Juvenile Court Jurisdiction Research Articles

Prosecuting Juveniles in Adult Court: The Practitioner's Perspective

ABSTRACT Fear of juvenile crime has reversed the long-accepted practice of treating young offenders in special juvenile courts. Thousands of children annually are now being transferred “automatically,” without judicial review, from juvenile court jurisdiction to adult criminal court and into adult corrections. These transfers place children into a court setting in which they are at a disadvantage at every stage of the process. Children who are incarcerated in adult facilities are at great risk. Those who are convicted but not imprisoned may still suffer long lasting negative consequences. The imposition of adult punishments, far from deterring crime, actually seems to produce an increase in criminal activity in comparison to the results obtained for children retained in the juvenile system. Reliance upon the criminal courts and punishment ignores evidence that more effective responses to the problems of crime and violence exist outside the criminal justice system in therapeutic programs. Because there is considerable racial disparity in the assignment of children to adult prosecution, the harshness, ineffectiveness, and punishing aspects of transfer from juvenile to adult court is doubly visited on children of color.

Psychological evaluation at juvenile court disposition.

Do psychologists' evaluations of juvenile offenders prior to dispositional placement have a measurable effect on judges' decision making? Is the nature of any such influence best explained by the quality of the written report, the relationship between the psychologist and the judge, or a combination of these and other factors? The current study attempted to address these issues by investigating the quality of 172 predisposition psychological evaluation reports from a Philadelphia-area juvenile court jurisdiction and the association between report quality and judges' recommendation acceptance. Results point to the need for practicing psychologists and judges to become more aware of the relevant domains of assessment for this type of evaluation and of what constitutes quality reporting within each domain.

(Un)equal Justice: Juvenile Court Abolition and African Americans

Many academics now call for the abolition of juvenile court jurisdiction over delinquency adjudications. This article examines Barry Feld's assumptions behind his call for juvenile court abolition and the potentially adverse impact of the criminal court alternative in the lives of young African Americans. Three assumptions are examined: (1) criminal courts can provide the same or greater substantive and procedural protections compared to the current juvenile court; (2) criminal courts can provide shorter sentences for reduced culpability, with fractional reductions of adult sentences in the form of an explicit youth discount; and (3) treatment strategies are of dubious efficacy, and the possibility of effective treatment is inadequate to justify an entirely separate justice system. This article finds that these assumptions are erroneous and that the juvenile court's abolition may very well be harmful to young African Americans due to false assumptions concerning both juvenile and criminal courts.

Juvenile Transfers to the Criminal Justice System: State of the Art*

This article reviews the research literature on the main mechanisms for transferring juveniles to the criminal justice system: judicial waiver, prosecutorial direct files, and legislative exclusion from juvenile court jurisdiction. The main criteria guiding this review are the extent to which these transfer mechanisms capture serious, violent, and chronic offenders; convict and incarcerate them; and protect the public safety. Most of the research to date focuses on judicial waiver. The article makes an overall assessment of current knowledge and discusses unintended consequences of transferring juveniles to the criminal justice system.

The Automatic Waiver of Juveniles and Substantive Justice

Legislative waiver bypasses juvenile court and juvenile justice officials by initially transferring jurisdiction over juveniles arrested for serious offenses to criminal court. Supporters of legislative waiver argue that the exclusion of offense categories from juvenile court jurisdiction best meets the punishment-oriented objectives of waiver. However, a logistic regression analysis of case processing decisions in a state with automatic transfer provisions revealed that juvenile offenders from single-parent households were more likely to face a grand jury indictment than juveniles from dual-parent households.

Criminalizing the American Juvenile Court

Progressive reformers envisioned a therapeutic juvenile court that made individualized treatment decisions in the child's "best interests." The Supreme Court's Gault decision provided the impetus for transforming the juvenile court from an informal welfare agency into a scaled-down criminal court. Since Gault, the juvenile court procedures increasingly resemble those of adult courts, although in some respects, such as assistance of counsel, juveniles receive less adequate protections. Judicial and legislative changes have altered the juvenile court's jurisdiction over noncriminal status offenders and serious young offenders-as the former are diverted from the system, the latter are transferred to adult criminal courts. Juvenile courts increasingly punish youths for their offenses rather than treat them for their "real needs." These charges eliminate most differences between juvenile and criminal courts. The juvenile court must either develop a new rationale and mandate or face further erosion and redundancy.

California Legislature Ends the Jailing of Children: The Story of a Policy Reversal

In 1986, California adopted the nation's strongest law prohibiting the incarceration of children in jails and lockups for adults. This legislation was a policy reversal in a state with a long history of jailing children in huge numbers. Key ingredients of the reform effort were a well-organized proponent coalition, including the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and the Youth Law Center; a respected legislative author; a background of pending California litigation on the issue; and publicity surrounding tragic deaths and injuries to minors confined in adult facilities. The reform bill, SB 1637, became effective January 1, 1987. It outlaws use of jails for minors under juvenile court jurisdiction, but permits six hour confinement of certain minors in police lockups under strict statutory conditions. Advocates of reform in other states may benefit from this study of jail removal in California.

The Nature of Programs Used in Response to Delinquent Behavior Among Juveniles

The history of responses to juvenile misconduct indicates that a wide variety of approaches have been used. Even prior to the establishment of the first juvenile court at Cook County, Illinois, in 1899 some alternatives were attempted in an effort to deal with younger offenders. A major premise underpinning the establishment of juvenile court jurisdiction during the early 1900's was to provide a wider range of options by selecting effective responses that would operate in the best interests of the child. To a large extent, this search continues today. In this paper the focus is only on public offense and status offense cases. We will not examine other areas of responsibility such as welfare services for youth, child abuse, neglect and foster care. An examination of programs in existence reveals a high degree of diversity. The literature on this topic is quite scattered and there are few organized means available by which to compare and contrast so many different programs. A purpose of this paper is to provide students a framework by which to view various courses of action that have characterized responses to misconduct among juveniles. Considering interventions according to (1) focus, (2) process, (3) degree of restriction, and (4) vehicle provides a basis for comparing and contrasting the many different programs in existence. Liberal use of specific examples of more recent programs are included that reflect contemporary thought as well as possible future direction. Readers should note that the aim is not to evaluate whether a given program is effective. However, contrary to Martinsons' insistence that “nothing works,” Ross and Gendreau provide examples of programs that have demonstrated effectiveness. Examples utilized in this paper were selected from among those indicating positive results.

Divesting Status Offenses from Juvenile Court Jurisdiction

Most states and locales that have sought to deinstitutionalize status offenders have restricted or prohibited secure confinement, but have permitted the juvenile court to maintain jurisdiction over status offenses. This article examines Washington state's experiences with a different deinstitutionalization strategy (divestiture of court jurisdiction). The results indicate that divestiture is successful in eliminating coercive control over status offenses, but that relabeling and discretion permits approximately half of the status offenders to be referred to court. In one area, the probability that a runaway would have delinquency charges filed and sanctions applied increased under the divestiture law. Delinquents who had a history of running away were given more severe sentences than were “pure” delinquents in both the pre- and postreform systems.

Discretionary waiver of juvenile court jurisdiction: An invitation to procedural arbitrariness

Discretionary waiver of juvenile court jurisdiction: An invitation to procedural arbitrariness

Delinquent Careers and Criminal Policy

ABSTRACT* * *This article critically examines the prevailing judicial waiver statutes that require juvenile court judges to make individualized determinations as to a youth amenability to treatment and danger to society. It concludes that such decisions cannot be made with an acceptable degree of accuracy using current methods of clinical diagnosis or prediction, and that the broad discretion given judges in making transfer decisions results in inconsistent and discriminatory applications that undermine the fairness and predictability of the process. In light of the expanding research on the development of delinquent careers, it contends that a legislative redefinition of juvenile court jurisdiction that automatically excludes certain youths from the juvenile court on the basis of their present offenses and past records not only identifies more accurately those youth who should be prosecuted as adults, but also increases the fairness, rationality, and predictability of the adulthood determination. It suggests that an application of “just deserts” principles to the juvenile court waiver decision could have salutary consequences for youths, the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and social control.

Mental Health Implications of the Juvenile Justice Standards

In recent years there has been increasing skepticism about the therapeutic promis of the juvinile court and increasing attention to due process for juveniles accused of delinquent offenses and other behaviors which might invoke juvenile court jurisdiction. Reflective of these trends are the model standards embodied in the IJA/ABA Juvenile Justice Standards, which provide for primary emphasis on the rights and interests of the juvenile, to be furthered by a principle of least intervention. The Standards imply a substantial but considerably more modest role for mental health service providers in juvenile justice. Such a change is consistent with a model of treatment based on respect for the individual and automomous, contractual relations between helping professionals and their clients.

Legislative Policies toward the Serious Juvenile Offender

The problems of waiving juvenile court jurisdiction and transferring young offenders to the criminal courts for prosecution as adults raise virtually every issue of juvenile jurisprudence and pose a variety of substantive and procedural questions for legislatures. This article critically examines the prevailing judicial waiver process and statutes that require juvenile court judges to make individualized determina tions as to a youth's amenability to treatment and danger to society. Such decisions simply cannot be made with an acceptable degree of accuracy using current methods of clinical prediction; the broad dis cretion given judges in making transfer decisions results in abuse, in consistency, and discriminatory application that undermine the fairness and predictability of the judicial process. Although it is not possible, at present, to predict clinically a youth's amenability to treat ment or his dangerousness, a legislature may use actuarial tables with various combinations of present offenses and past records to identify those juveniles who pose the greatest threat to public safety and re quire longer confinement than is available within the juvenile justice system. The article contends that a legislative redefinition of juvenile court jurisdiction that automatically excludes certain youths from the juvenile justice system on the basis of their present offenses and past records not only identifies more accurately those youths who should be transferred, but also, by eliminating judicial discretion, reduces the dangers of discrimination and increases predictability. The article also suggests some of the beneficial effects on juvenile and adult sentenc ing policies that may follow from legislatively mandated "automatic adulthood."

Parents' Rights and Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: A Review of Before the Best Interests of the Child

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Juvenile Court Jurisdiction in Italy and Europe

Most western nations have established specialized courts to resolve criminal and administrative cases involving juveniles. These institutions vary significantly from country to country, sometimes reflecting different approaches to similar objectives and sometimes reflecting fundamental differences in underlying principles and assumptions. One way to illustrate these distinctions is to compare juvenile courts in legal systems that are related but display significant differences. This article compares the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts in Italy with the system advanced under the Proposed Juvenile Justice Code for Europe.1 Since the Proposed Code reflects American influences, and the Italian system, a progressive one since the early 30s,2 has not heretofore been described in English-lan-

Parents' Rights and Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: A Review of "Before the Best Interests of the Child"

Parents' Rights and Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: A Review of "Before the Best Interests of the Child"

Legal and Judicial Battles Affecting Runaways

THIS article traces the history and development of the events leading to the current debates on the validity of the juvenile court by examining the "child savers," or those reformers who instituted the first juvenile court; the "constitutionalists" who insist upon due process and other procedural rights for children; the "revisionists" who advocate the adversary system of juvenile justice; and the "abolitionists" whose position is to remove runaways and other status offenders from juvenile court jurisdiction or, at the extreme, to abolish the juvenile court altogether.

Toward a rational policy on status offenders

Junior League of Worcester for its financial support in collecting the data for this article. The juvenile court's jurisdiction the Supreme Court recognized in the over status offenders is the subject of Kent decision was that treatment had national controversy. The debate fobecome synonymous with custodial in cuses on the contradictory objectives stitutionalization and with a high rate of of the juvenile court: social control and recidivism. Furthermore, this pater treatment. Historically, the juvenile nalistic philosophy allowed courts to courts were not mandated simply to adjudicate as delinquent youths whose sanction and treat criminal offenders, only crime was running away, truancy, but also to care for those juveniles or disobeying parental authority.4 whose behavior indicated a proclivity These status offenses, which are not toward becoming an adult offender. By considered crimes if committed by implementing the philosophy of parens adults, subject children to the jurisdic patriae (the power of the state through tion of the juvenile courts. This broad the court to act in behalf of the child as definition of deviant behavior has come

Punishing the Innocent: Juvenile Court Jurisdiction Over “Status Offenders”

Richard Jenkins has reported that a 10-year-follow-up study of boys committed to the Iowa State Training School showed that boys confined for being runaways were less likely to be released for good adjustment, more likely to be returned to the institution from parole, and more likely to have adult criminal convictions than boys confined to the same institution for criminal offenses. Specifically, Jenkins found that 67% of the criminal offenders were released for good adjustment, compared with only 25% of the runaways; that only 24% of the criminal offenders were returned to the institution from parole, compared with 67% of the runaways; and that 40% of the criminal offenders later had adult criminal convictions, compared with 61 % of the runaways. jenkins's findings are drawn from a study of 90 criminal offenders and 36 runaways. Jenkins notes that his findings are similar to those of Lee Robins (1966), who found in a 30-year follow-up study of children seen in child guidance clinics that children who were runaways or truant were somewhat more likely to become adult sociopaths than children charged in clinic records with theft, a criminal offense. Robins found that 33 to 34% of the runaways and truants became adult sociopaths, compared with 30 to 31 % of the criminal law violators. These findings were drawn from the records of 242 criminal offenders, 200 runaways, and 182 truants. If the Jenkins and Robins studies are valid and reliable, they demonstrate that 33 to 61 % of runaway and truant children become adult sociopaths and that 39 to 67% of runaway and truant children do not become adult sociopaths. The Jenkins study shows that nearly two thirds of the children confined at the Iowa State Training School for running away from home later had adult criminal convictions.

Judicial Paternalism and the Female Status Offender

Criticism of the juvenile court's jurisdiction over the status offender consistently neglects one important aspect of the issue. As a product of the court's history of extralegal paternalism, status offenses have involved the system in the maintenance of traditional family norms, which require greater obedience and chastity from females than from males. The enforcement of status offenses has created a de facto double standard of juvenile justice in America. Like "good parents," police and court personnel tend to select for punishment girls whose behavior threatens parental authority and boys whose behavior is beyond that which can be excused as "boys will be boys." This pattern explains both the overrepresentation of girls charged with status offenses in court popula tions and the relatively harsh official response to this behavior. Evidence is presented to show that, at every level in the system, girls charged with status offenses are treated more harshly than girls charged with crimes. Further, the noncriminal activity of girls is frequently seen as requiring more drastic intervention than the criminal behavior of boys.