Chapter 8

THE JUVENILE COURT PROCESS

Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, 7th ed.

Chapter 8

What You Need to Know

• In 2007, juvenile courts processed over 1.6 million delinquency cases and an estimated 150,700 petitioned status offense cases. In addition, approximately 8,500 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 non-secure 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.

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What You Need to Know (cont.)• 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.

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Detention

• The first decision that juvenile court personnel must make is the detention decision which decides whether to keep a juvenile in custody or to allow the youth to go home.

• The Model Juvenile Delinquency Act, a guideline for state codes, stipulates that the detention hearing be held within 36 hours and that certain criteria be used to decide whether to detain a particular youngster.

• In 2007, approximately 364,000 delinquency cases involved detention.

• Several years ago it was estimated that it cost about $116 to detain a juvenile in 2005 and over $200 in 2006.

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Detention Options

• Court personnel have several options at the detention decision point. Releasing a child to his or her parents is the most frequently used option.

• Secure Detention - placing a child in the juvenile equivalent of a local jail which involves placement in a locked facility of 10, 20, or more youths who are also awaiting further court action.

• Nonsecure Detention - typically involves less serious offenders, who are placed in small group homes which are not locked as secure detention facilities.

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Detention Alternatives• Because of criticisms of detention programming and

the high cost of detaining youngsters in secure detention facilities, many jurisdictions have sought alternatives to traditional detention facilities.

• Day Evening Centers - A form of nonsecure detention which provides formal education in the morning, remedial/tutorial work in the early afternoons, and recreational programs in the late afternoons.

• Home Detention - Typically reserved for youths awaiting further court action, but allows a youth to live at home under the supervision of a detention worker who ensures that theyouth is attending school and maintaining a curfew.

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Detention Alternatives (cont.)

• Bail - Not universally available in juvenile court, often deemed inappropriate in the traditional juvenile court. – The temporary release of an accused person awaiting

trial, sometimes on condition that a sum of money be lodged to guarantee their appearance in court.

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The Intake Decision• The second decision that juvenile court personnel must make

is the intake decision. At intake, a court official (a probation officer or prosecutor) decides whether to file a court petition of delinquency, status offense, neglect, abuse, or dependency in a particular case.

• The intake process is supposed to consider the welfare of the child and the legal demands of the police and the victim (parens patriae philosophy).

• This tradition is changing. There is a shift from probation officers making the decision to allowing prosecutors to make the decision to file certain cases under various court processes such as informal adjustment, teen courts, drug courts, and adult courts.

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The Intake Decision (cont.)

• Informal adjustment - Occurs when an intake officer decides not to file a petition alleging delinquency or a status offense but rather tries to resolve the issue in an informal manner such as requiring a first time shoplifter to pay restitution or ordering a truant child to receive counseling (account for 44% of delinquent cases in 2007).

• Teen courts - Based on restorative justice (petition is filed) in which most cases involve status offenses, misdemeanors, and low-level felonies. Most common penalty is community service, other penalties include teen court jury duty, writing essays about offending, writing apologies to victims, and monetary restitution.

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The Intake Decision (cont.)• Drug courts - Typically involve a judge, prosecutor,

and defense attorney who collaborate as a team with drug treatment specialists to coordinate treatment and monitor the youth.

• Adult court - A prosecutor may decided to transfer or waive the juvenile into an adult court. The juvenile will then be tried in a criminal court and possibly be punished by confinement within an adult prison or jail. In 2007, approximately 8,500 juveniles were waived to adult criminal court. There are also additional methods for prosecuting juveniles in adult court.

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Adult Court

• There are several additional forms of transfers or waivers which include:– Statutory exclusion - or legislative waiver, means that a state

legislature rules that certain offenses, such as murder, automatically go to adult court.

– Prosecutorial waiver - State law gives juvenile and adult court concurrent jurisdiction over certain cases. Depending on the offense, the age of the offender, and/or the youth’s prior record, the prosecutor decides whether to file the case in juvenile or adult court.

– Reverse waiver - Allows criminal courts the possibility to return a case they received due to a mandatory judicial waiver, legislative exclusion, or prosecutorial waiver back to juvenile court.

– “Once an adult, always an adult” provisions - Require that youths placed in criminal courts must automatically be processed in adult courts for any subsequent offenses.

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Adjudication and Disposition

• For children not sent to adult criminal court, the next steps after the filing of a petition are adjudication and disposition. In these decisions, a judge determines whether there is enough evidence to establish the petition and then decides what to do if there is enough evidence.

• Ideally, the determination of the truth of the petition occurs in a rational fashion, with the prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge using their abilities and training to seek justice.

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Attorneys in Juvenile Court• There are several problems concerning attorneys in

juvenile court; many juveniles do not have attorneys, many waive their right to counsel and many defense attorneys have very large caseloads leaving juvenile defendants with the impression that “their attorneys do not care about them.”– Many public defenders within the juvenile court system fail

to assume the zealous advocate role, in other words, the ethical obligation to zealously represent their client.

– Some attorneys assume the concerned adult role and encourage youths to admit to petitions in cases which an adversarial approach may have resulted in a dismissal of the petition.

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Plea Bargains, Jury Trials, and The Recent Emphasis on Punitiveness

• As in criminal court, the vast majority of cases in juvenile court are resolved by plea bargains. Youths admit the allegations in the petition and are given a less severe punishment.

• Only 10 states allow jury trials as a right for juveniles and another 11 states for special circumstances. Some contend that it is critical for juveniles to have the right to a jury trial.

• Recent Emphasis on Punitiveness. Recently, dispositions (sentencing) in juvenile justice have taken on an increasingly punitive character. Rather than following the parens patriae philosophy, states have taken a tougher approach by emphasizing community protection, offender accountability, crime reduction through deterrence, or outright punishment. This recent understanding has led to the development of blended sentencing.

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Disproportionate Minority Contact• Research on disposition decisions shows evidence of

disproportionate minority contact. This means that minority youths are overrepresented at the various stages of court processing.

• The differential involvement hypothesis holds that minorities commit more crimes.

• The differential selection hypothesis hold that police and court officials process minority youth differently than white youth.

• The mixed-model hypothesis contends that there is a combination of differential involvement and differential selection (processing).

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Effectiveness of Transfer• The bulk of the research on transfer suggest that

transfer laws do not result in preventing crime. They are not an effective general deterrent.

• The studies tend to find higher recidivism among youths transferred to criminal court compared with youths processed in juvenile court.

• One explanation for such higher recidivism is the possibility that the youth is given a sentence in criminal court that is too harsh. The term for this is that the youth is “leap-frogged” to an excessive penalty instead of being given the next, graduated penalty.