Author ORCID Identifier

Wright: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4653-3596

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2006

Publication Title

The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Volume

96

Issue

4

First Page

1451

Last Page

1478

Abstract

Juvenile waiver, or transfer, laws allow certain young offenders to be removed from juvenile court jurisdiction and prosecuted in criminal court, where the range of sanctions is presumably greater. In the past several decades, many states have modified their existing transfer statutes in order to streamline the waiver process and make it easier to prosecute juveniles in criminal court. In doing so, states have excluded certain offenses from juvenile court jurisdiction or added concurrent jurisdiction provisions to their existing waiver statutes. Concurrent jurisdiction, or direct file, statutes afford prosecutors the unreviewable discretion to charge certain juveniles in either juvenile or criminal court. Although the increased legislation has generated a considerable amount of evaluations of the various effects of juvenile transfer laws, few studies have examined the deterrent effects of such laws on aggregate juvenile crime. In this study, we assess the general deterrent effects of direct file transfer laws in fourteen states which have such provisions. Findings reveal that direct file laws have little effect on violent juvenile crime.

Comments

This article is published by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology at Northwester Law and is copyrighted by the publisher.

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