What Predicts the Use of Blended Sentences Among Eligible Juveniles? A State-Wide Examination

In response to critiques of traditional juvenile justice processing and waiver to adult court, several states have adopted blended sentencing. These sentences fall in between these two approaches as they offer the benefits of the more rehabilitative-oriented juvenile system, with the option to deploy more punitive adult criminal sanctions. While previous research has indicated violent offenders were more likely to receive a blended sentence, it has not distinguished between those who were eligible for a blended sentence but did not receive this sanction. The current study seeks to address this gap and examine legal and extralegal predictors of receiving a blended sentence among those eligible. The analyses indicated that while those adjudicated for homicide and aggravated robbery were most likely to be given a blended sentence, other predictors such as prior probation failure and previous violence toward the family were associated with a decreased likelihood of receiving this sentence.

Improving responses to juvenile burglary offenders

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to make evidence-based recommendations for improving the responses of criminal justice agencies to juvenile burglary offenders. Design/methodology/approach The paper first analyzes what is known about factors relevant to young offenders’ initiation into burglary and subsequent persistence in that offense. It then evaluates research regarding juvenile justice interventions that can mitigate those factors in order to prevent youth from becoming involved in burglary or to encourage desistance in juvenile burglars. Findings Effective early intervention with juvenile burglars is vital, as burglars often begin committing this crime in their early teens and quickly develop expertise in the offense. Evidence supports the importance of positive mentoring, substance abuse programs, some forms of restorative justice and multi-modal interventions with education and employment components, while waiving these youth to adult court appears to offer little benefit over less punitive approaches. Originality/value This work delivers an original contribution by providing an analysis of existing burglary and juvenile justice research that may be useful to policymakers, law enforcement and other justice practitioners.

Unpacking Adultification: Institutional Experiences and Misconduct of Adult Court and Juvenile Court Youth Living Under the Same Roof

The present study explores the ability of juvenile waiver policy and the resulting adult court status to impact the experiences and behavior of male youth originating from differing jurisdictions but incarcerated together within state-level juvenile correctional facilities. Using official agency data and youth survey data, this research examines how “adult” status influences behavior for waived youth compared with their juvenile court counterparts. Structural equation modeling and multiple group analysis is used to determine the extent to which adult status moderates the measurement structure of models related to individual characteristics, institutional experiences, and institutional misconduct. Results reveal an improvement in model fit to occur when estimated across the two groups of juvenile court and adult court youth, beyond that which occurs when parameters are constrained to be equal for these two groups. This work reveals adult status to be powerful enough to moderate the effects of who a youth is and what that youth experiences, on how that youth behaves during a term of juvenile incarceration.

Drawing the Line

Every state maintains some mechanism by which youths can be tried as adults in criminal courts. While scholars have long debated the inherent benefits or detriments of prosecuting youths as adults, empirical studies of actual outcomes have provided mixed findings and have been limited by problems of selection bias and jurisdictional differences in processing. The current research aims to further inform this literature by capitalizing on a policy change in Connecticut that raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 17 on January 1, 2010, creating a natural experiment to assess the recidivism differences for youths based upon the system of processing: juvenile versus adult court. Findings from a 2-year follow-up reveal that 16-year-olds processed in juvenile courts had substantially reduced rates of recidivism with odds of rearrest that were between .462 and .630 less than for 16-year-olds processed in adult courts dependent on model specification.

Juveniles on Trial: Mode of Conviction and the Adult Court Sentencing of Transferred Juveniles

Several studies have compared the criminal court sentences given to transferred juveniles with those given to adults, but this research has reported inconsistent findings. In addition, some research has found that mode of conviction can interact with offenders’ characteristics, resulting in stronger or weaker effects of these factors among defendants convicted at trials. The current study explores the direct effects of juvenile status on sentence severity and whether these effects are conditioned by mode of conviction. Examination of data from Florida circuit courts ( N = 1,107,233) shows that transferred juveniles are less likely to be incarcerated than adults but are given longer incarceration sentences. Interaction analyses reveal that these disparities are weaker among trial cases than among plea cases.