Trying Juveniles as Adults in Criminal Court: An Analysis of State Transfer211 Provisions

摘要

All States and the District of Columbia allow adult criminal prosecution of211u001ejuveniles under some circumstances. The following discussion of State law in this 211u001earea-which is based on State statutes as amended through the 1997 legislative 211u001esessions-gives an account of the principal transfer mechanisms by which juveniles 211u001eare placed in the criminal justice system at the State level for serious and 211u001eviolent crimes. State transfer mechanisms differ from one another primarily in 211u001ewhere they locate the responsibility for deciding whether or not a given juvenile 211u001eshould be prosecuted in a court exercising civil (delinquency) or criminal 211u001ejurisdiction. Waiver provisions leave transfer decision making to the State's 211u001ejuvenile courts: juveniles may not be prosecuted as if they were adult criminals 211u001epursuant to a waiver provision until a juvenile court judge has ordered it. 211u001eWaiver provisions differ from one another in the degree of decision making 211u001eflexibility they allow the courts. Some make the waiver decision entirely 211u001ediscretionary. Others set up a presumption in favor of waiver. And still others 211u001especify circumstances under which waiver is mandatory. But under all waiver 211u001eprovisions, a case against a juvenile must at least originate in juvenile court 211u001eand cannot be channeled elsewhere without a juvenile court judge's formal 211u001eapproval. This report also describes statutory mechanisms by which individual 211u001ecases may be moved from criminal to juvenile court; provisions that permanently 211u001eterminate juvenile court jurisdiction over individual juveniles who have been 211u001etried or convicted as adults; standards applied to waiver decisions; and a number 211u001eof related subsidiary issues, including the extent to which transfers are allowed 211u001eor required for offenses that are not violent, probable cause requirements, 211u001eextraordinary evidentiary burdens, the effect of prior delinquency records in 211u001etransfer proceedings, limits on prosecutorial discretion, and minimum age 211u001eprovisions.