ABSTRACT
During the past decade, juvenile justice reform in the United States has been based on punishment and endorsed by the public as a means of protection from violent offenders. These reforms have included a lowering of the age at which juveniles can be transferred to the adult system—virtually every state has lowered its age to 14, but several have lowered it even further. For instance, the minimum age is 13 in North Carolina, 10 in Missouri, and 8 in Vermont and Wisconsin. Other states, such as Massachusetts, have made it possible to extend the length of sentencing well past the usual juvenile court jurisdiction age of 21 years. Still others have set the age of original jurisdiction for the adult system below the usual 18. For instance, the age in New York is 16, while North Carolina is at 17. Moreover, the process of judicial and legislative waivers have been supplemented in several states by an expansion of the possible crimes that can be invoked under legislative waiver and the addition of prosecutorial waiver. While this has led to an increased number of violent youth being transferred to adult court, the majority of youth transferred are accused of drug and property crimes (Snyder & Sickmund, 1996). If public safety is the goal, then these reforms are not working. Bishop, Frazier, Lanza-Kaduce, and Winner (1996) have reported that for Florida juveniles transferred to adult court, recidivism rates are worse for transfers than for comparable non-transfers in both short and long term follow-up studies. Moreover, given the fact that transfer to criminal court opens the door to the death penalty (Feld, 1999), the question, “Do children's crimes make them adults?”, has taken on a new urgency for developmental/community psychologists to become involved in the juvenile justice arena.
