Juveniles Sentenced as Adults Essay Example

As the rates of crime continue to increase with a decline in public confidence, most decision makers progressively turn to punitive juvenile due to public demand. Until 1999, forty-nine states in the United States had altered the scope of their juvenile laws to cover other crimes that allowed for the sentences and trial of juvenile offenders in adult criminal courts. 13 states restricted the jurisdiction of their juvenile court to juveniles under the age of between fifteen and sixteen, with some removing the age restriction. Some states have allowed the transfer of the juvenile to adult courts, constrained judicial discretion and reduced the number of offenses previously handled by the juvenile courts. Judges have the powers to transfer juveniles to adult courts when deemed appropriate for trial and subsequent sentencing. The transfer can occur on account of the seriousness of the crime, the adolescent's past offense record, or various statutorily characterized conditions allotted by the adult court. Presently, the laws concerning juvenile offenses are still punitive. As per Feld (2004), roughly 200,000 adolescents annually are tried as adults, mostly for non-violent crimes at a cost of $106 billion each year. The greater part of these adolescents is excluded from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court by age or offense and is considered adults under the existing laws.

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Statutory changes show that less accentuation is presently is on the individual conditions and treatment of juveniles and more focus on discipline and reprisal. Policy makers keep on depending on deterrence theory as a fundamental basis for their programs on sentencing. General deterrence theory expresses that threats of brutal punishment deter or dissuades the commission of wrongdoings. Firmly linked, explicit deterrence holds that extreme punishment of guilty parties ought to deter them from repeating the crime (Turner, 2008). These theories are grounded on a rational choice model, which holds that before the commission of an offense, an individual deliberately weighs the rewards versus the risks of commission. Despite such sensible justifications, the measurement of possible crime-prevention benefits of incarceration is one important but elusive concern of public policy and criminology. The dread of wild juvenile crime and emergence of "super-predators" has undermined the conventional routine with regards to treating adolescents differently as adult culprits - less at fault due to their age and the ease of rehabilitation. As of late, the attention has swung to punishment and specifically to the transfer to adult courts. These arrangements have been shown to do harm than to the public than good.

Juvenile courts are in charge of handling youngsters who are accused of two types of offense. The first one is the status offenses, which is the infringement of laws by children, such as fleeing from home, and the second is the delinquency offenses, which are acts carried out by children that when committed by adults could result in indictments (Griffin, Addie, Adams & Firestine, 2011). The basis of the juvenile system is that children are formatively not the same as adults and in this way are more responsive to rehabilitation and treatment. The justice process of the juvenile is individualistic and takes into consideration the child's needs and problems, concentrating less on punishment and more on behavioral change. Over the past years, the dread of juvenile criminals and crimes has undermined the fundamental concept upon which juvenile court was established (Feld, 2004). The federal government and state have retorted to the more punitive model of adult courts, requiring that even adolescents in some cases be treated as though they were equal in terms of comprehension and culpability to adults who perpetrate comparative crimes.

For the perceived risk of being given a specific sentence, almost no explorations exist, and even fewer studies exist in regards to adolescents' perceived risk of being awarded adult sentences. Rather, most investigations have focused on police detention and have excluded other decision-making avenues in the criminal justice system, such as arraignment and condemning. In like manner, albeit the certainty of fear is likewise critical to deciding the risk of discernment for youth, the focus was not to address the essential but rather unmistakable issue of sentence severity. Juvenile and adult offenders may not figure out being caught. For an effective deterrence function, policymakers must accept a levelheaded decision model of criminogenic conduct (Groenewald, 2004). In this model, adolescents will gauge the possible short-and long terms benefits and risks as a major aspect of a decision-making process to decide where to commit a wrongdoing

The criminogenic model additionally assumes that understanding and perceptions of the youth of punishment must be intensive enough and sufficiently detestable to them to prevent them from perpetrating the wrongdoing. Notwithstanding, youngsters may not take part in such a conscious cost and benefit analysis. The brain development of youth and ability and capacity to gauge future outcomes have been observed to be less developed compared those of their adult counterparts. Subsequently, deterrability" or the capacity and willingness of the offender to perfume this computation must be truly addressed. In addition, the intelligent cost-benefit analysis relies on subjective elucidations and understandings of the young person. In this manner, it is essential to look directly at their perceptions.

The decision to send more children to the criminal justice system's adult courts is a radical conceptualization of the conventional view that delinquent children are in need of help to transform their lives and have a place in a system, which concentrates fundamentally on rehabilitation as opposed to punishment. Strikingly, the nationwide change to this increasingly punitive method is occurring notwithstanding the multiyear decrease in juvenile crime. With the number of juveniles in adult courts increasing, more people are acknowledging the courts are an unjust and inappropriate setting to try children whose developmentally immaturity places them at a disadvantage throughout the system (Feld, 2004). There is mounting evidence of extended and damaging impacts suffered by children in adult prisons and jails. Besides, the imparting of adult punishments, a long way from preventing wrongdoing, improves the probability that a youngster will perpetuate further criminal offenses. The transfer to adult courts is on the rise in the face of burgeoning evidence of adverse effect on children and the overall public safety, which undermine great public policy on fighting delinquency and crime.

References

Feld, B. C. (2004). Juvenile transfer. Criminology and Public Policy, 3(4), 599-604. Ghatt, R., & Turner, S. (2008). New report highlights the impact of incarcerating youth in adult facilities and strategies for reform. Sheriff, 60(1), 60-66.

Griffin, P., Addie, S., Adams, B., & Firestine, K. (2011). Trying juveniles as adults: An analysis of state transfer laws and reporting. Pittsburgh, PA: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Retrieved from http://www.ojjdp.usdoj.gov/ojjdp

Groenewald, T. (2004). A phenomenological research design illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1), 1-26.

Jacobs, B. A. (2010). Deterrence and deterrability. Criminology, 48, 417-441. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2010.00191.x