List and describe three different ways of transferring juveniles to adult court

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

For the most serious and violent juvenile cases, all states have provisions for the transfer of jurisdiction from juvenile courts to adult courts. Transfer provisions gained popularity in the 1990s as the public's response to the problem of violent juvenile crime. Transfer, also known as waiver or certification, provisions may be classified into one of three general categories (Sickmund, 2003):
• Judicial waiver: Authority to transfer the case to criminal court is given to the juvenile court judge, who certifies, remands, or binds over for criminal prosecution.
• Concurrent jurisdiction: Original jurisdiction is shared by both criminal and juvenile courts, and the prosecutor has discretion to file in either court. This process is also known in some states as prosecutorial waiver, prosecutor discretion, or direct file.
• Statutory exclusion: State legislative statutes automatically exclude certain juvenile offenders from juvenile court jurisdiction.
Of the three categories, judicial waiver is the most commonly used, but the two other approaches are also available in some states. The transfer decision follows the intake decision, or the initial decision to formally file a case before the court. The decision to transfer is made based on the severity of the offense, prior juvenile record, prior responses the juvenile has had to supervision and treatment in the juvenile justice system, and level of dangerousness the juvenile may pose in the future. Once transferred, the juvenile ceases being a juvenile and virtually becomes an adult for all purposes, including the trial proceedings and the sentence. Adult sanctions are imposed if a juvenile is tried in adult court; hence, much is at stake for the juvenile and the public.
Wide variation exists among states on judicial waivers, with some states making waivers mandatory and others considering it discretionary. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have at least one provision for transferring juveniles to the criminal court for which no minimum age is specified. Although judicial waivers are widely available, the number of juvenile cases that go through this procedure is rare—only about 0.5% of all delinquency cases (Sickmund, 2009). Surprisingly, about half of all cases waived were for nonviolent crimes. Of the 6,900 cases waived in one year, 51% were for violent crimes of person, 27% for property crimes, 12% for drugs, and 10% for public order crimes (Sickmund, 2009).
Not all waived juveniles end up doing prison time. In fact, about half of the waived individuals are supervised on adult probation or in a community-based facility, which is comparable to what they would have received in the juvenile justice system (Butts and Mears, 2001). The other half of waived juveniles who are found guilty are sentenced to confinement. Of the nearly 4,000 youths in prison in an adult facility, 51% are in maximum-security, 38% in medium-security, and 11% in minimum-security custody (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). Although waivers are indeed a symbol of "get-tough" policies, the reality is that few youths are receiving the most serious sanctions for fear of widening the net too broadly to youths who will age out of crime (Butts and Mears, 2001).