An Exploration of Juvenile Waiver Decision-Making

• In Event: Navigating the System: Perspectives on Juvenile Justice Processes

Abstract

The development of various mechanisms of juvenile waiver created an opportunity for scholars to explore system differences in juvenile case processing, predictors of juvenile waiver, and the effects of different types of waivers on sentencing. What factors are driving specific juvenile case outcomes, especially juvenile waivers? What types of waivers are more likely to end in a prison sentence? Quantitative studies have examined some of these questions (e.g., Bishop & Frazier, 1996; Brown & Sorensen, 2013), but quantitative approaches fail to identify the more nuanced organizational factors that impact discretionary decision-making involved in juvenile waiver across courts operating in the same state. This study features a qualitative analysis of Ohio urban court actors (i.e., prosecutors and judges) in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of administrative data. The quantitative analysis will allow for embellishment of the qualitative findings. Understanding between-court differences in these procedures within the same state sheds additional light on disparities in the use of juvenile waivers and the sources of these disparities across urban areas in the same state which feed the vast majority of these transfers.

Authors

• Symone Pate, University of Cincinnati

• John Wooldredge, University of Cincinnati