Abstract
From its inception in 1899 and throughout most of its 100-year history, the American juvenile court was firmly rooted in the doctrine of parens patriae. Nascent ideas about differences between young people and adults were especially influential in the creation of a separate juvenile court, whose establishment coincided with the emergence of the fledgling discipline of developmental psychology and with what has come to be known as the child study movement. Two ideas that were advanced in the child-study literature were especially influential (Ryerson 1978: 28–29). The first focused on “childhood innocence”. Greatly influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, some argued that children were amoral from birth but were destined to evolve naturally into moral and law-abiding adults. From this perspective, children and adolescents lacked sufficient maturity to be held criminally responsible for their bad acts. Their misdeeds were normal and temporary and would be naturally outgrown in due course, so long as corrupt or misguided adults did not bungle natural processes of development. Thus, Richard Tuthill, the first juvenile court judge in Chicago, warned of “brand[ing] [a child] in the opening years of its life with an indelible stain of criminality” and of placing a child “even temporarily, into the companionship of men and women whose lives are low, vicious, and criminal” (Tuthill 1904: 1–2). Those who shared Tuthill’s view supported a diversionary rationale for the juvenile court: the court would shield youth from criminal convictions and from adult correctional institutions, where exposure to depraved adults might derail their natural development (see also Zimring 2000).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Such an illogical response is no less likely today than it was in the 1910s. Indeed, it is more common now than it was a century ago.
- 2.
Ironically, though in every state children aged 14–16 are routinely held to adult standards of criminal responsible, they are not adults for other purposes. For example, young people cannot vote or make medical decisions without parental consent until they are 18. Owing to concerns about the immaturity of their decision-making, they are not permitted to drink until they are 21.
- 3.
The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC] recognizes the special needs of children and their potential for rehabilitation. Because sentences of life without possibility of parole flatly contradict the idea that children have the potential to change, the CRC provides (Article 37a) that “Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age.”
- 4.
Sixty percent of these youths were first offenders. The vast majority were convicted of murder, but more than one quarter were convicted of felony murder, where a youth participated in a robbery or burglary during which a co-defendant committed murder without his knowledge or intent (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International 2005, p. 1 f.).
- 5.
Longitudinal research using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other sophisticated scanning techniques (e.g., PET scans, MRS) have provided images of brain functioning at rest and during various tasks, during regular intervals through adolescence and into adulthood. Using these technologies, Dr. Elizabeth Sowell, Dr. Jay Giedd, and others have shown that the prefrontal cortex undergoes dramatic changes during the adolescent years, and is one of the last areas of the brain to reach maturity. The gray matter thins in a pruning process that tightens the connections among neurons. In the same areas where gray matter thins, white matter increases through a process called “myelination.” The accumulation of myelin around brain cell axons forms an insulating sheath, which increases communication among cells and allows the executive center to process information more efficiently and accurately. More important perhaps, the myelination process eventually completes the circuitry that integrates the executive center with other regions of the brain so that greater control is exerted over the social and emotional impulses originating in the limbic region (see Giedd et al. 1999).
References
Banay, Ralph S. 1947. Homicide among children. Federal Probation 11: 11–20.
Bishop, Donna M., Charles E. Frazier, Lonn-Lanza-Kaduce, and Lawrence Winner. 1996. The Transfer of juveniles to criminal court: Does it make a difference? Crime and Delinquency 42: 171–191.
Breckenridge, Sophonisba Preston, and Edith Abbott. 1912. The Delinquent Child and the Home. New York: Charities Publication Committee.
Brownlee, Shannon. August 9, 1999. Inside the teen brain. U.S. News and World Report, pp. 44–48.
Cauffman, Elizabeth, and Laurence Steinberg. 2000a. Researching adolescents’ judgment and culpability, in Thomas Grisso and Robert G. Schwartz, eds., Youth on Trial: A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 325–343.
Cauffman, Elizabeth, and Laurence Steinberg. 2000b. (Im)maturity of judgment in adolescence: Why adolescents may be less culpable than adults. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 18: 741–760.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. November 30, 2007. Effects on violence of laws and policies facilitating the transfer of youth from the juvenile to the adult justice system. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Vol. 56, No. RR-9. Atlanta, GA: CDC.
Dahl, Ronald E. 2004. Adolescent brain development: A period of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1021: 1–22.
DiIulio, John. November 19, 1995. The coming of the Super-predators, The Weekly Standard 1: 23–29.
Fagan, Jeffrey. 1996. The comparative advantage of juvenile versus criminal court sanctions on recidivism among adolescent felony offenders. Law and Policy 18: 77–119.
Fagan, Jeffrey, and Deanna L. Wilkinson. 1998. Guns, youth violence, and social identity in inner cities, in Michael Tonry and Mark Moore, eds., Youth Violence—Crime and Justice: A review of Research, Vol. 24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 105–188.
Fagan, Jeffrey, Aaron Kupchik, and Akiva Liberman. 2007. Be careful what you wish for: Legal sanctions and public safety among adolescent felony offenders in juvenile and criminal court. Columbia Law School, Pub. Law Research Paper No. 03-61. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=491202
Furby, Lita, and Ruth Beyth-Marom. 1992. Risk-Taking in Adolescence: A Decision-making Perspective. Washington, DC. Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development.
Gardner, Margo, and Laurence Steinberg. 2005. Peer influence on risk taking, risk preference, and risky decision making in adolescence and adulthood: An experimental study. Developmental Psychology 41: 625–635.
Giedd, Jay, et al. 1999. Brain development during childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal MRI study. Nature Neuroscience 2: 861–863.
Goldberg, Elkhonon. 2001. The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Griffin, Patrick. 2003. Trying and sentencing juveniles as adults: An analysis of state transfer and blended sentencing laws. Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice.
Gur, Ruben C. 2002. Declaration of Ruben C. Gur, Ph.D., in Patterson v. Texas. Petition for Writ of Certiorari to U.S. Supreme Court, J. Gary Hart, Counsel. Available at http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/patterson.html
Harris, Thomas LeGrand. 1914. Ben B. Lindsey. in Mary Griffin Webb and Edna Lenore Webb, eds., Famous Living Americans. Greencastle, IN: Charles Webb and Co., pp. 300–312.
Human Rights Watch/Amnesty International. 2005. The rest of their lives: Life without parole for child offenders in the United States. New York, NY: Amnesty International. Available at http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/
Krisberg, Barry, and Susan Marchionna. 2007. Attitudes of US voters toward youth crime and the justice system. Oakland, CA: National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Available online at http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/n_pubs_main.html
Lanza-Kaduce, Lonn, Jodi Lane, Donna M. Bishop, and Charles E. Frazier. 2005. Juvenile offenders and adult felony recidivism: The impact of transfer. Journal of Crime and Justice 28: 59–78.
Lipsey, Mark W. 1992. Juvenile delinquency treatment: A meta-analytic inquiry into the variability of effects, in Meta-Analysis for Explanation, Thomas D. Cook, Harris Cooper, David S. Cordray, Heidi Hartmann, Larry V. Hedges, Richard J. Light, Thomas A. Louis, and Frederick Mosteller, eds.,. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lipton, Douglas, Robert Martinson, and Judith Wilks. 1975. The Effectiveness of Correctional Intervention: A Survey of Treatment Evaluation Studies. New York: Praeger.
Mack, Julian W. 1909. The juvenile court. Harvard Law Review 23: 104–122.
Mulvey, Edward P., and Faith L. Peeples. 1996. Are disturbed and normal adolescents equally competent to make decisions about mental health treatments? Law and Human Behavior 20: 273–286.
Myers, David L. 2001. Excluding Violent Youths from Juvenile Court: The Effectiveness of Legislative Waiver. New York, NY: LFB Publishing.
Nagin, Daniel S., Alex R. Piquero, Elizabeth S. Scott, and Laurence Steinberg. 2006. Public preference for rehabilitation versus incarceration of juvenile offenders: Evidence from a contingent valuation study. Criminology and Public Policy 5: 627–652.
Oppenheim, Nathan. 1898. The Development of the Child. New York: The MacMillan.
Palmer, Ted B. 1991. The effectiveness of intervention: Recent trends and current issues. Crime and Delinquency 37: 330–346.
Podkopacz, Marcy R., and Barry C. Feld. 1996. The end of the line: An empirical study of judicial waiver. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86: 449–492.
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. 1967. Task Force Report on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Ryerson, Ellen. 1978. The Best Laid Plans: America’s Juvenile Court Experiment. New York: Hill and Wang.
Scott, Elizabeth S., and Laurence Steinberg. 2003. Blaming youth. Texas Law Review 81:799–840.
Sechrest, Lee B., Susan O. White, and Elizabeth D. Brown, eds. 1979. The Rehabilitation of criminal Offenders. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences.
Sowell, Elizabeth R., et al. 2001. Mapping continued brain growth and gray matter density reduction in dorsal frontal cortex: Inverse relationships during postadolescent brain maturation. Journal of Neuroscience 21: 8819–8829.
Sowell, Elizabeth R., et al. 2002. Development of cortical and subcortical brain structures in childhood and adolescence. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology 44: 4–16.
Steinberg, Laurence, and Elizabeth Cauffman. 2000. A developmental perspective on jurisdictional boundary, in Jeffrey Fagan and Franklin E. Zimring, eds., The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 379–406.
Tanenhaus, David S. 2004. Juvenile Justice in the Making. New York, Oxford University Press.
Torbet, Patricia, Richard Gable, Hunter Hurst IV, Imogene Montgomery, Linda Szymanski, and Douglas Thomas. 1996. State Responses to Serious and Violent Juvenile Crime. Pittsburgh: National Center for Juvenile Justice.
Travis, Thomas. 1908. The Young Malefactor: A Study in Juvenile Delinquency: Its Causes and Treatment. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co.
Tuthill, Richard S. 1904. History of the children’s court in Chicago, in Children’s Courts in the United States: Their Origin, Development, and Results. New York: The International Prison Commission.
United States Children’s Bureau. 1923. Juvenile-Court Standards: Report of the Committee Appointed by the Children’s Bureau, August, 1921, to Formulate Juvenile-Court Standards, Adopted by a Conference Held under the Auspices of the Children’s Bureau and the national Probation Association, Washington, DC, May 18,1923. Publication no. 121. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Warr, Mark. 2002. Companions in Crime: The Social Aspects of Criminal Conduct. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Winner, Lawrence, Lonn Lanza-Kaduce, Donna M. Bishop, and Charles E. Frazier. 1997. The transfer of juveniles to criminal court: Reexamining recidivism over the long term. Crime and Delinquency 43: 548–563.
Wright, William F., and Michael C. Dixon. 1977. Community treatment of juvenile delinquency: A review of evaluation studies. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 19: 35–67.
Zimring, Franklin E. 2000. The common thread: Diversion in juvenile justice. California Law Review 88: 2477–2495.
Zimring, Franklin E. 2005. American Juvenile Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bishop, D.M. (2009). Juvenile Transfer in the United States. In: Junger-Tas, J., Dünkel, F. (eds) Reforming Juvenile Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89295-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89295-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-89294-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-89295-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)