals” (31). The court’s second phase, initiated by the US Supreme Court’s 1967 In re Gault decision, “transformed juvenile courts from welfare agencies into scaled-down criminal courts” (66). Next, the “Get Tough” period—from the 1970s into the 2000s—witnessed the easing of transfer protocols such that juveniles (especially youth of color) were more readily assigned to adult courts and, consequently, to adult correctional facilities (122). Finally, the “Kids Are Different” era, inaugurated by a series of Supreme Court rulings in the early twenty-first century, has marked a modest retreat from the “Get Tough” moment—even as the United States continues to cage young people at unconscionable rates. (South Dakota, for one, incarcerates nearly 500 juveniles per 100,000.) While Feld provides a fine overview of the juvenile court, his periodization and historical analysis leave something to be desired. Most notably, to explain the rise of a “Get Tough” ethos in juvenile justice, Feld marshals top-down political developments—namely the historiographically hoary tropes of right-wing “backlash” and “racial political realignment” supposedly touched off by the “classical” black freedom struggle, but which actually has much deeper roots (90). “In the 1960s,” Feld claims, “conservative Republicans decried crime [End Page 146] in the streets and advocated law and order. In the 1970s, they supported a war on crime. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan launched a war on drugs. By the 1990s, they waged a war on youth” (99). This interpretive framework papers over two complicating factors. First, local and state prosecutors and judges (not those at the federal level) make the overwhelming majority of charging and sentencing decisions in juvenile and adult courts alike. This is not to say that national politicking and federal policymaking have no effect on local or state policy, but reconfigurations of the electoral map can only explain so much. To be fair, Feld correctly identifies local and state prosecutors as the main engines of juvenile and adult mass incarceration. However, he ties punitive prosecutorial and legislative action to a national “[a]nti-state populism” which served “to strengthen states’ police powers”—even though antistatism seems incompatible with hyperpolicing and carceral expansion (107). Second, pinning “Get Tough” policies almost exclusively on Republicans and “conservative Southerners” masks the troubling continuities between the country’s major political parties on racialized “law...

Future Direction of the Adult Administrative Court

Future Direction of the Adult Administrative Court

Sentencing Drug Court Failures: Judicial Considerations With Increased Offender Information

This study explores the influential predictors of sentence severity within a sample of drug court failures. This sample is unique, in that, judges possess greater amounts of offender information at the time of sentencing, relative to conventional adjudications. Due to defendants’ participation in a drug court program, judges possessed offender program performance information in addition to traditionally assessed criminogenic and offender indicators. Data were collected from 320 individuals who participated, yet failed, in Midwestern adult felony drug court program. Results suggest that, in these instances, judicial sentencing decisions were influenced by case and program performance characteristics. Moreover, judges who oversaw defendants in the program sentenced participant failures more harshly than judges who had no affiliation with the drug court or offender prior to sentencing.

Unpacking Adultification: Institutional Experiences and Misconduct of Adult Court and Juvenile Court Youth Living Under the Same Roof.

The present study explores the ability of juvenile waiver policy and the resulting adult court status to impact the experiences and behavior of male youth originating from differing jurisdictions but incarcerated together within state-level juvenile correctional facilities. Using official agency data and youth survey data, this research examines how "adult" status influences behavior for waived youth compared with their juvenile court counterparts. Structural equation modeling and multiple group analysis is used to determine the extent to which adult status moderates the measurement structure of models related to individual characteristics, institutional experiences, and institutional misconduct. Results reveal an improvement in model fit to occur when estimated across the two groups of juvenile court and adult court youth, beyond that which occurs when parameters are constrained to be equal for these two groups. This work reveals adult status to be powerful enough to moderate the effects of who a youth is and what that youth experiences, on how that youth behaves during a term of juvenile incarceration.

The Impact of Waiver to Adult Court on Youths' Perceptions of Procedural Justice.

The current study examined perceptions of fair treatment in a past court experience among a sample of incarcerated youth (n = 364). Perceptions were compared for youth whose cases were processed through the juvenile (n = 261) versus adult court (n = 103) systems. In general, youth who were adjudicated in adult court felt more justly treated by legal authorities than youth adjudicated in juvenile court. Specifically, youth in adult court rated judges as only marginally more just than youth in juvenile court, but rated their defense attorney's treatment as significantly more just. Youth rated the prosecutor's treatment as relatively unjust regardless of where their case was handled. Differences in perceptions of procedural justice were also observed based on prior arrest history and race, with minority youth and repeat offenders perceiving the process to be less procedurally just. Our findings should not be used as support for the increased transfer of youth into adult court, as other studies have demonstrated these youth tend to have worse outcomes. However, our findings do suggest that improvements should be made to increase elements of procedural justice in juvenile court settings.

Drug court handbooks suitability for programme participants with low literacy

Objective:The objective of this study was to describe the suitability of adult drug court handbooks for participants with low literacy.Methods:A convenience sample of seven drug court participant handbooks from urban drug courts in three regions of the USA were assessed for reading and literacy suitability for low-literacy learners using the Fry Index Readability Formula and the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM). The Fry Index Readability Formula follows an objective approach using a three-step process of counting three random samples of 100-word passages to calculate grade reading level. The SAM uses a 0–2 range scale to assess six distinct factors of written materials to yield a numerical score as superior, adequate or not suitable.Results:All handbooks were written above the reading level for low-literacy learners with scores at the eighth grade reading level or higher. A few handbooks scored adequate ratings in some SAM categories, and only two handbooks scored superior ratings in any one category. Overall SAM scores showed all handbooks were not suitable for low-literacy learners.Conclusion:Findings indicate that drug court participant handbooks from this sample are not written for low-literacy learners. Key recommendations are to develop a drug court handbook appropriate for participants with low literacy, assess drug court participants’ literacy for reading grade level and comprehension and provide multi-modal teaching formats to promote effective learning.