The Impact of Juvenile Transfer on Adult Court Processes
A number of legal and extralegal factors have combined to play a significant role in the decision to transfer a serious juvenile offender to criminal court jurisdiction (Poulos & Orchowsky, 1994). In the view of Kurlychek and Johnson (2004), some 49 states and the District of Columbia expanded the provisions by which juveniles could be transferred to adult court during the 1990s. The effect of these laws has been to facilitate the transfer of broad classes of juveniles from juvenile courts to adult courts based upon the consideration of such factors as current offenses and prior criminal histories without giving similar concern to individual characteristics or circumstances (Kurlychek & Johnson, 2004).
The result of this trend has been what Kurlychek and Johnson (2004) characterize as a dramatic increase in the population of juveniles who are processed and sentenced in adult court. Between 1996 and 1999, these researchers noted that reports found that the use of expanded statutory exclusion provisions alone moved 218,000 juveniles into adult courts between 1996 and 1999. This not only places new burdens on an already overburdened adult court system, it also places juveniles at risk for receipt of punishments that are potentially more harsh and punitive than those they might receive from a juvenile court proceeding.
Klein (1998) said that this trend may be the result of a growing lack of tolerance of juvenile offenders across the nation with particular intolerance for those offenders, who despite their age, have been identified as serious, chronic, and violent. More and more people, said Klein (1998, p. 372), "are becoming concerned with juvenile crime as what has been traditionally seen as an inner city problem begins to affect white America." Though somewhat simplistic in its focus on race as a dominant explanation for the growing determination of American...