ABSTRACT
What You Need to Know
■ In 2014, juvenile courts processed almost one million delinquency cases and about 100,000 petitioned status offense cases. In addition, approximately 4,200 cases were transferred (waived) to adult court.
■ The detention decision concerns whether to keep a juvenile in custody or to allow the youth to go home with his or her parents while awaiting further court action. Two options are secure detention and nonsecure detention.
■ When an intake officer does not file a petition against a youth but tries to resolve the matter, that is called informal adjustment.
■ Two avenues for youths not petitioned to court are teen court and drug court.
■ The prosecutor’s role in juvenile court may include approving petitions, deciding to prosecute some juveniles in adult courts, and prosecuting juveniles in juvenile court.
■ There are several means for youths to be sent to adult court. The most traditional is transfer or waiver, in which the juvenile court judge makes the decision after a hearing.
■ Statutory exclusion means that the state legislature rules that certain offenses automatically go to adult court.
■ Prosecutorial waiver gives juvenile and adult court concurrent jurisdiction over certain cases. The prosecutor decides which court to use.
■ Research on transfer indicates higher recidivism for youths who were transferred to adult criminal court.
■ Adjudication and disposition in juvenile courts are the equivalent of conviction and sentencing in adult courts.
■ There are several problems concerning attorney representation of juveniles: many youths waive their right to counsel, many attorneys have high caseloads and are poorly paid, and many defense attorneys are unsure whether they should follow the zealous advocate model of defense with juveniles.
■ In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the trend in juvenile court was one of increasing punitiveness, but a more recent trend is to consider the research from developmental psychology that teens are still in the process of maturing. One example has been legislation to return to age 18 as the initial age of adult criminal court jurisdiction. A second example is legislation in some states making changes in transfer provisions.
