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.

The Impact of Adult Prison Transfer on the Recidivism Outcomes of Blended-Sentenced Juvenile Delinquents

Juvenile justice systems today have various methods to sanction serious, violent, and chronic delinquents. One of these methods is through blended sentencing. Broadly, blended sentencing processes allow for juvenile justice sanctioning first and then, if needed, criminal justice sanctioning—including placement in adult prisons. The current study examines the recidivism outcomes of blended-sentenced youth transferred to adult prisons following a period of state juvenile incarceration compared with a matched group of blended-sentenced youth that avoided adult prison transfer following state juvenile incarceration. Drawing on data from 905 serious delinquent offenders sentenced between 2005 and 2013 in Texas, the current study used Propensity Score Matching and found no post-release recidivism differences between those transferred to adult prison following a period of state juvenile incarceration and those who were released from state juvenile incarceration to the community without experiencing adult prison incarceration.

Americans’ Opinions on Juvenile Justice: Preferred Aims, Beliefs About Juveniles, and Blended Sentencing

Feld asserts that juvenile justice is entering a new era, one that is based on the idea that kids are different from adults in a number of important ways. It is against this backdrop that we conducted a contemporary, national assessment of the public’s views of youth today and juvenile justice policy priorities, focusing specifically on an understudied policy, juvenile-blended sentencing. We find the public holds pessimistic views of youth today, which influences their support for blended sentencing. Support for blended sentencing is also found to be related to belief in the potential consequences of such a sentence as well as belief in the importance of the goals of juvenile justice.

Blended Sentencing Laws and the Punitive Turn in Juvenile Justice

In many states, young people today can receive a “blended” combination of both a juvenile sanction and an adult criminal sentence. We ask what accounts for the rise of blended sentencing in juvenile justice and whether this trend parallels crime control developments in the adult criminal justice system. We use event history analysis to model state adoption of blended sentencing laws from 1985 to 2008, examining the relative influence of social, political, administrative, and economic factors. We find that states with high unemployment, greater prosecutorial discretion, and disproportionate rates of African American incarceration are most likely to pass blended sentencing provisions. This suggests that the turn toward blended sentencing largely parallels the punitive turn in adult sentencing and corrections—and that theory and research on adult punishment productively extends to developments in juvenile justice.