Investigating the Criminogenic Consequences of Juvenile Waiver to Adult Court

• In Event: New and Creative Ways to Study Responses to Sanctions and Risk

Abstract

As part of the general shift in juvenile justice towards more punitive policies, the past several decades witnessed an expansion of the ability to transfer jurisdiction of delinquency cases to adult court (Fagan, 2008). As a result, there has been a significant increase in the number of youth processed in adult courts and, consequently, incarcerated in adult prisons (Carson and Golinelli, 2014; Puzzanchera and Kang, 2011; Snyder and Sickmund, 2006). With respect to subsequent offending, transfer provisions are largely ineffective in that they do not prevent future crime (Redding, 2008) and may in fact be counterproductive, promoting future offending (Loughran et al., 2011; McGowan et al., 2007). However, the precise mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. The current study uses data from the Pathways to Desistance study and leverages propensity score matching to compare how sanction types (1) affect recidivism rates of youth retained in the juvenile court compared to with youth waived to adult court and (2) determine whether factors such as legitimacy, legal cynicism, human capital, and criminal capital explain any differences in recidivism rates.

Authors

• Megan Bears Augustyn, University of Texas at San Antonio

• Jean McGloin, University of Maryland

• Holly Nguyen, Pennsylvania State University