Juvenile delinquent sentencing practices and outcomes

Sentencing Juveniles

Juvenile Delinquent Sentencing

Two factors that should be considered when sentencing a juvenile offender

According to Sandborn (2009), there is substantively little difference between the perceptions of a juvenile of the nature of court proceedings with those of an adult: both can understand that the concepts of a jury, defense attorney, and judge. Supposedly, teens are capable of doing so as young as thirteen (Sandborn 2009: 153). However, merely understanding the vocabulary of the justice system does not seem analogous to being able to fully understand the proceedings or assist with a defense strategy in an active fashion. Moreover, Sandborn's position ignores mounting evidence that juveniles are unable to fully appreciate the consequences of their actions like adults because of their biological state of development and frequently engage in behavior that they would not continue in doing, had they matured.

When considering a juvenile offender's sentence two critical components must be kept in mind. The first is the nature of the offense. The fact that all teens make errors in judgment as part of the learning process is virtually a given, and a number of judicial mechanisms, such as teen court and juries by the teen's peers have been created in some areas to judge teens' guilt or innocence on relatively minor offenses (Peterson 2009; Stickle et al. 2008). Teen courts emphasize the rehabilitative function of justice, and try to keep first-time offenders out of the juvenile corrections systems, where delinquent behavior may simply become more ingrained. Also, given that many juvenile offenses are status offenses, which would not be crimes if an adult committed them (such as breaking curfew), leniency for minor offenses is suggested.

The second component that must be kept in mind is the juvenile's background and history. Juveniles who grow up in high-crime environments, with little educational enrichment and parents who are criminals themselves have few opportunities for appropriate social modeling. Rather than viewing these teens as 'bad' it is fairer to contextualize their crime within the wider social environment, with an eye upon rehabilitation. Underprivileged teens have fewer resources to help them survive 'youthful indiscretions' that spiral out of control. A white, middle-class suburban teen who experiments with drugs might be quietly shipped off to rehab by his parents; an impoverished African-American urban teen that does the same does not have these financial or emotional resources and instead may only be placed in a position of finding help after the addiction becomes an entrenched behavior.