By: LINDSEY O’NEILL, ESQ.
A rising number of juveniles under the age of 18 are not only being charged for crimes as adults, but are serving in adult jails and even serving life sentences. Every state has some mechanism in place that allows juveniles charged with certain crimes to be tried in criminal court as adults. Thousands of children annually are even being “automatically” transferred to adult criminal court. Much of the change in the laws over the past few decades making it easier to try youths as adults has been in part due to the increase in juvenile crime and public outrage over particularly violent crimes and repeat juvenile offenders. The most common increases in juvenile crime have been noted with respect to gang violence, school shootings, increases in drugs in youth neighborhoods, and even increases in bullying among peers.
A 1998 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Juvenile Felony Defendants in Criminal Courts, surveyed juvenile case processing in the nation’s largest urban counties, found the following:
- An estimated 7,100 juvenile defendants were charged with felonies in adult criminal court in 1998.
- In criminal courts in these 40 counties, juveniles (64%) were more likely than adults (24%) to be charged with a violent felony.
- These juvenile defendants were generally treated as serious offenders, as 52% did not receive pretrial release, 63% were convicted of a felony, and 43% of those convicted received a prison sentence.
- States have expanded the mechanisms by which juveniles can be charged in criminal courts. In 1998, statutory exclusion was the most common method (42%) used to charge juveniles defendants compared to the more traditional use of juvenile waiver (24%).
- About two thirds (66%) of the juvenile felony defendants in the 40 large counties were convicted, either of a felony or a misdemeanor. Of those convicted, 64% were sentenced to jail or prison as the most serious penalty. The average prison sentence received was 90 months.
- In 1998, in the 40 counties, 62% of the juvenile felony defendants were black, 20% were white, 16% were Hispanic, and almost 2% were another race.
- Two-thirds of juveniles prosecuted in criminal courts were charged with a violent felony offense including robbery (34%), assault (15%), and murder (11%). About a sixth were charged with a felony property offense. For the remainder of juveniles in
criminal courts, the most serious arrest charge was a drug (14%) offense.
There is debate, however, about whether or not juveniles should be so readily charged and tried as adults. One of the arguments for reversing this trend is that it simply doesn’t work. Studies show that transferring juveniles to adult court is not an effective deterrent of further criminal activity. See: Juvenile Transfer Laws: An Effective Deterrent to Delinquency? The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy organization promoting treating youth offenders in juvenile court, authored commentary on this subject as well, Prosecuting Juveniles in Adult Court: Perspectives for Policymakers and Practitioners, concluding that adult courts are inappropriate and unjust settings for juveniles.
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. One theory behind the use of “blended sentencing” could be that the objective of adult incarceration is aimed more at punishment, whereas the goal of juvenile detention leans more toward rehabilitation and rehabilitating juvenile offenders is in society’s best interest.
You can learn more about juvenile crime by visiting LawInfo’s Free Legal Resource Center. For assistance in defending against a criminal charge against a youth, contact an attorney in your area today.
Lindsey O'Neill is the Director of Legal Content and Strategic Development at LawInfo.com. Ms. O'Neill is a California licensed attorney based in La Jolla and experienced in a wide variety of legal and business matters.
i agree
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I understand that all kids are going to go through their “bad stages” where they act out and do bad things, but when they do certain things there is a certain way of punishing them. When you hear about under aged children robbing drugstores at two o’clock in the morning, or young kids fighting a lot in school, or children stealing from their neighbors, you begin to wonder where this child’s parents were when they were doing this. And how this young child was raised, and whether or not they were raised in a proper home. The child could have been neglected at a younger age so therefore they felt they needed to act out to get attention from his or her parents. Or maybe the child’s parents were no longer in the picture, so the only way to get by in life was to steal. Youthful offenders are not as cognitively developed or mature as adults and, therefore, should not be held accountable for their crimes in the same way that adults are. Whatever the case may be a child should not be blamed fully for the actions they decide to carry out because they came from a broken home and have no other way to express their feelings. There are certain ways to punish a child for the certain actions they carry out.
When I was a sophomore in high school, two of my friends were charged as adults for making “hash muffins”. They baked marijuana and laxatives into three dozen muffins, and delivered them to another school and placed them into the teacher’s lounge. This was supposed to be a senior prank, so this was the reasoning for putting them into a different schools teachers lounge. About two days later, the police showed up at our school asking to see the two kids who delivered the muffins to the school. Apparently there were two people who had to be hospitalized and one elderly lady almost died because she was allergic to the laxatives that were used. Charges were pressed against both of my friends and they were sentenced to ten years in prison each. One of my friends Ian who was involved in this had never been in trouble before with the law. So because of this prank gone bad he no longer will have the opportunity to do or make anything of his life.
There are other young kids who do different things that require harsher punishment sentencing. However, I don’t think that it’s right that juveniles be charged as adults. What if it is their first offense? Or what if it was an accident? Or what if they are not mentally stable to realize what they are doing is wrong? They shouldn’t be charged as adults just because they did something wrong.
On November 19th, 2008, an 8 year old boy was charged as an adult for shooting his father and his father’s friend. See. This boy is eight years old, the first question that should come to everyone’s mind is where he learned how to hold, shoot, and load a gun. If the boys’ father was the one who taught him how to hold, shoot, and load a gun, then no one is to be blamed but the father. Also another question that should come to everyone’s mind is, what could this father have possibly done to make his eight-year-old son want to kill him? This little boy still has his entire life to live ahead of him, but because he is charged as an adult he will never get to go to high school, have a girlfriend, go to college, get a job or even start his own family one day. It is not right that this little boy is being charged as an adult for his first crime, he should at least be put in a juvenile jail for a few years to see if he changes for the better. However, he should not be charged as a full adult.
According to Laura H. Carnell, professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, and director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, harsh punishments may actually increase the chance of future criminal activity. Therefore, juveniles should not be charged as adults, because they have time to change and become better people. Unlike adults who have already lived their life, juveniles have a chance to become a totally different person.
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nicole cash Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
i believe he should be punished somehow but i beleive that kids of the age of 13 to 17 should be charge as adult crimes and punished just like adults because a lot of them no better
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i think they should,they wanna do an adult crime then they should be tried as adults
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Paul Reply:
March 18th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
what exactly is an adult crime?
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Lauren Reply:
May 13th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
There is no shuch thing as an “Adult Crime” a crime is a crime. But juveniles don’t always know the extent of the crime they have committed.
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first of all a crime is a crime there is no difference between adult and juvenile crime. it is all the same. i agree juveniles should not be tried as adults because they might not know the severity of the crime. No juvenile should recieve life without parole. that is not giving them a chance to fix themselves.
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Of course kids should not be charged as an adult, They are only kids . Juveniles don’t know wrong from right because your brain isn’t fully developed until 23. They can not go into a store to purchase cigarettes until 18 and alcohol until 21 so why treat them as adult for a crime done at the age if 16.
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Of course kids should not be charged as an adult, They are only kids . Juveniles don’t fully know wrong from right because your brain isn’t fully developed until 23. Juveniles can not go into a store to purchase cigarettes until 18 and alcohol until 21 so why treat them as adult for a crime done at the age of 16?
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Ok their is some reasoning for kids not to be charged as adults. I also understand that kids go through alot in life because some parents just dont give a f*** but it is not right for their kids to be commiting murders or other crimes. For someone to only get a could of months in juvenile hall when they beat and stabbed my brother unconscious is defenatly not ok because when they get out they will continue to commit crimes and it may be even bigger crime. So in this case i do agree with juveniles being tried as adults!!!!!
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