Adult Criminal Justice System Research Articles

Human Rights, Solitary Confinement, and Youth Justice in the United States

Over the last 15 years, US activists working on a range of domestic issues – from police violence and mass criminalization to reproductive rights to access to water – have incorporated human rights claims into their work. But even as it becomes more commonplace to hear activists make human rights claims, the question remains, what impact do the claims have? When are they successful in contributing to changes in attitudes, laws, and policies? For the most part, the United States’ human rights obligations cannot be directly enforced in US courts. The lack of a legally enforceable human rights charter or text leaves both the substantive rights and the forums and spaces to implement them up for grabs. Indeed, while Americans have a commitment to human rights, we often lack a common understanding of what is encompassed by the term. But the fluidity of the term also creates opportunities for social justice activists. US activists often seek to expand the public’s understanding of what can be claimed as a right beyond the confines of rights formally recognized under US law. In the United States (as in other countries), successful human rights claims can be leveraged in debates to change public attitudes on issues as long as they are accepted by American audiences as human rights. These claims may ultimately result in changes in laws, standards, and policies irrespective of whether they create legally binding obligations under international or domestic law. These claims are strengthened and legitimized when the international human rights community recognizes and prioritizes the claims as important human rights issues, but ultimately their success relies upon whether they resonate with Americans as human rights issues and inspire activism for change. Two areas where there has been increased human rights advocacy in the United States are in challenges to the use of solitary confinement and to the practice of trying and incarcerating youth (individuals under age 18 years) in the adult criminal justice system. In New York and in many other states, work around the second issue is known as “raise the age.” This chapter examines advocacy efforts around these two issues, with a particular focus on reform efforts in New York City and New York State, and considers the ways in which human rights activism and popular understandings of rights influence law and policy making.

You Have the Right to Remain a Child: The Right to Juvenile Treatment for Youth in Conflict with the Law

The growing criminalization of youth in the U.S. requires new legal approaches. This article proposes recognition of a substantive right to juvenile treatment to prevent or limit prosecutors from pushing youth into the adult criminal justice system. In making the case for a right to juvenile treatment, the article re-conceptualizes the Supreme Court’s children’s rights jurisprudence, provides a comparative international and foreign law perspective on the rights of youth and contributes to growing scholarship considering how the Court deals with difference. Other scholars have argued that Roper v. Simmons and its progeny support Eighth Amendment challenges to imposing adult sentences on youth. My article contends that Roper’s reasoning supports challenges to state laws that allow or require that youth be criminally charged as adults for offenses committed when they where under 18. Because of recognized fundamental differences between youth and adults, including youth’s evolving cognitive capacity, vulnerability to harm, and capacity to grow and develop, when a youth is charged with a criminal offense, different rules and enhanced protections are required to fully respect her or his constitutional rights. The article places the treatment of youth in conflict with the law within the broader context of Supreme Court precedents and historic U.S. legal recognition of inherent differences between youth and adults. These cases are often interpreted to hold that youth and children enjoy fewer constitutional protections. I argue that youth accused of crimes have the same constitutional rights as adults and that their youth status requires enhanced rights protections, including specialized judicial proceedings and facilities and dispositions oriented towards development and rehabilitation. To support this approach, the article includes a comprehensive summary of international law standards on the rights of the child and comparative information about the treatment of youth accused of crimes in other countries.

Is restorative justice a piece of the Colombian transitional justice puzzle?

In 2002, when the Colombian Congress included in the national constitution a reference to restorative justice mechanisms as part of the new adversarial, adult criminal justice system, it was expect...

Gender Differences in Complex Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms, and Their Relationship to Mental Health and Substance Abuse Outcomes in Incarcerated Adults.

Complex trauma (CT; for example, childhood abuse) has been associated with significant behavioral health problems (i.e., mental health and substance use disorders) and symptoms that are consistent with complex posttraumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). CT is prevalent in adult forensic populations, and particularly important for women as they tend to report more adverse consequences of exposure to traumatic stressors and are entering the criminal justice system at a heightened rate compared with men. However, no studies have empirically tested the relationship among CT, C-PTSD, and behavioral health problems with gender among incarcerated adults. The present study examined the relationship between gender and childhood abuse history, C-PTSD symptom severity, and behavioral health problems in 497 incarcerated adults. Findings indicate that women were more likely to report a history of childhood abuse, and more severe C-PTSD symptoms and behavioral health problems than men. Childhood abuse history significantly accounted for the gender difference observed in C-PTSD symptom severity. C-PTSD partially mediated the gender difference in psychiatric morbidity and in risk of hard drug use. Implications for trauma-informed and gender-responsive services and research in the adult criminal justice system are discussed.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Primer for Social Workers.

The school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) refers to a path from the education system to the juvenile or adult criminal justice system. Over the past two decades, this path has grown significantly, and scholars attribute a myriad of contributing factors to this increase. Each factor has its own impact and consequences, which are covered in detail based on an extensive literature review and macro practice through Race Matters for Juvenile Justice. Prior to the STPP concept, education had largely been considered a protective factor for children and a route to success as opposed to a risk factor or track toward juvenile justice involvement. Staying in school and getting good grades were regarded as strategies that even at-risk students could use to overcome poverty, prejudice, and powerlessness. But since the 1990s, the approach to discipline in U.S. public schools has changed, and the effects of this change are only now becoming evident. This article explains the correlates of the STPP and its disparate outcomes, most notably for students of color; those with disabilities; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning students. The article concludes with implications for social workers in various settings and specific strategies for reducing the impact of the STPP.

Responding to the needs of children of parents arrested in Victoria, Australia. The role of the adult criminal justice system

The prison population in most jurisdictions is escalating. As many prisoners are also parents, more children will inevitably be affected by the experience of having a parent incarcerated. Police and the lower courts are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system and make urgent and vital decisions about arrest, remand and sentencing which have critical consequences for the children of those arrested, remanded and sentenced. To better understand how these children are responded to by this adult system, this paper draws on data collected from a purposive sample (N = 16) of Victorian magistrates, legal representatives and police, as part of a broader ARC funded study. Findings indicate that the consideration of these children by police and magistrates is largely ad hoc and depends on good will and the exercise of discretion. The balancing of justice issues and the interests of children is also complex and currently under-researched and under-informed. The authors argue that until the agencies dealing with adults incorporate child-focused practices, children, who have a primary carer in prison, will continue to be disadvantaged by a system which considers them only as collateral damage in the exercise of justice.

Reflections on Norway’s juvenile justice model: A comparative context

Juvenile delinquency and its relationship to the complex contemporary challenges that confront (certain) young people remain an enigma for many national juvenile justice systems (JJS). One exception to this global trend is Norway, which has experienced low levels of youth crime even though it processes youth within the adult criminal justice system at age 15. With few such exceptions, most industrialised liberal democratic countries have utilised a variety of distinctive JJS separate from their adult criminal justice systems. In this article, the ‘Norwegian model’ is examined to assess whether it is theoretically unique to Norway and, if so, why. The broader political, social and economic contexts appear essential in explaining the success of a JJS embedded in the adult criminal justice system. The article concludes with several policy observations.

“That’s Just the Tip of It Because It Goes Deeper Than That”: A Qualitative Exploration Into the Role of Mental Illness in Offending Onset and Subsequent Offending Behavior

There continues to be considerable debate regarding the most effective ways to reduce the number of mentally ill offenders in the adult criminal justice system. What is often missing from this national discussion is an examination of the factors associated with their initial involvement in illegal activities. This qualitative study assesses the self-perceived role that psychiatric symptoms had in the onset and continued offending of a sample of 28 parolees with mental illness. The findings showed that psychiatric symptoms rarely played a direct role in the onset and continued offending in this sample. Furthermore, the majority of the sample started offending prior to the age of 18, highlighting the need to devote more resources toward delivering evidence-based interventions to youth at risk of becoming involved in a criminal lifestyle as one strategy for reducing the number of mentally ill who become involved in the adult criminal justice system.

Minority threat and criminal sentencing: examining juveniles in the adult criminal justice system

Racial/ethnic threat has been researched regarding its impact on criminal sentencing. Past research has been fairly mixed, but a significant number of studies suggest that in areas of higher minority concentration, sentencing is generally harsher. Most of the existing research has utilized adult samples in testing this hypothesis. The current research adds to the existing research through the examination of juvenile offenders convicted in the adult criminal justice system. The data included a national sample of 3457 juveniles convicted in criminal court during 1998 across 40 counties within the United States. In this study, the racial/ethnic hypothesis was examined to assess its effect on sentencing among juveniles in the criminal system. The findings suggest some support for minority threat having an effect on sentencing decisions.

Power, Process, and Protection: Juveniles as Defendants in the Justice System.

The juvenile court was created in 1899 in part to remedy the unfairness of trying youth in the adult criminal justice system, but its success at rectifying those problems is unclear. One concern is that the vast majority of youth who are adjudicated delinquent are adjudicated after waiving their right to trial and entering a guilty plea. Fairness and equity in the plea bargaining process are premised on the assumption that youth have the capacity to understand and elect between available options and will be given a meaningful opportunity to choose without coercion and deception. In legal terms, the Constitution will only sanction a plea when the defendant makes a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver of her right to trial. In this chapter, we briefly describe the juvenile court process and explain the circumstances of a plea bargain, which constitutes both a waiver of Constitutional rights and an agreement to certain conditions. Then we evaluate the research and practice knowledge regarding the legal components of a valid waiver-that it must be knowing and voluntary. We consider how information, capacity, and circumstance contribute to a knowing waiver. Then we examine how procedural justice, paternalism, and coercion may affect a voluntary waiver. Throughout, we consider whether the people, policies, and practices meant to assess and safeguard that waiver decision fulfill their intended purpose.

Blended Sentencing Laws and the Punitive Turn in Juvenile Justice

In many states, young people today can receive a “blended” combination of both a juvenile sanction and an adult criminal sentence. We ask what accounts for the rise of blended sentencing in juvenile justice and whether this trend parallels crime control developments in the adult criminal justice system. We use event history analysis to model state adoption of blended sentencing laws from 1985 to 2008, examining the relative influence of social, political, administrative, and economic factors. We find that states with high unemployment, greater prosecutorial discretion, and disproportionate rates of African American incarceration are most likely to pass blended sentencing provisions. This suggests that the turn toward blended sentencing largely parallels the punitive turn in adult sentencing and corrections—and that theory and research on adult punishment productively extends to developments in juvenile justice.

Looking Back to the Future: Threats to the Success of Restorative Justice in the United Kingdom

Recent years have witnessed an entrenchment of restorative justice principles and practices in the youth and adult criminal justice systems of the United Kingdom. This research presents a comparative analysis of the findings of two empirical studies—one of a police restorative cautioning scheme conducted 15 years ago, and the second a contemporary study of youth offender panels. In this research, we argue that restorative justice practices in the United Kingdom are repeating history, rather than learning from it. Specifically, we argue that if restorative justice programs continue to proliferate with the same shortcomings—most notably, inadequate victim involvement, failure to provide a genuine role for the community, and targeting only relatively low-level crime—the future for restorative justice in the United Kingdom is likely to be bleak.

HIV testing among non-incarcerated substance-abusing juvenile offenders.

Juvenile offenders are a subgroup of adolescents at particular risk for HIV/STI infection. Although HIV prevalence among these youth is low (<1%) in the US, rates of other STIs, unprotected sexual activity, multiple partners, and incidents of substance use during sex are high compared with other adolescent populations. Many of these youth will enter the adult criminal justice system, which is known to have an extremely high rate of HIV infection. US constitutional mandates provide HIV/STI testing for incarcerated juveniles, but close to 80% of juvenile arrestees are never detained. Moreover, although they engage in similar HIV risk behaviors as those detained, they have limited access to available HIV/STI testing services. Thus, our study examined rates of lifetime HIV testing among a pilot sample of 60 court-involved, substance-using juveniles monitored in the community to explore rates of testing and the reasons related to lifetime testing among a high-risk, yet understudied US juvenile population.

Developmental Psycho- Neurological Research Trends and Their Importance for Reassessing Key Decision-Making Assumptions for Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults in Juvenile/Youth and Adult Criminal Justice Systems

One of the underlying foundations of Western criminal justice is the notion that human behavior is the product of rational choice. The creation of separate justice systems for juveniles and adults is based on the idea that fundamental differences in rationality exist between these two groups. Since its inception, the establishment of upper and lower boundaries demarking the juvenile justice system has been a highly contentious issue, both scientifically and politically. Critically, this debate stems from the largely arbitrary nature of the boundaries. Over the last thirty years a sufficiently large body of psychological and neurological empirical work has examined the development of decision-making and rational choice in late childhood, adolescents, and adulthood. The current article discusses the implications of this research on the establishment of upper and lower age jurisdictions for the juvenile justice system, as well as how adolescent decision-making influences other key aspects of the justice process such as competency to stand trial.

Outliers in American juvenile justice: the need for statutory reform in North Carolina and New York.

There is a well-established and growing body of evidence from research that adolescents who commit crimes differ in many regards from their adult counterparts and are more susceptible to the negative effects of adjudication and incarceration in adult criminal justice systems. The age of criminal court jurisdiction in the United States has varied throughout history; yet, there are only two remaining states, New York and North Carolina, that continue to automatically charge 16 year olds as adults. This review traces the statutory history of juvenile justice in these two states with an emphasis on political and social factors that have contributed to their outlier status related to the age of criminal court jurisdiction. The neurobiological, psychological, and developmental aspects of the adolescent brain and personality, and how those issues relate both to a greater likelihood of rehabilitation in appropriate settings and to greater vulnerability in adult correctional facilities, are also reviewed. The importance of raising the age in New York and North Carolina not only lies in protecting incarcerated youths but also in preventing the associated stigma following release. Mental health practitioners are vital to the process of local and national juvenile justice reform. They can serve as experts on and advocates for appropriate mental health care and as experts on the adverse effects of the adult criminal justice system on adolescents.

Cost-benefit analysis of a preventive intervention for divorced families: reduction in mental health and justice system service use costs 15 years later.

This cost-benefit analysis compared the costs of implementing the New Beginnings Program (NBP), a preventive intervention for divorced families to monetary benefits saved in mental healthcare service use and criminal justice system costs. NBP was delivered when the offspring were 9-12 years old. Benefits were assessed 15 years later when the offspring were young adults (ages 24-27). This study estimated the costs of delivering two versions of NBP, a single-component parenting-after-divorce program (Mother Program, MP) and a two-component parenting-after-divorce and child-coping program (Mother-Plus-Child Program, MPCP), to costs of a literature control (LC). Long-term monetary benefits were determined from actual expenditures from past-year mental healthcare service use for mothers and their young adult (YA) offspring and criminal justice system involvement for YAs. Data were gathered from 202 YAs and 194 mothers (75.4 % of families randomly assigned to condition). The benefits, as assessed in the 15th year after program completion, were $1630/family (discounted benefits $1077/family). These 1-year benefits, based on conservative assumptions, more than paid for the cost of MP and covered the majority of the cost of MPCP. Because the effects of MP versus MPCP on mental health and substance use problems have not been significantly different at short-term or long-term follow-up assessments, program managers would likely choose the lower-cost option. Given that this evaluation only calculated economic benefit at year 15 and not the previous 14 (nor future years), these findings suggest that, from a societal perspective, NBP more than pays for itself in future benefits.

Judicial Waiver Decisions in Two Southern States: A Study of Judicial Perceptions

In 2007, nearly fourteen thousand juveniles were waived to the adult criminal court. Sending juveniles to the adult criminal justice system continues to be a significant mechanism for the increase in accountability; adult time for adult crime. Numerous studies have examined the factors that increase the juvenile’s likelihood of being waived. This process generally involves examining case files of juvenile offenders already waived to the adult criminal court. These types of studies obtain information on juvenile offenders’ age, race, gender, type of crime committed, prior criminal history, and family structure. Although this information is important these types of studies do not look at how characteristics of juvenile court judges affect their perceptions of the factors they consider in their waiver decisions. This study sought to examine the relationship between individual characteristics of juvenile court judges; race, age, gender, political party affiliation, tenure on the bench, way in which the judge acquired his/her position, previous position, and jurisdiction, and their perceptions regarding judicial waiver. The results indicate that jurisdiction was a significant predictor variable of juvenile court judges’ perceptions regarding judicial waiver. Juvenile court judges in suburban jurisdictions were less likely than juvenile court judges in urban and rural jurisdictions to believe transferring juveniles to the adult criminal justice system deterred crime. In addition, although not statistically significant, gender and race did show some interesting results. Suggestions for future research are offered. The researchers acknowledges that there are differences in the definitions for the words transfer and waiver; however, to reduce confusion and for the purposes of this study, the word waiver will be used for both.

Youthful Offending and Delinquency: The Comorbid Impact of Maltreatment, Mental Health Problems, and Learning Disabilities

A majority of adolescents formally involved in juvenile court have at least one, if not more than one, significant emotional or learning impairment, or maltreatment experience. This is particularly true in juvenile detention and incarceration facility populations. While this problem is increasingly recognized within the juvenile justice system and social work profession, often the impact and correlation to delinquency of these child and youth difficulties is underestimated. This paper reviews the links from mental health disorders, learning (and academic-related) disabilities, and maltreatment victimizations to delinquent and serious youthful offending behaviors, and provides successful collaboration outcome examples to address this problem. The most difficult challenge to juvenile courts and youth-caring systems is working with adolescents and families with comorbid difficulties, for this group is most at risk for incarceration and involvement with the adult criminal justice system.

Trying to Restore Justice

New Zealand is well known for its restorative justice conferences in the youth justice system. However, restorative justice has yet to overwhelm the adult criminal justice system. Based on interviews in New Zealand with correctional staff, restorative justice providers, and others, this article explores the reason for the modest inroads that restorative practice has made, and suggests that the general context may explain the limits of restorative justice in other places. The article argues that bureaucratic silos make it challenging to determine if restorative practice might fit within a rehabilitation or reintegration framework. In addition, because of the dominance of psychological modes for assessing and treating criminal behavior, an overarching preoccupation with risk management orients correctional practice toward treatment. Moreover, restorative justice's affiliation with victims' perspectives has made its placement within offender reintegration difficult to imagine. Finally, the penal populism that frames correctional practice in New Zealand, and other Anglophone countries, makes alternative to punishment harder to sell. However, the current liminal state of correctional practice creates an opportunity to conceive of more humanistic ways of repairing the harm caused by crime.

Juvenile Status and Criminal Sentencing

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of juvenile status on sentencing in the adult criminal justice system. This study includes four years (2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006) of national level data from the State Court Processing Statistics. The sample is comprised of over 35,000 offenders who were convicted in criminal court. In using multilevel modeling, the results indicate that juveniles are punished both equally and more harshly than adults, depending on the age of the adults and the specific sentencing outcome. The findings are partially consistent with existing research that suggests a juvenile penalty at the sentencing stage of criminal court proceedings.