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Philosophical, Legal, and Systemic Aspects of Juvenile Court Plea Bargaining
Abstract
Despite indications of its existence, plea bargaining in juvenile court remains largely unexplored. Despite the absence of research, numerous state legislatures and national commissions have formulated divergent positions regarding juvenile court plea negotiation. This article presents the results of interviews conducted with 100 workers from three juvenile courts. The data suggest that caution should be exercised in accepting conclusions that have been drawn concerning plea bargaining in juvenile court and that some policy decisions in this area are unnecessary and possibly even harmful to juvenile court operations.
... Instead, most studies focused upon predicting whether a juvenile was waived or not waived, with particular emphasis given to comparing the characteristics of waived and non-waived populations. Yet surely this image of waiver is unrealistic (see Singer 1996a:10), particularly given that sentencing typically involves consideration of a range of sanctions (Sanborn 1993). These include but are not limited to: dismissal, diversion to various programs, standard probation, intensive supervision probation (ISP), community-based programs, indeterminate sentencing to juvenile justice facilities, and waiver to the criminal justice system (Champion 1998). ...
... This type of restriction is unrealistic, but nonetheless pervades the research literature on waiver (Howell 1996). In reality, prosecutors make decisions at disposition -and prior to disposition (e.g., during plea negotiations) -among a wide range of dispositional options (Mahoney 1987;Sanborn 1993;Champion 1998). ...
... The first of these goals could perhaps be viewed as constituting a tough, second-best alternative to waiver when waiver is not an option, but clearly the second cannot. In the latter instance, determinate sentencing was created explicitly as a presumably more lenient alternative to waiver (Anderson & Bradley 1995 • plea bargaining for more certain adjudications, tougher sanctions, assistance in prosecuting the youth's associates, or managing the court docket (see Sanborn 1993), ...
Research on juvenile and adult sentencing has been characterized by theoretical, methodological, and empirical limitations that preclude adequate description, prediction, or assessment of decisionmaking processes and outcomes. Five limitations are prominent: emphasis on atheoretical, empirical attempts, generally unsuccessful, to increase predictive accuracy; limited conceptualizations of dependent variables (e.g., incarceration versus nonincarceration); overreliance on individual, offender-level data with minimal reference to victims, practitioners, or contextual factors; failure to incorporate analytically multiple research methods; and inattention to intended and unintended uses and effects of sentencing. These limitations can be highlighted by focusing on a context--juvenile justice--in which the goals of sentencing are varied, conflicting, and, due to recent reforms, changing. Using interview and survey data, the present research examines juvenile sentencing reform in Texas to highlight these limitations and to outline an analytical framework for improved description, modeling, and assessment of sentencing.
... One solution, common in evaluation research efforts that face similar constraints, is to draw on the insights and perspectives of knowledgeable "insiders" (Rossi, Lipsey, & Freeman, 2004). That approach has been taken in a number of studies of juvenile justice policies (e.g., Bishop, Frazier, & Henretta, 1989;Butts & Halemba, 1994;Kupchik, 2006;Mears, 2000;Sanborn, 1993). The risk, of course, is that insiders may be wrong in their assessments; thus, caution must be taken in interpreting their views. ...
... Instead, they focus on offender outcomes or state-level variations along a few delimited dimensions, such as how the juvenile justice process is structured in each state (Dedel, 1998). Certainly, many studies focus on practitioner views about particular practices in particular jurisdictions (e.g., Bishop et al., 1989;Butts & Halemba, 1994;Moak & Wallace, 2000;Sanborn, 1993), but few examine a wide range of policies across multiple jurisdictions and states. ...
... An initial set of priority areas and prominent policies and practices was identified through a review of research, especially articles, reports, and books focused on juvenile justice policy and practice. Mindful of the need to develop a short questionnaire that practitioners would be likely to complete (see, e.g., Butts & Halemba, 1994;Mears, 2000;Sanborn, 1993), we turned to the advisory panel for assistance. Each panel member was asked to identify those areas, policies, and practices that they viewed as especially widespread and as potentially influential or important developments in juvenile justice. ...
Dramatic changes in juvenile justice have occurred in recent decades. One result has been the emergence of new policies and practices, many of which remain largely unexamined. One avenue for gaining insight into whether such policies and practices are needed or effective, as well as into how the juvenile justice system might be improved, is to tap into the perceptions of people who work within this system. Drawing on a national survey of juvenile court practitioners, the authors investigate key questions about the effectiveness of juvenile justice and discuss the implications of the study’s findings for research, policy, and practice.
... For juveniles, what research does exist on this increasing phenomenon comes from older, largely qualitative research and legal and/or statutory analyses in the early 1990s (Sanborn, 1992(Sanborn, , 1993(Sanborn, , 1996. Still, some noteworthy implications may be drawn from these works: Sanborn (1996), for example, noted that prior research points to a consistent finding, in that courtroom actors were able to identify a number of characteristics ascribed to the juvenile that affected what they believed to be the correct disposition, such as their home situation and commitment to school. ...
... Third, the dichotomous definition of plea bargain as operationalized in this research may not be as simple as being offered or not offered a plea. Pleas may include, but are not limited to, charge, sentence, and count reductions, sentencing/treatment recommendations, and case dismissal (McCoy, 2005;Sanborn, 1992Sanborn, , 1993. More importantly, these data only tell us whether or not a plea was offered, nor the actual case outcome. ...
There exists much scholarship on the decision-making process in the juvenile court. While a variety of processes in the juvenile court, types of offenders, and theoretical frameworks have been analyzed to better understand the decision-making processes, there are some gaps, particularly in the use of an intersectional framework in explaining the plea bargaining process among serious and violent girls. Given the paucity of research on this subject, the present study pays homage to intersectionality by exploring the aforementioned process and group in the juvenile court.
... Indeed, although we found little evidence of an interaction between race and age, the types of concerns that we have mentioned indicate the need to investigate more carefully potential interactive effects among key factors and their interpretation in different organizational, social structural, historical, and political contexts ( Bishop and Frazier, 1996;Dixon, 1995;Feld, 1999;Myers and Talarico, 1987;Podkopacz andFeld, 1995, 1996;Pope and Feyerherm, 1993;Sampson and Laub, 1993;Smith and Damphousse, 1998;Steffensmeier et al., 1998;Ulmer and Kramer, 1996). The results of our study suggest that, as expected, case adjustment (as a proxy for plea bargaining) is associated with more lenient sanctioning ( Sanborn, 1993). However, it is associated with more severe sanctioning when the negotiation involves attempts to have a case dismissed. ...
... Future research thus would do well to consider addressing the relationship between race and the evidentiary strength of cases (see Forst, 1995: 366-368; Smith and Damphousse, 1998: 86;Steffensmeier et al., 1998: 764). Additional consideration should be given to the extent to which race and defense representation, especially quality of representation, interact to result in disproportionate plea bargaining of black youths to more severe sentences ( Puritz et al., 1995;Sanborn, 1993). More generally, systematic attention should be given to how other case characteristics interact with or otherwise affect the role of race in sentencing ( Bishop and Frazier, 1996;Dawson, 1992Dawson, : 1001Feld, 1999;Podkopacz and Feld, 1995;Pope and Feyerherm, 1993). ...
Recent juvenile justice reforms have produced increasingly complex and criminal-like approaches to sanctioning youths, yet research to date has not examined the full range of newly available sentencing options nor systematically drawn on theories of adult sentencing. The present study addresses these issues by developing competing hypotheses about the effects of legal, extralegal, and processing factors, as well as sentencing options, in a highly proceduralized and criminalized juvenile court in Texas. These hypotheses are then tested using quantitative and qualitative data. The results are largely consistent with derived expectations and do not support arguments that increased proceduralization and criminalization of juvenile courts will eliminate consideration of age, gender, or race/ethnicity in sentencing decisions.
... The availability of diversion, too, may empower court officials-and increasingly police officers-to coerce youth into admitting guilt and participating in diversion. Plea bargaining has constituted a central feature of juvenile and criminal court processing for decades, but it typically has resulted from prosecutorial discretion (Kutateladze, Lawson, and Andiloro, 2015;Mears, 1998;Sanborn, 1993). Although the police exercise considerable discretion in how they handle particular incidents involving youth (Jaggers et al., 2014;Sanborn and Salerno, 2005), they typically have not had the authority to sanction youth directly. ...
Research Summary: The juvenile court was established to help children through the use of punishment and rehabilitation and, in so doing, “save” them from a life of crime and disadvantage. Diversion programs and policies emerged in the 1970s as one way to achieve this goal. Despite concerns about its potential harm, diversion became increasingly popular in subsequent decades. We examine the logic of a prominent contemporary diversion effort, civil citation, to illuminate tensions inherent to traditional and contemporary diversion. We then review extant evidence on traditional diversion efforts, examine civil citation laws, and identify the salience of both traditional and contemporary, police-centered diversion efforts for youth and the juvenile court. The analysis highlights that diversion may help children but that it also may harm them. It highlights that the risk of net-widening for the police and the court is considerable. And it highlights the importance of, and need for, research on the use and effects of diversion and the conditions under which it may produce benefits and avoid harms. Policy Implications: This article recommends a more tempered embrace of diversion and a fuller embrace of research-guided efforts to achieve the juvenile court's ideals. Diversion may be effective under certain conditions, but these conditions need to be identified and then met.
... Much of what we do know about the juvenile plea bargaining process has been derived from qualitative studies and legal/statutory analyses conducted during the 1990s (Sanborn, 1992(Sanborn, , 1993. In an analysis of state statutes governing plea bargaining, Sanborn (1992) found that juveniles are at a major disadvantage because judicial inquiries into the voluntariness of pleas (Boykin inquiries) are not mandatory by juvenile courts in a majority of the states (p. ...
This study examines the use of plea bargaining among a sample of waiver-eligible juveniles. Using focal concerns as our theoretical foundation, we examine whether concerns about public safety and blameworthiness help to shape plea bargain decision making. Data from a juvenile court in one South Carolina jurisdiction were analyzed using logistic regression (N = 241). This research finds that several factors influence the plea bargain decision including type of offense, number of victims, age, and race. Additionally, the analysis shows that there are several interactive effects between race, first-time offenders, and presence of an attorney. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.
... Sanborn (1992) noted that researchers barely acknowledge that plea bargaining occurs in juvenile court, yet plea bargaining happens frequently. In one of the few studies of plea bargaining, Sanborn (1993) found a geographical difference in the acceptance of pleas. Judges in urban areas were more likely to accept sentence bargains than their suburban or rural counterparts. ...
Family courts are in use or are being considered in more than half of U.S. states, yet little research exists on their outcomes. This study examines effects of a policy change in one state, which created a pilot family court system. The policy change to family court mandates a more individualized client focus for these courts. Family courts are compared to juvenile courts in the processing of delinquency cases. Results of logistic regression show that family courts may be meeting the policy goals of individualized justice by accepting fewer plea bargains and by ordering more clinical assessments for juveniles and their families. Ultimately, however, there is no difference in sentencing outcomes between these two types of court structures. Policy implications are discussed.
... Indeed, almost exclusive attention has been given to whether prosecutorial, judicial, or legislative waiver results in lengthier sentences and reduced recidivism relative to what otherwise would obtain (Howell 1996). What much of this research neglects, however, is the contextual nature of waiver, including how it is perceived and used by practitioners (Bishop, Frazier, and Henretta 1989) and how cultural, social, and organizational factors affect the implementation and use of waiver (Sanborn 1993(Sanborn , 1994a(Sanborn , 1994b(Sanborn , 1996. The situation is aggravated by the absence in most states of alternatives to waiver (Singer 1996a;Torbet et al. 1996). ...
Many states currently are implementing “get tough” sentencing reforms in juvenile justice. Surprisingly, however, little attention has been given to evaluation issues identified by the adult justice sentencing literature as critical to assessments of efficacy. Analysis of one recent juvenile justice sentencing reform in Texas—determinate sentencing—provides an opportunity to highlight such issues and to demonstrate their relevance to assessment of other states' juvenile justice sentencing reforms. This article identifies the failure to attend adequately to design, implementation, use, and assessment issues, including identification of potential unintended effects, as barriers to effective evaluation of these reforms.
... Concerns about plea bargaining in the juvenile court have increased in recent years (Sanborn 1993;GAO 1995), but there remains little empirical research that addresses the extent or effects of plea bargaining. Some observers (e.g., Feld 1988Feld , 1989Feld , 1993bFeld , 1999 have argued convincingly that juveniles receive inadequate defense representation and that the quality of procedural justice generally is much lower than what adults receive. ...
Research to date has taken a relatively narrow view of the criteria by which the effectiveness of juvenile justice sentencing policies are to be assessed. This narrowness is particularly striking given the comprehensive “get tough” reforms that recently have been enacted in nearly every state. Drawing on previous research and an analysis of the potential effects of a recent juvenile justice sentencing reform in Texas, this paper argues for greater attention to conceptualizing and empirically assessing effectiveness broadly, including reference to intended and unintended effects, multiple goals and means, and diverse stakeholders. The argument is sustained first by outlining and discussing these key dimensions and then by empirically illustrating the potential importance of one of these dimensions – diverse stakeholders and their respective interests.
... These findings stood in contrast to other policy research. For instance, in an analysis of detention reform in Florida, Bazemore and Dicker (1996) found that judges were generally unsupportive of juvenile detention reform because they felt that detention sometimes needed to be used as punishment or as a reality check (also see Sanborn, 1993). In this study, only one out of fourteen judges interviewed thought that detention should sometimes be utilized for these alternative purposes. ...
Criminal justice policies may be enacted, but the actual implementation of those policies depends upon those working on the frontline. Policies that affect how cases are processed in the courtroom can be thwarted by the efforts of courtroom workgroup members. The present study analyzed how courtroom workgroups adjusted to a new juvenile justice policy. Qualitative interviews demonstrated that while there was widespread agreement on the basic tenets of the reform, perceptions of the reform varied by confidence in workgroup membership. Further, the reform inherently increased the workload for some and decreased the workload for others. Those whose workload increased discussed subverting the reform effort in order to continue with business as usual. These findings demonstrated that effective policies must consider the needs of workgroups as adaptation of policies in actual practice depend upon workgroup members' support.
American Criminal Justice Policy examines many of the most prominent criminal justice policies on the American landscape and finds that they fall well short of achieving the accountability and effectiveness that policymakers have advocated and that the public expects. The policies include mass incarceration, sex offender laws, supermax prisons, faith-based prisoner reentry programs, transfer of juveniles to adult court, domestic violence mandatory arrest laws, drug courts, gun laws, community policing, private prisons, and many others. Optimistically, Daniel P. Mears argues that this situation can be changed through systematic incorporation of evaluation research into policy development, monitoring, and assessment. To this end, the book provides a clear and accessible discussion of five types of evaluation – needs, theory, implementation or process, outcome and impact, and cost-efficiency. and it identifies how they can be used both to hold the criminal justice system accountable and to increase the effectiveness of crime control and crime prevention efforts.
This article is focused on front-end processing in the juvenile court. The front end of juvenile justice refers to initial court decisions about how to process cases. The article discusses how the traditional mission of the juvenile court, which emphasizes punishment, treatment and services, and individualized attention, contributes to the goals and structure of front-end decision-making. Following this, it reveals two critical front-end activities: screening and assessment and informal and formal processing encompassing the roles of intake officers and prosecutors in these activities and how they comport with the juvenile court's traditional mission. Furthermore, it explores the stakes involved in front-end decision-making, including the potential impacts on how cases are processed and describes the implications of front-end processing for policy and practice. It concludes with a call for better monitoring of and research on front-end juvenile court processing and its impacts on recidivism, juvenile crime rates, and other outcomes.
This article examines the "law on the books" and the "law in action" in juvenile courts. It analyzes developmental psychological research on juveniles' competence to exercise rights. It also examines the impact of juveniles' limited competence to exercise and waive their right to counsel. Juveniles' developmental limitations adversely affect the delivery of legal services in juvenile courts and increase the risks of erroneous adjudications. Youths' diminished competence and the absence of counsel compounds the risks of erroneous convictions. It then studies the Court's rationale to deny juveniles a constitutional right to a jury trial and analyzes why that makes it easier to convict delinquents than criminals and how the subsequent use of delinquency convictions to enhance criminal sentences compounds that procedural disparity. Finally, the article concludes that most states do not provide delinquents with procedural safeguards that provide formal or functional protections comparable to those of adult criminal defendants.
This report presents the results of research that examined changing trends in juvenile justice legislation and surveyed juvenile justice professionals across the nation to measure their impressions of recent juvenile justice policy reforms. Researchers learned there is considerable consensus among diverse practitioner groups, with survey respondents viewing rehabilitative programs as more effective than punitive ones – a perspective consistent with recent legislative trends. Together, these data suggest the policy pendulum is swinging toward more progressive measures after years of “get tough” reforms.
Of the many recent changes in juvenile justice, none are more prominent than waiver laws designed to more easily transfer young offenders to adult courts. These laws create more options to punish youth as if they were adults, leading some to question the need for a separate juvenile justice system. As yet, however, we have little systematic empirical basis for assessing the effectiveness of these laws. To help develop the foundation for such an assessment, this article examines the leading intended and unintended impacts identified by researchers. It then discusses critical research gaps that must be addressed if we are to develop a balanced and empirically informed assessment of the effectiveness of waiver.
Structure of amorphous Al2O3 has been investigated by the Molecular Dynamics (MD) method. Simulations were done in the basic cube under periodic boundary conditions containing 3000 ions with the BKS pair potentials. Structure of amorphous models agrees reasonably well with experiment. The microstructure of systems has been analyzed through partial radial distribution functions, coordination number distributions, pore distributions, bond-angle distributions and interatomic distances. Temperature dependence of these distributions was obtained. Calculations show that, in amorphous Al2O3 model with real density at 3.095g/cm3, there is a short-range order dominated by distorted AlO4 tetrahedron, in agreement with Lamparter's experiment. When the density of model increases from 3.095 to 4.20g/cm3, we found the structural transformation from a tetrahedral to an octahedral network. We also present the effects of MD run time on the structure of models.
Although a common practice in many legal systems, plea bargaining (PB) tends to be held in low esteem by the public at large. In the present study, which was based on a survey of a national sample of Israeli respondents, a factorial design methodology was used to examine public attitudes toward varied PB scenarios. It was hypothesized that opening up PB procedures to parties other than the traditionally involved “insiders” would enhance public support for PB. The findings of the study generally confirmed this hypothesis, albeit not completely: The effect of decreased covertness was minimal. This article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the findings.
Investigated how accused delinquents' admission/denial of their crimes affected adjudication and disposition decisions. An archival analysis of 2,043 adjudication decisions in 16 Georgia counties found that juveniles who admitted committing their crimes were treated more severely than juveniles who denied committing their crimes. Whites were more likely than Blacks to admit committing the crime, and, after controlling for this and other legal factors, race did not have a significant effect. In the second study, 67 judges, 53 probation officers, and 126 court service workers made adjudication and disposition decisions about three juveniles in an experimental simulation in which race of juvenile, length of prior record, and the juvenile's reaction to the crime (admitting or denying it) were systematically manipulated. Consistent with the archival study, juveniles who admitted committing their offense were treated more severely than juveniles who denied committing their offense. Possible reasons are discussed for why admitting a crime leads to more punishment.
The article delineates the effect of Gault on the "right to counsel" in the juvenile court. It reviews the background of the Supreme Court decision and analyzes the controversy over the lawyer's role in adjudication and disposition and it discusses some of the effects of the ruling on institutional population and the backlog of cases awaiting disposition.
The research reported in this paper develops a typology of American metropolitan juvenile courts through factor analysis of 96 court characteristics and a cluster analysis of courts based on indicators of five derived factors representative of structural dimensions. The data were collected through a mail and telephone survey of court personnel in a saturated sample of 150 metropolitan juvenile courts. The empirical typology is presented and its implications for future comparative studies and studies testing differential processing are discussed.
The 1967 In re Gault decision by the United States Supreme Court expressly noted that its procedural requirements for the adjudicatory stage had no necessary applicability to the preadjudication treatment of juveniles. However, the Gault mandate of the right to defense counsel in time led to greater prosecution representation of the community interest at ad judicatory hearings. This set in motion another development which is now eroding probation officers' informal, discretionary practices at the intake stage. State legislatures, responding to public concerns regarding juvenile crime, are rapidly placing prosecutors in decisional roles at juvenile intake, using various models in accommodating and accomplishing this. This development portrays yet another example of the replacement of historic juvenile court informality and parens patriae practice by a legal process model.
This study was designed to examine the guilty plea process in juvenile court. In the first phase of the research, I analyzed statutes, court rules, and case law from all 50 states to see what the country had decided about pleading guilty in juvenile court. In the second phase I observed three juvenile courts to ascertain their responses to juveniles' guilty pleas. In the third and final phase, I interviewed 100 court workers to disclose problems that these individuals have discovered and solutions that they have offered surrounding the guilty plea process in juvenile court. The data reveal considerable diversity both nationally and among local juvenile courts with respect to this process.