Children in an Adult World: Prosecuting Adolescents in Criminal and Juvenile Jurisdictions; Doctoral thesis

摘要

Since the creation of the juvenile justice system at the turn of the twentieth century, juvenile justice system reforms have reshaped how adolescents are prosecuted and punished in the United States. One important shift in the prosecution and punishment of adolescents is the increasingly frequent transfer of youth from the juvenile jurisdiction to the criminal jurisdiction previously reserved primarily for adult offenders. Policy-makers and academics often assume that a different model of justice is reflected in the prosecution of adolescents in each of these two legal forums, with a criminal justice model in the criminal jurisdiction and a juvenile justice model in the juvenile jurisdiction. These two models of justice are believed to vary along three dimensions: formality of case processing, evaluation of defendants, and punishment. Yet no research to date compares the models of justice actually reflected when adolescents are prosecuted in juvenile and criminal jurisdictions. In this dissertation I compare the models of justice in juvenile and criminal jurisdictions processing adolescent felony offenders. I analyze quantitative and qualitative data on cases of adolescents from counties in adjacent states, New York and New Jersey, which have very different boundaries between their criminal and juvenile jurisdictions. This method allows me to contrast processing of comparable cases, matched by offender and offense characteristics, in the New York criminal jurisdiction and the New Jersey juvenile jurisdiction. I find that the prosecution and punishment of adolescents in the New Jersey juvenile jurisdiction fits the juvenile justice model along each of the three dimensions I compare: formality, evaluation and punishment. Yet the prosecution and punishment of adolescents in the New York criminal jurisdiction fits neither a criminal justice model nor a juvenile justice model throughout case processing.