This paper examines the ongoing debate over how the United States should sentence juvenile offenders, focusing on the tension between transferring youth to adult courts and maintaining a rehabilitative juvenile justice system. Drawing on scholarship from Shay Bilchik, Barry C. Feld, and Thomas Grisso, as well as congressional testimony and case law, the paper evaluates recidivism statistics, the historical evolution of the juvenile court, and the impact of graduated sanctions programs. It also addresses constitutional concerns raised by overcrowded and under-resourced juvenile detention facilities. The paper concludes that evidence consistently favors rehabilitation and adequately funded juvenile justice systems over punitive adult incarceration for adolescent offenders.
The issue of sentencing juveniles has been a topic of considerable debate in recent years. Due to the increase of school shootings and other serious crimes committed by adolescents that have grabbed national media attention, many believe that juveniles should be sentenced within adult correctional systems. However, solving the issue of juvenile sentencing is far from simple, as there are many variables to consider.
Shay Bilchik, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America, writes in the April 2003 issue of Corrections Today that the United States has taken a dramatic step toward prosecuting far too many juveniles in the adult correctional system (Bilchik). Laws in the United States recognize that juveniles are too young to consume alcohol, vote, engage in legal contracts, and enter into marriage because they are not fully developed mentally and emotionally (Bilchik).
The juvenile justice system, created by legislators, is based on the belief that adolescents have much to learn and that early interventions will alter their paths toward delinquent behavior (Bilchik). Yet today, many politicians are poised to abandon this approach.
Between 1984 and 1994, arrests for juveniles charged with violent offenses jumped 78 percent, according to the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. Some criminologists portrayed this generation of teens as predators invading America's neighborhoods, and many predicted a surge in juvenile crime (Bilchik). In response to such rhetoric, nearly every state passed legislation making it easier to try juveniles as adults. But, as Bilchik notes, "the mayhem that was anticipated never arrived, and by the mid-1990s, teen crime rates had begun to plummet" (Bilchik). Although it is difficult to pinpoint a single explanation for this change, most leaders in the juvenile justice field attribute the decline to a stronger economy, a decline in drug use and related gang activity, and an increase in preventive and developmental youth programs.
However, the transfer laws have not been repealed, and the majority of decisions to transfer juveniles to criminal or adult court today are left in the hands of a prosecutor or the legislature's mandatory guidelines, rather than a judge (Bilchik). Each year, approximately 200,000 adolescents are sent directly to adult courts, and the majority of those offenses are property crimes and drug-related (Bilchik).
As the leader of a youth advocacy organization, Bilchik finds these developments troubling for American youths; but as a former district attorney dedicated to keeping streets safe, he finds these outcomes equally troubling for communities throughout the United States (Bilchik). According to Bilchik, rather than "lowering the likelihood of violent crime, this more severe approach increases the chances that youths will leave prison and continue to commit crimes" (Bilchik). What is needed is adequate funding and support to make the juvenile justice system work properly, for there are too few juvenile justice systems in the United States that have the capacity to hold juveniles accountable and provide the appropriate treatment that they and their families need (Bilchik). For example, if a 16-year-old is arrested and found guilty of burglary and then spends months at home while awaiting placement in a crowded juvenile facility, he learns that there is no swift and appropriate consequence for his actions; yet if he is sentenced to an adult prison, he learns little more than how to become a more successful criminal (Bilchik).
When Bilchik worked as a prosecutor in Florida, he faced an under-funded juvenile justice system that often sent offenders home for months to await placement, but he worked with judges and defense attorneys to expand juvenile placements and alternative sentencing approaches in adult court. Bilchik claims this made a meaningful difference.
A 2002 Florida study for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice used matched pairs of offenders in both the adult and juvenile systems — matched by age, current offense, and criminal history — and found that 49 percent of youths tried as adults recidivated, compared with 35 percent of youths who remained in the juvenile justice system. The Miami Herald conducted a similar study in 2001 and found that sending a juvenile to prison increased the odds by 35 percent that he or she would re-offend within one year of release. Recent studies in Georgia, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania reveal similar effects (Bilchik).
Evidence shows that well-researched, well-informed, and well-funded juvenile justice systems produce substantial results (Bilchik). Studies conducted by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence have demonstrated that when working in tandem with child welfare and juvenile justice systems, programs such as Nurse Home Visiting, Multisystemic Therapy, Functional Family Therapy, and Quantum Opportunities "reduce high-risk behaviors and arrest rates, and increase high school graduation rates among vulnerable and other high-risk youths." While such programs are costly, the costs of incarcerating adolescents are far greater (Bilchik). Bilchik notes that too many communities are failing to provide programs that hold adolescents accountable in a timely manner and offer the guidance needed to turn them away from crime. By transferring them blindly to adult facilities, society is not only failing America's youth but failing communities as well (Bilchik).
Barry C. Feld writes in the September 1997 issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology that over the past three decades, "judicial decisions, legislative amendments, and administrative changes have transformed the juvenile court from a nominally rehabilitative social welfare agency into a scaled-down, second-class criminal court for young people" (Feld). These reforms have converted the historical ideal of the juvenile court as a social welfare institution into a penal system that provides adolescent offenders with neither therapy nor justice (Feld). The merging of the juvenile and criminal courts eliminates all operational differences in strategies of criminal social control for youths and adults, and thus "no compelling reasons exist to maintain, separate from an adult criminal court, a punitive juvenile court whose only remaining distinctions are its persisting procedural deficiencies" (Feld).
"Grisso traces changing views of youth culpability"
"Congressional testimony on flexible graduated sanctions programs"
"Federal court ruling on overcrowded juvenile facilities"
Juvenile sentencing is a serious issue; however, the debate over punishment versus rehabilitation is likely to continue for decades to come.
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