Juveniles tried as adults: legal and policy considerations

Criminal Justice

Should Juveniles be tried as Adults?

The juvenile justice system in the United States has conventionally emphasized individualized treatment and rehabilitation. This focus has shifted over the years, however, and while juvenile courts are still directed at reform of young offenders, juvenile proceedings have become more punitive in nature (Steward-Lindsey, 2006). Recently there has been a dramatic change in the way juvenile crime is viewed by policymakers and the general public. This shift has led to widespread changes in policies and practices that concern the treatment of juvenile offenders. Rather than choosing to classify offenses committed by youth as delinquent, there has been a movement to redefine them as adults and transfer them to the adult court and criminal justice system (Steinberg, 2009).

There have been few issues that have confronted a society's ideas about the natures of human development and justice quite like serious juvenile crime. Because people neither expect children to be criminals or expect crimes to be committed by them, the intersection between childhood and criminality creates a dilemma that most people find difficult to deal with. The only way out is to either make the offense something less serious or to redefine the offender as someone who is not really a child (Steinberg, 2009).

Over the last 100 years, American society has most often chosen to redefine the offense as something less serious. It has dealt with juvenile offenses by treating most of them as delinquent acts to be adjudicated within a separate juvenile justice system. This system is theoretically designed to recognize the special needs and immature status of young people and emphasize rehabilitation over punishment. The prevailing thought process was that juveniles have different competencies than adults and therefore need to be adjudicated in a different type of venue and second that they have different potential for change than adults and therefore merit a second chance and an attempt at rehabilitation. States have recognized that the criminal act alone should not by itself determine whether to try a juvenile in the adult criminal justice system (Steinberg, 2009).

Most rational people agree that there are a small number of juvenile offenders that should be transferred to the adult system because they pose a legitimate threat to the safety of other people. The harshness of their offense warrants a more severe punishment, or their history of repeated offending does not bode well for their rehabilitation. However, there are many juvenile offenders who are currently are being prosecuted in the adult system, who do not belong there. These offenders have largely been charged with nonviolent crimes. When the transfer of offenders to adult court becomes the rule rather than the exception, there becomes a fundamental challenge to the very premise that the juvenile court was founded on, the fact that adolescents and adults are different (Steinberg, 2009).

Since the inception of juvenile court more than a hundred years ago, the underlying basic assumption has been that juvenile offenders shouldn't go through the adult criminal courts. The juvenile court was originally created to handle juvenile offenders on the foundation of their youth rather than the crimes they commit. The purpose of juvenile court is to treat and guide the children rather than punish them. During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a public push for getting tough with juveniles and trying them as adults. Many states passed laws making it easier to try certain youthful offenders as adults, while some states even considered the radical plan of abolishing juvenile courts altogether (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

Those that support the idea of getting rid of juvenile courts center their arguments on the need to punish juvenile criminals and to protect the juveniles' rights. There argument includes:

That juvenile court was founded on false grounds because its purpose is to protect youths from the consequences of their own actions.

Overall juvenile court fails to deter juvenile violence.

The severity of the current juvenile crime problem requires that all juvenile offenders should be punished in order to discourage the next generation of juveniles from becoming predators.

Justice stresses that juvenile courts should be abolished. They believe that if juveniles were tried in adult courts, they would be afforded their full array of constitutional rights (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

On the other side of this argument are many experts that believe that getting rid of the juvenile court will only make things worse. They feel that:

The premise of the juvenile court is good because of the fact that children have not fully matured yet so they shouldn't be held to the same standards of accountability as adults.

The purpose of the juvenile court is to treat and rehabilitate, not to deter or punish.

Changing the social environment in which juveniles live is a more effective in reducing juvenile violence than punishing them in adult courts.

While the denial of full constitutional rights for juveniles is sometimes a problem, the juvenile court's mission is compassion and to serve the best interests of the children (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

Even with all the debate about whether or not to abolish the juvenile court system there is a more important question that needs to be addressed. And that is how juvenile delinquency can be reduced when neither the present juvenile courts nor adult criminal courts are designed to deal with the various environmental factors that contribute to the causes of juvenile violence (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

It is believed that initial causes of juvenile crime can be found in the early learning experiences within the family. These involve weak family bonding and ineffective supervision, child abuse and neglect, and conflicting and harsh discipline. There are indications that very poor urban communities often put youths at a greater risk for involvement in violence. It is believed that some neighborhoods also provide special opportunities for learning or participating in violence (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

The presence of gangs and illegal drugs often provide an increased exposure to violence, negative role models, and possible rewards for youthful involvement in violent criminal activities. Schools also play a part in producing juvenile violence. A main cause of the beginning of serious violent behavior is the involvement in a delinquent peer group. Alcohol and guns also play a huge role in violent behavior by juveniles. Growing up in poverty and unemployment has major effects on the likelihood that a young person will turn to violence during the move to adulthood (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

There have been several other strategies proposed other than incarceration that can be used in preventing serious juvenile crime. These include:

Making it harder for youth to access handguns as a way of reducing gun-related crimes by juveniles.

Improving the schools that serve juveniles that live in poor urban communities.

Providing parents with the skills and resources to show their children unconditional love in safe settings in order to reduce child abuse and neglect.

Creating meaningful job opportunities and employment training programs to help ease poverty (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2009).

In response to the ever growing concern about the increases in juvenile crime, and to federal requirements that crime be reduced in order for local governments to qualify for grant funding, all fifty states have set out to increase policies toward juvenile crime. The central idea to most of these policies is try juveniles as adults who have committed certain felonies. At first look, such a policy seems very straightforward. In reality though, the issue is very complex. Because each state sets its own guidelines for the circumstances under which juveniles will be transferred to adult criminal court and for how the juvenile will interact with the adult court it is very difficult to have any unity. Every State has a different view on the processes for transferring juveniles to criminal court. They also have different ideas on whether the juvenile remains within the adult criminal system or is transferred back to the juvenile system. The entire issue is complicated by the differences in how the juvenile justice system and the adult criminal system in each state handles the various steps in the process from confinement, trial, sentencing, and incarceration (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2007).

Critics against trying juveniles as adults claim that incarceration in a juvenile facility has a much better effect on the offender than incarceration in an adult prison. Usually delinquent juveniles serve sentences in facilities that are strictly for juveniles. These facilities include group homes, shelters, detention centers, or boot camps. As more and more states move towards juveniles being tried and sentenced as adults, problems have arisen from juveniles being housed with adults. These issues have included prisoner-on-prisoner brutality and increased recidivism due to what the juvenile learns in prison. It is believed that if a teen-ager is locked up with an adult offender, they get more than just a cell mate the get a role model. This had lead to a growing number of states segregating juveniles and adults within the adult prison. Judges are also taking into account the availability of beds when they determine sentences for juveniles that have been tried as adults and may go so far as putting the youth on probation rather than putting them in an adult prison with adult prisoners (Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults, 2007).

It is often believed that if a child is old enough to do the crime, then they are old enough to do the time. While young people must be held accountable for serious crimes, the juvenile justice system was set up for precisely that reason. Channeling youth into the adult system does no good and in the end causes harm. Juveniles are not adults, and trying them in an adult court does not make them one. When these youth are tried in an adult criminal court they are not then seen as an adult for other purposes, such as voting and drinking. The common belief is that minors are developmentally less mature and responsible and more impulsive, erratic and vulnerable to negative peer pressure (Maroney, 2007).

A person's brain does not fully develop until around the age of 23. Because of this a teenager is less likely to realize if they realize at all just how bad a situation can get if they commit a crime. Most proponents do not feel that they should not be punished, but they believe that if they did the crime as a child they should be tried as a child. They should be tried and sentenced and when the system thinks that the offender has become stable and competent enough to be released, and then they should be. But not let out to go completely free. They need to be put on probation, and monitored by their probation officer as often as the court decides (Beeler, 2009).

As a person, a child is still an active work in progress. It is often hard to accept the logical consequences of that though. They are by nature less responsible than lawbreaking adults, even when they do things that are bad. So in the end we end up changing the rules in the middle of the game. "In the last decade, virtually every state has made it much easier to try juveniles as adults. These sweeping changes came amidst widespread alarm that a wave of "juvenile super predators" was coming -- which fortunately turned out to be false" (Maroney, 2007).

In some states there is no minimum age for which kids can be transferred to adult court for certain crimes. Most juvenile offenders do not grow up to become adult criminals. But when we punish them as adults, these odds are severely changed. It has been shown that teens tried as adults commit more crimes when released. Their educational and employment opportunities are noticeably worse, which creates an opportunity and incentive for them to commit more crime. The separate juvenile justice system was created to help lessen these harms along with preventing youth being preyed upon while in adult prisons. By trying children as adults we are sending them right back to very environment from which we were trying to protect them. The bad things is that there has never been any evidence to support that transferring youth to the adult system has reduced juvenile crime (Maroney, 2007).

"Some states have innovated alternatives to simply trying juveniles as adults, including "blended sentencing" programs, which, for example, allow youth offenders to be incarcerated in the juvenile system until the age of majority, followed by a period of adult incarceration or other sentence (O'Neill, 2008). It is thought that the theory behind the use of blended sentencing is that the objective of adult incarceration is aimed more towards punishment, while goal of juvenile detention is more about rehabilitation and the child's best interest (O'Neill, 2008).

Another argument about the increasingly number of youths being treated as adults in the legal system revolves around the central issue of jury trials for juveniles. Children that are tried as adults are not being tried by a jury of their peers, but by a jury of adults. Having a jury of one's peers is based on two things: that the jury will be made up of members from the defendant's community, and that the defendant is entitled to an impartial jury. "A central concern regarding jury trials for young offenders is that a jury comprised only of adults may hold attitudes about young people that will result in a systematic bias in decision making regarding juvenile defendants as compared to adult defendants" (Warling and Peterson-Badali, 2003).

Recently there has been a trend in the thinking that has led to a concern that the juvenile court is not able to deal with the new breed of delinquents that seem to be emerging. It is felt that the court is outdated and that it was never intended in the first place to deal with serious and violent juvenile offenders. There has been a call for tougher juvenile laws in order to prosecute juvenile offenders as adults. Between 1990 and 1996, forty states passed laws to make it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults. Many of these new laws also made juvenile records which had once been confidential, now widely available. Juvenile proceedings which once were closed were now open in certain cases, and statues that once stressed rehabilitation and the best interest of the child were redone to emphasize punishment and protection of the public (Tanenhaus and Drizin, 2003).

Historically, the goal of the juvenile justice system has been the rehabilitation of criminal offenders. Youth that could not be reformed or rehabilitated within the juvenile system were transferred to the adult system. Juvenile courts have always had the ability for the removal of the most serious juvenile offenders from the juvenile justice system to adult court. But it was once an exception and not the overall general policy. All states now allow juveniles to be transferred to adult court, with the standards for waiver varying from state to state. Because transfer to adult court is a decision that can have serious consequences, it is believed that it should be limited to cases where it is truly warranted. Research indicates that transfer does nothing to reduce the rate of reoffending. In fact it has been shown that transferring juveniles to adult court may actually increase recidivism rates. "Often, juveniles who are incarcerated with adults leave prison hardened and embittered, possibly due to the psychological and physical trauma they may endure. Juveniles in adult institutions are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten by staff and fifty percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon than minors in juvenile facilities (Steward-Lindsey, 2006).