Most states have enacted laws that allow prosecution of juvenile offenders as adults in response to the increasing rates of crimes committed by adolescents. Those in favor of trying juvenile offenders as adults believe that certain violent crimes committed by juveniles merit harsher punishment than allowed by juvenile law, and that harsher punishment may serve as a deterrent for the commission of future crimes.
However, a growing body of evidence is beginning to show that this belief is wrong and unjust. Many nonthreatening juvenile offenders are sent through adult criminal courts regardless of the impact of their crime on the community. There is a significant amount of racial disparities, and youths with special needs are not protected. Many juvenile courts fail to request, or grant a request, for psychiatric evaluation of the juvenile offender, and many vulnerable youths with psychiatric disabilities end up in the adult criminal system. The evidence also shows that trying adolescents as adults has no deterrent effect and that transfers may in fact increase the risk of recidivism among this cohort of juvenile offenders. Furthermore, youths incarcerated in the general adult population are left in an unjustifiable vulnerable position with grave and long-lasting consequences (Bishop, 200)
Juvenile courts have always had the power to transfer juvenile offenders to the criminal court system. However, it was not until the sharp rise in juvenile crimes that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s that states across the nation began trying juvenile offenders as adults, in what Jeffrey Fagan (2008) refers to as “redrawing the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems.” Prior to that, a juvenile court judge’s decision to transfer a case to criminal court was based on a number of competing factors that balanced public safety against rehabilitation of the juvenile offender. The fact that state law now mandates when juveniles are to be transferred between courts suggests that legislators have taken some of the power away from the judicial system, so that a significant number of juveniles are being transferred to the adult criminal system that in the past juvenile court judges would have kept in their courts. Approximately 25 percent of all juvenile offenders under the age of 18 are tried as adults (Fagan). A great majority of these juvenile offenders are tried in states where the age boundary between juvenile and criminal court has been dropped down from eighteen, to sixteen or seventeen.
This raises a couple of critical policy questions: (1) have the new transfer laws been effective in reducing crime, and (2) have the new transfer laws been effective in reducing recidivism? The answers are no, and no. Studies are beginning to accumulate with evidence that there exists no significant difference in juvenile crime rates between states that have lowered the age at which juveniles can be transferred to criminal courts and those that keep cases of juvenile adolescents 16 to 18 years old in juvenile courts (Hahn et al., 2007). Nor do juvenile offenders tried as adults have a lower risk of recidivism than youths tried in juvenile courts (Shook, 2014) The transfer of juveniles to the criminal court system has failed as a tool in controlling juvenile crime and has in fact increased the probability that a juvenile offender tried in criminal court will commit future crimes. Juvenile offenders tried as adults are amongst the highest at-risk adolescents.
Studies have also shown that juvenile offenders are different from adult offenders and that the negative effects of judgment and imprisonment are significantly greater for adolescents. Most states are beginning to accept this fact, and the power to transfer adolescents to the criminal court has been handed back to juvenile court judges, who again have the discretion to transfer aggravated cases to the criminal court system, such as cases involving exceptionally violent crimes, repeat felony offenders, or crimes involving vulnerable members of society. However, New York and North Carolina continue to automatically charge and try adolescents aged 16 and over as adults. Their policies are based more on political and social factors than factors related to criminal justice, and ignores the terrible and irreversible consequences of incarcerating youths at such an early age. (Tedeschi and Ford, 2014).
The Task Force on Community Preventive Services (Task Force), in association with the Guide to Community Preventive Services, conducted a literature review on inter-court transfer of juvenile offenders to determine whether legislation of the transfer of juvenile offenders to criminal courts has been effective in the control and prevention of crimes committed by youths (Hahn et al., 2007). The data examined revealed that trying juvenile offenders as adults increased, rather than decreased, the probability that these youths would engage in future criminal behavior. Based on this evidence, the Task Force determined that laws allowing the adjudication of juvenile offenders in criminal courts have been ineffective in reducing juvenile crime. The Task Force also called for in-depth evaluation of current programs aimed at the prevention of juvenile delinquency.
Shook (2014) agrees with the Task Force’s recommendations and contends that in light of the vast disparities that exist in the programs and services offered among communities according to race or ethnicity, and considering the higher rates of recidivism among juvenile offenders tried as adults, there exists a critical need for legislation and policy reform. He also calls for the establishment of more programs focused on the prevention of juvenile crime.
However, not much is known regarding the effectiveness of programs designed to prevent and control repeat juvenile criminal behavior. Careful analysis of delinquency-prevention programs can help determine which factors are more effective in clinical practice to reduce the rate of recidivism.
Peter Greenwood (2008), a researcher at the Institute for Public Health & Justice at Louisiana State University, conducted a study to identify and evaluate “proven” and “promising” delinquency-prevention programs. He believes that early intervention in cases involving juvenile offenders can stop the onset of adult criminal careers and lower overall crime rates. Timely intervention can also lower the cost of crime; states spend billions of dollars per year to arrest, try, imprison and counsel juvenile offenders, whereas delinquency-prevention programs can be established and managed at a fraction of the cost. But more important is the fact that harsher laws that call for the transfer of juvenile offenders to criminal courts have been shown to be ineffective. In contrast, delinquency-prevention programs have been proven successful.
According to Greenwood, the best programs are those that lower the risk of a youth ever committing an offence and include home visits that target all members of the family. Pregnant adolescents are specifically targeted. Many of the more successful programs are school-based and these focus on the prevention of drug use, delinquency, truancy and anti-social behavior.
Community-based programs have been proven successful in preventing first-time juvenile offenders from committing further crimes. The best ones encourage participation by the juvenile offender’s family and provide training and education.
According to a study by de Vries et al. (2014), behavioral-oriented programs that focus on parental skills and the modification of behavior are more effective in the prevention of crimes committed by at-risk adolescents. Successful behavioral-oriented programs used a multi-modal approach; however, contrary to expectations, intensive programs were less effective than non-intensive programs. Effective programs matched the intensity of interventions to the level of risk of the juvenile offender. Interventions involving family members were more effective than programs than limited their focus on the juvenile offender, whether through individual or group therapy.
However, the main problem appears not to lie in the efficacy, or lack of efficacy, of the programs themselves, but in the fact that these programs reach only a very small minority (5%) of youths in need of intervention and a lot or work remains ahead before these evidence-based delinquency-prevention programs become the mainstream of juvenile justice.
One factor that impacts the evaluation of delinquency-prevention programs is that race plays a significant role in dispositional decisions as to what type of facility a juvenile offender is allocated to. A significantly larger percentage of minority juvenile offenders are sent to large facilities with programs that use a physical regimen as their primary intervention. In contrast, white juvenile offenders are generally sent to smaller facilities that use psychotherapy as their chief modality. This suggests that juvenile courts not only attribute higher levels of culpability to minority juvenile offenders but also have lower expectations of their reformability. Thus, the juvenile system is skewed against vulnerable minority at-risk youths and the court’s decision in choosing a particular program for a minority juvenile offender is not founded on criminal theory or needs-based factors (Fader, Kurlychek and Morgan, 2014).
Part of the problem can be attributed to society’s misconceptions regarding black juvenile offenders and the probability of their rehabilitation. White people believe that minorities, in particular, black juveniles, are driving juvenile crime. They also hold the misperception that black juvenile offenders cannot be rehabilitated. As a result, whites are less supportive of programs aimed at the rehabilitation of black juvenile offenders (Pickett, Chiricos and Gertz, 2014).
Mental health practitioners are best positioned to educate the public and policymakers in juvenile justice for they can offer evidence-based suggestions on factors associated with juvenile delinquency and rehabilitation. They can also evaluate individual juvenile offenders for the presence of neurobiological, psychological, and developmental elements that would leave them particularly vulnerable in adult prisons. Evaluation of these factors can also help juvenile courts choose the right program for a particular juvenile offender (Tedeschi and Ford, 2014).
In conclusion, legislators, policymakers and interventionists should take into consideration the accumulating body of evidence against the transfer of juvenile offenders from juvenile to adult criminal courts, current decline in violent juvenile crime, and new understanding of adolescent development, to reinstate or declare 18 as the right age for juvenile court jurisdiction.
References
Bishop, D. M. (2000). Juvenile offenders in the adult criminal justice system. Crime and Justice. 27, 81-167. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1147663
de Vries, S.L., Hoeve, M., Assink, M., Stams, G.J., Asscher, J.J. (2014). Practitioner Review: Effective ingredients of prevention programs for youth at risk of persistent juvenile delinquency - recommendations for clinical practice. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12320. [Epub ahead of print]. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12320/abstract;jsessionid=163A21058B0CE3EEA9594047C9D89D6C.f02t04
Fader, J.J., Kurlychek, M.C., & Morgan, K.A. (2014). The color of juvenile justice: racial disparities in dispositional decisions. Soc Sci Res. 2014 Mar;44:126-40. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.11.006.
Fagan, J. (2008). Juvenile crime and criminal justice: resolving border disputes. Future Child, 18(2),81-118. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/future_of_children/toc/foc.18.2.html
Greenwood, P. (2008). Prevention and Intervention Programs for Juvenile Offenders. Future Child, 18(2),185-210. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/future_of_children/toc/foc.18.2.html
Hahn, R., McGowan, A., Liberman, A., Crosby, A., Fullilove, M., Johnson, R., Moscicki, E., Price, L., Snyder, S., Tuma, F., et al. (2007). Effects on violence of laws and policies facilitating the transfer of youth from the juvenile to the adult justice system: a report on recommendations of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services. MMWR Recomm Rep. 2007 Nov 30; 56(RR-9):1-11. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5609a1.htm
Pickett, J.T., Chiricos, T. & Gertz, M. (2014). The racial foundations of whites' support for child saving. Soc Sci Res., 44, 44-59. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X13001579
Shook, J.J. (2014). Looking back and thinking forward: examining the consequences of policies and practices that treat juveniles as adults. J Evid Based Soc Work.,11(4),392-403. doi: 10.1080/10911359.2014.897112.
Tedeschi, F., Ford, E. (2014). Outliers in American juvenile justice: the need for statutory reform in North Carolina and New York. Int J Adolesc Med Health. doi: 10.1515/ijamh-2015-5006. [Epub ahead of print]. Retrieved from http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ijamh.ahead-of-print/ijamh-2015-5006/ijamh-2015-5006.xml;jsessionid=4D212C3FCCFBE76AC83F67ECF0948AB3
