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Policies Regarding the Prosecution of Juvenile Murderers: Which System and Who Should Decide?
Abstract
The fate awaiting the juvenile charged with murder varies considerably from state to state. In some jurisdictions the youth (depending on age) would have to be prosecuted in juvenile court and receive at worst the most severe sanction available in that forum. In other locations the juvenile could have to be tried in adult court or could be sent there by either a judge or a prosecutor, and would be eligible for an adult sentence, including possibly the death penalty. This study examines the country's various policies regarding the prosecution of juvenile murderers, as well as the implications behind both using the juvenile versus the adult court for these prosecutions and extending the transfer power to the prosecutor versus the judge.
The role of juvenile probation officers (JPOs) involves a balancing act between “child saving” and community safety activities. In this study, we examine JPOs’ supervision strategies and how these fit within a juvenile justice framework. Using surveys and latent class analysis, we examine the extent to which JPOs engage in a variety of case management and supervision strategies. Findings reveal little evidence supporting a purely law enforcement role and identified a new class of JPOs that does not fit within the traditional role definitions but focuses on a pro forma role that was nonengaged in case management and supervision activities.
Early twentieth-century legal reforms entrusted the state with the role of parens patriae (or legal protector acting in the best interest) to juveniles and to providing rehabilitation services to troubled youth. The US Supreme Court's Gault decision of 1967 established the right to defense counsel, which shifted the historical informality and parens patriae practice toward a more criminal court-like process since juveniles were granted some basic due process constitutional rights. This created a conflict between the historical mission of juvenile courts and the role of prosecutors (to protect the public and to seek justice). The prosecutor's role in juvenile courts has become similar to the role of prosecutors in adult courts and has similar problems such as the overrepresentation of minorities. Waivers (or certification of transfers) of juveniles to adult courts have increased recidivism and have caused other harmful effects on youth.
This Article examines and refutes the validity of the explosion of claims in the literature that juveniles are not competent to stand trial in criminal court. After providing a framework through which to analyze the legal relationship between juvenile defendants and the requirements for competency to stand trial, this Article summarizes the current advocacy presented by researchers in favor of finding that juvenile defendants are categorically incompetent to stand trial. However, this Article argues that the research in support of such a finding relies upon faulty premises and suffers from critical methodological problems. In support of this conclusion, this Article surveys various studies of juvenile competence undertaken by developmental psychologists, and explains that many such studies share particular logical and practical flaws. Thus, this Article argues that there is in fact no categorical problem of juvenile incompetency to stand trial, and that the solutions proposed to solve this so-called problem are in fact worse than the legal dilemma itself. This Article concludes with a number of proposals that would better serve to protect the rights of juvenile defendants, in lieu of a universal finding that such defendants are incompetent to stand trial.
New York's Juvenile Offender (JO) Law of 1978 is a significant step away from separate systems of justice for adults and juveniles. The law requires that juveniles accused of violent offenses be tried in criminal court, and it provides penalties comparable to those for adults. This paper evaluates the impact of the JO Law on violent juvenile crime rates in New York City and in upstate New York. Analyzing arrest data through the use of an interrupted time series model, we conclude that the JO Law has not been effective in reducing juvenile crime.
In recent years, many states have developed a system by which serious young offenders are transferred from the juvenile to the criminal court so that more severe punishment can be imposed. Using court records, this paper examines the effects of the transfer procedure in California. A loglinear analysis was conducted to compare final charges and sentencing outcomes in juvenile and criminal court over a four-year period. The result indicated that the criminal court did not tend to use the most severe sentence option available, and that both courts tended to use similar sentencing strategies. Regardless of fitness finding, more severe initial charges led to more severe final charges and sentences. The due process implications of these findings are discussed.
If the rationale of juvenile waiver provisions is that some young offenders are too dangerous or incorrigible to be controlled and reformed by the juvenile justice system, current practices belie that intention. Most juveniles referred to adult courts for criminal prosecution are not charged with crimes against persons. Violent offenses—homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault—account for less than one-fourth of the judicial and prosecutorial referrals to adult courts, and they account for only one-twentieth of the arrests of sixteen- and seventeen-year olds in the twelve states which have lowered the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction.
Originally, juvenile courts were designed to promote only the best interests of the child. Developments within the last three decades, however, have suggested that there are other interests represented in juvenile court proceedings. In this study, one hundred juvenile court workers (judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, probation officers) from three juvenile courts (urban, suburban, rural) were interviewed to determine the extent to which the child's interests are promoted in the contemporary juvenile court. The data suggest that a number of other interests currently rival the youth's for primacy in decisions reached in juvenile court.
In the past decade, juvenile justice policy has shifted from “the best interests of the child” to approaches blending punishment and rehabilitation. The result has been efforts to narrow juvenile justice system jurisdiction, especially for violent, serious, and chronic offenders. Judicial transfer is the most widely applied mechanism to remove juvenile offenders to criminal jurisdiction. Transferred youth, particularly violent offenders, often receive lengthy prison sentences. A disproportionate share of male, minority adolescents are arrested for serious and violent crime. Thus, the harsh consequences of transfer, compounded by racial disparities in both juvenile and criminal justice processes have major implications for serious juvenile offenders considered for transfer. Transfer as a juvenile court disposition has received little scholarly attention, and racial determinants of transfer have yet to be analyzed. This study examines racial differences in judicial transfer decisions for chronically violent delinquents in four urban juvenile courts. Though minority youth were transferred more often, race was not predictive of transfer in multivariate models combining offense and offender characteristics. Rather, offense characteristics and defendant's age at the time of the offense are the strongest contributors to the transfer decision. Murder, in particular, is a determinant of transfer. The results suggest that juvenile court judges have adopted implicit policies to reserve transfer for older violent offenders, especially those charged with capital crimes.
Traditionally, adjudicatory hearings in juvenile court operated under the direction of the parens patriae doctrine, the state's obligation and license to care for children. Adjudications were achieved in informal, clinic-like sessions. The Supreme Court purportedly transformed juvenile court hearings into criminal-like trials via the Gault and Winship decisions. This research examines the extent to which juvenile court personnel currently perceive remnants of parens patriae in the adjudicatory hearing. One hundred workers (judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and probation officers) from three different juvenile courts (urban, suburban, and rural) were interviewed concerning sources of unfairness in the contemporary adjudicatory hearing. The results indicate that court workers see numerous obstacles to fairness in the juvenile court adjudicatory hearing.
Recent juvenile justice commentators have been guilty of serious misrepresentations about the process of transferring juvenile defendants to criminal court. If accepted, these misrepresentations could lead to dramatic changes in juvenile court certification policy. The purposes of this article are twofold. The first is to thoroughly explicate the transfer phenomenon and thereby neutralize the misrepresentations in the literature. The second objective is to identify the perspectives of various juvenile court workers regarding certification so as to further enable policymakers to comprehend and to address this volatile subject.
The quality of procedural justice is especially relevant to recent changes in juvenile courts' sentencing policies. Punitiveness is reflected in (a) changes in juvenile code purpose clauses and court decisions endorsing punishment; (b) juvenile sentencing statutes and correctional guidelines that employ proportional, determinate, or mandatory sentences; and (c) evaluations of dispositional decision making and conditions of institutional confinement. The shift from treatment to punishment raises basic issues of procedural justice, especially the delivery of legal services. As juvenile courts' sentencing practices resemble increasingly those of their criminal counterparts, does any reason remain to maintain a separate court whose sole distinguishing characteristic is its persisting procedural deficiencies?
The automatic transfer of juveniles charged with serious crimes to adult court has become an increasingly common alternative to juvenile court handling in a number of states in the past two decades. Deterrence is one of the major arguments underlying this growth in the use of legislative waiver. This research evaluated the deterrent effect of the 1981 Idaho legislative waiver statute. Analyses of arrest data using a time series design indicated that this law did not reduce violent juvenile crime.
The juvenile court has been transformed from an informal, welfare agency into a scaled-down, second-class criminal court as a result of a series of reforms that divert status offenders, waive serious offenders to adult criminal courts, punish delinquent offenders, and provide more formal procedures. There are three plausible policy responses to juvenile courts that punish in the name of treatment and deny elementary procedural justice: (a) restructure juvenile courts to fit their original therapeutic purpose; (b) accept punishment as the purpose of delinquency proceedings, but coupled with criminal procedural safeguards; or (c) abolish juvenile courts and try young offenders in criminal courts with certain substantive and procedural modifications.
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.
The remand of juveniles to adult court has traditionally been justified as providing protection to the public by identifying the most intractable and dangerous delinquents. The present analysis of the case histories of 214 remanded juveniles and interviews with key decision makers does not support this traditional rhetoric. There is little evidence to suggest that those juveniles remanded are singularly dangerous or intractable, nor is there evidence to suggest that their remand enhances public safety. In contrast to traditional rhetoric, the present analysis suggests that organizational and political factors account for the high rate of remand. In evidencing a willingness to relinquish jurisdiction over a small percentage of its clientele, and by portraying these juveniles as the most intractable and the greatest threat to public safety, the juvenile system not only creates an effective symbolic gesture regarding protection of the public but it also advances its territorial interests in maintaining jurisdiction over the vast majority of juveniles and deflecting more encompassing criticisms of the entire system.
Despite the widespread transfer of violent youth from juvenile to criminal court, there is little empirical knowledge of the transfer process, rate of transfer, or of case outcomes, sentences, and placements of transferred juveniles. This study examines these issues for 177 violent youths considered for transfer in four urban areas, comparing court outcomes for youths transferred to criminal court with those for youths retained in juvenile court. Varying procedures, criteria, and court rules result in case processing time averaging 2.5 times greater for transferred youth. Most spend this time in detention. Violent youth considered for transfer are adjudicated at a high rate for the offenses as charged in both juvenile and criminal court. Plea bargaining for charges rarely occurred. Youth considered for transfer but retained by the juvenile court received maximum commitments and placements within the jurisdictional limits of the juvenile justice system. Transferred youth convicted in criminal court received even more severe sanctions both in nature and length. Alternatives to incarceration were rarely used by either the juvenile or criminal court.
An analysis of recent trends in juvenile waiver or transfer hearings in four states reveals that these hearings are increasingly used as avenues whereby officials may impose more serious penalties on youthful offenders charged with serious crimes. While the present research finds no evidence suggesting that juvenile delinquency is increasing or changing from the pattern of delinquency in previous years, the waiver or transfer appears to be used more frequently for juveniles in the 15-17 age range in order to subject them to the jurisdiction of criminal courts. Increased use of waivers seems closely associated with public rejection of rehabilitation and growing support for the “just-desserts” philosophy of punishment in criminal justice. However, the present investigation suggests that waivers do not automatically result in more severe penalties for most juveniles waived to criminal courts.
Consistent with a trend toward more punitive responses to delinquency, many states have enacted laws that facilitate the transfer of young offenders to criminal court by bypassing the traditional waiver hearing. The most highly controversial of these streamlined transfer methods is prosecutorial waiver, which allows prosecutors to choose whether to initiate proceedings in juvenile or criminal court. This article examines the practice of prosecutorial waiver in Florida, a state that grants prosecutors extremely wide latitude with respect to the transfer of 16- and 17-year-olds. Our analyses focus on interviews conducted with prosecutors in each of the state's judicial circuits, as well as individual-level case data on transfers in two urban counties. Few of the juveniles transferred via prosecutorial waiver are the kinds of dangerous, repeat offenders for whom waiver is arguably justified. This is in large part due to the lack of statutory guidelines to govern the selection of cases, the ease with which waiver is accomplished, and the lack of support among prosecutors for traditional principles of juvenile justice.
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."
Delinquents are better managed in the juvenile court, though the adult system may be necessary for the few cases in which juvenile facilities and jurisdictional time remaining cannot adequately protect the public.
Data were collected on all youth considered for transfer to adult court over a six-year period in a single jurisdiction. Demographic, legal, and organizational determinants of the waiver decision were treated as independent variables in a discriminant analysis of that decision. Analysis of covariance then was used to assess the effect of court of adjudication on severity of sentencing; the demographic, legal, and organizational variables were used as controls. Variables distinguishing fit from unfit youth were the seriousness of the offense, the number and nature of prior offenses, and prior treatment. Personal and aggravated personal offenders received more severe sentences in adult court than their counterparts in juvenile court, but property offenders were treated more leniently. Seriousness of offense played a significant role in adult court sentencing, but was over-shadowed in juvenile court by the number and nature of prior offenses and by prior treatment.
This study identified the legal and extralegal factors that play a significant role in the decision to transfer a serious juvenile offender to criminal court jurisdiction in Virginia. A sample of 364 juveniles adjudicated delinquent for felony-level crimes and transferred to criminal court was compared with a sample of 363 juveniles adjudicated for similar crimes who were incarcerated in juvenile learning centers, the most restrictive juvenile correctional option in Virginia. Thirteen variables were significant predictors of the transfer decision, the most important ones being age, current offense, and prior delinquency record.
Examined views about trying juveniles accused of homicide as adults and compared these views to automatic legislative statutes. Random samples of 681, 671, and 64 adults, respectively, participated in 1 of 3 interviews. Ss responded to scenarios in which a juvenile had committed a homicide under different circumstances. Ss' views were strongly influenced by whether juveniles had been abuse victims, and most Ss preferred juvenile court for adolescents who killed abusive fathers. Ss were more likely to prefer adult court for repeat offenders with no history of child abuse. For parent and neighbor homicides, Ss believed adult trials for abused juveniles were less effective at deterring other youths than were adult trials for nonabused juveniles. Ss' sophisticated views are at odds with the simplistic approach taken in automatic legislative transfers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined offense characteristics for a national sample of 2,400 juvenile homicide offenders listed in the FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports for 1984 or 1991. Analyses indicate that the largest increases in juvenile homicide can be found among minority males using handguns to kill acquaintances. Juvenile homicides committed in the course of another crime (e.g., robberies, drug deals) have increased over 200%, while homicides precipitated by an interpersonal conflict with the victim have increased 83%. In comparison to adults, juvenile homicide offenders are much more likely to use a handgun and to act with an accomplice. These results highlight the association between handguns and juvenile homicide. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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.
One of the lingering controversies surrounding the juvenile justice system in the United States is the transfer of juvenile offenders to adult criminal courts, ostensibly for more severe dispositions. This issue especially has been of concern as the “get-tough” movement seemingly has gained momentum over the past two decades. This article examines the waiver process in New Mexico to establish the characteristics of the juveniles subject to the process and to determine the actual, instead of symbolic, criminal court dispositions of juveniles tried as adults.
Juveniles who committed serious offenses are sometimes waived to the criminal court. Despite the existence of waiver guidelines or statutes, past research has found that the waiver decision has been governed by factors not related to the offense or the juvenile. This study was an attempt to investigate whether the decision to waiver in Maricopa County Juvenile Court was consistent with its philosophy and policy. The results of the analysis showed that juveniles who had been waived in a previous offense were most likely to be waived again in future referrals.
The Determinants and Impact of Jurisdictional Transfer in Philadelphia
- Joel P Eigen
- Hall
Juvenile Homicide: A Study in Legal Ambivalence
- Richard J Bonnie
Legal Outcome of Juveniles Charged with Homicide
- Dewey G Cornell
- Lois Staresina
- Elissa P Benedek
Competency to Stand Trial and Criminal Responsibility in the Juvenile Court
- Lawrence Fitch