Blurred Lines: Age of Adulthood and Implications of Processing Youth in Juvenile vs Adult Court

• In Event: Juveniles and Sentencing Issues

Abstract

Adolescent delinquents have traditionally been treated with leniency in American courts. However, during the ‘get tough’ era of the 1980s and 1990s, states passed sweeping legislation to limit the jurisdiction of the juvenile court and allow for the greater prosecution of juveniles as adults. More recently this trend appears to be reversing with several states raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction. However, both reformations have occurred in the absence of empirical research on the benefits of processing these youth as either juveniles or adults. The current study capitalizes on a change in legislation in the state of Connecticut that provides a natural experiment to assess the causal impact of processing youth originally in juvenile versus adult court. This legislation raised the age for adult criminal court prosecution such that 16 year olds arrested prior to 2010 were automatically adults and after 2010 they were redefined as “juveniles”. Results of this quasi-experimental study explore impacts on arrest rates, conviction/dismissal rates and immediate sentencing outcomes. Hazard models are also employed to explore differences in recidivism rates. Findings are discussed as they relate to future decisions to prosecute youth as either juveniles or adults.

Author

• Eric Fowler, University at Albany, SUNY