Trying Juveniles as Adults: Policy, Ethics, and Outcomes
This paper examines U.S. transfer laws that allow or require juvenile offenders to be tried in adult criminal courts. It traces the legislative expansion of these laws from the 1980s through 2003, outlines the three primary legal mechanisms for transfer — judicial waiver, prosecutorial transfer, and statutory exclusion — and identifies the key stakeholders involved in implementation. The paper then evaluates the ethical dilemmas these policies create, including questions of competency, due process, and proportionality, as well as documented negative outcomes such as increased rates of abuse, suicide, and recidivism among juveniles housed in adult facilities. Racial disparities in transfer rates are also highlighted. The paper concludes by recommending that juvenile offenders remain within the juvenile justice system while facing adult-level sentencing standards.
- Overview of Juvenile Transfer Laws: History and expansion of juvenile transfer legislation
- Legal Mechanisms for Transfer: Three legal grounds enabling juvenile court transfers
- Stakeholders and Implementation: State governments, courts, and judges as actors
- Ethical Dilemmas and Negative Consequences: Abuse, suicide risk, and competency concerns
- Racial Disparities and Policy Effectiveness: Minority overrepresentation and recidivism evidence
- Recommendations and Conclusion: Case for keeping juveniles in juvenile justice system
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- It grounds policy claims in concrete data — citing specific percentages for recidivism, suicide risk, and racial disparities — which gives the argument an empirical foundation rather than relying solely on opinion.
- The paper moves logically from policy description to stakeholder analysis to ethical critique to recommendation, making its structure easy for readers to follow.
- The conclusion connects the critique directly back to the stated goal of American correctional programs (rehabilitation), creating an internally consistent argument for reform.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of comparative evidence: it places outcomes from adult versus juvenile court dispositions side by side (e.g., Fagan's 1996 recidivism study) to argue that the policy fails on its own terms. This technique — testing a policy against its intended goals using empirical comparison — is a core method in criminal justice policy analysis.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a historical and legislative overview of transfer laws, then explains the three legal transfer mechanisms. It surveys who enacts and enforces these laws before pivoting to a sustained critique covering ethical concerns, documented harms, and racial disparities. A brief concluding section synthesizes the findings and proposes keeping juvenile offenders in the juvenile system while applying adult sentencing standards. The structure follows a classic policy-analysis format: describe, evaluate, recommend.
Overview of Juvenile Transfer Laws
Many states in the U.S. allowed the prosecution of juveniles in adult courts through transfer laws, as part of an expansion program that ran through the 1980s and 1990s (Griffin, Addie, Adams & Firestine, 2011). Transfer laws for juveniles outline the conditions under which underage defendants may be tried as adults in criminal cases. Earlier in the history of the American justice system, the criminal courts sought to separate adults from underage offenders. However, the laws were revised to allow youthful suspects to be transferred and tried in adult courts. This revision was triggered by a notable and serious escalation of violent crime committed by juvenile offenders (Burgess-Proctor, Holtrop & Villarruel, 2008).
Many attempts were made between 1979 and 2003 to modify transfer laws across numerous states. Some of these efforts were aimed at eliminating the minimum age requirement for trial in a criminal court, while others sought to expand the range of offenses subject to such prosecution. These efforts varied in approach: some combined both goals, while others focused on one or the other.
The spirit of the transfer laws was to make it an extremely serious consequence for juvenile offenders who engaged in criminal acts. There remains considerable public support for transfer laws, even though some states, such as Indiana, have moderated their application in recent years.
Legal Mechanisms for Transfer
Several fundamental legal grounds facilitate the transfer of juvenile criminal cases to adult criminal courts. The first is the Judicial Waiver, which allows the judge of a juvenile court to determine, at a waiver hearing, whether to order the transfer of a juvenile case to adult court. The second mechanism is the Prosecutorial Transfer, in which the prosecuting attorney exercises discretion to file a case directly in an adult criminal court when the case meets certain criteria related to the offense or the offender. The third mechanism is known as Statutory Exclusion, a law that removes certain offenses from juvenile court jurisdiction entirely. Anyone charged with such excluded crimes is therefore automatically prosecuted in adult criminal court (Burgess-Proctor et al., 2008).
Stakeholders and Implementation
The 1990s mark the period during which most states began enforcing tougher policies on juvenile crime. This shift was a direct reaction to the increasing incidence of violent crime committed by youths and children. The year 2003 represents the peak of this trend, when states enforced transfer laws that either allowed or required child offenders to be tried in adult criminal courts. These laws were crafted by state governments and are commonly referred to as Juvenile Waiver Laws. Once passed by a state legislature, the laws are implemented by the courts, with judges serving as the primary actors in their application.
All states in the U.S. have provisions that allow children as young as 14 years old to be prosecuted in adult courts under special circumstances. In states such as Vermont, Indiana, and South Dakota, offenders as young as 10 years old can be tried in adult criminal courts (Champion, 2001).
Ethical Dilemmas and Negative Consequences
Subjecting children to trial in adult courts presents several serious ethical dilemmas. To begin with, adult criminal courts were established to try adult offenders. When children are tried in these courts, they face a clear disadvantage relative to their adult counterparts. Additionally, studies demonstrate that children often lack the competency required to assist counsel in their own defense. They are also limited in their understanding of their legal rights and privileges — challenges that have been linked to developmental immaturity and an inability to fully follow the process of trial (Grisso, 1997).
A number of documented negative outcomes are also on record. Child offenders held in adult correctional facilities are subjected to significantly higher rates of physical and sexual abuse compared to those held in juvenile facilities. Research has shown that children committed to adult correctional facilities are 7.7 percentage points more likely to commit suicide than their counterparts in juvenile centers, and 5 percentage points more likely to be sexually abused. They are also twice as likely to be assaulted by staff and 50% more likely to be attacked with a weapon (Forst, Fagan & Vivona, 1989).
References
Burgess-Proctor, A., Holtrop, K., & Villarruel, F. A. (2008). Youth transferred to adult court: Racial disparities. Washington, DC: Campaign for Youth Justice.
Champion, D. J. (2001). The juvenile justice system: Delinquency, processing, and the law. Prentice Hall.
Fagan, J. (1996). The comparative advantage of juvenile vs. criminal court sanctions on recidivism among adolescent felony offenders. Law and Policy, 18, 77–112.
Forst, M., Fagan, J., & Vivona, T. S. (1989). Youth in prisons and training schools: Perceptions and consequences of the treatment-custody dichotomy. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 40(1), 1–14.
Griffin, P., Addie, S., Adams, B., & Firestine, K. (2011). Trying juveniles as adults: An analysis of state transfer laws and reporting. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 20–21.
Grisso, T. (1997). The competence of adolescents as trial defendants. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 3(1), 3.
Strom, K., Smith, S. K., Snyder, H. N., & Justice, J. (1998). Juvenile felony defendants in criminal courts. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.