Health and Justice for Youth

Kids in the Adult Criminal System

Due to high rates of violent crime in the late 1980s and fears that youth were becoming "super predators", policies were quickly enacted to "get tough" on juvenile crime. (See below to learn how youth are transferred.) Although the adult criminal court is intended to be reserved for the most serious, chronic and violent juvenile offenders, the majority of the young people tried as adults are arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes.

The punitive philosophy in the adult criminal system blatantly contradicts the rehabilitative premise of the juvenile justice system. The adult system is not designed nor equipped to address developmental needs of youth, allowing youth to fall into a dangerous gap in service, education and healthcare. The permanence of an adult conviction also negatively impacts one’s future by limiting eligibility for education, financial aid, employment, housing, military service.

Kids in Adult Jails

In some states, youth sentenced as adults are placed in adult detention facilities where they are:

• Twice as likely to be beaten by staff
• Five times more likely to be sexually assaulted
• 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon
• Eight times more likely to commit suicide than youth in juvenile detention.

If convicted as an adult, youth may be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Despite tougher laws and movements to incarcerate youth, secure facilities have not succeeded in reducing recidivism (repeat offending) and rehabilitating youth. National research suggests that youth in the adult system, compared to peers with similar offenses in the juvenile system, are more likely to be rearrested, commit more serious new offenses and reoffend sooner.

Adolescent Brain Development and its Implications for Juvenile Justice

Conventional wisdom has always told us that children are different than adults, but recent research on neurological development further reveals that young people’s brains are not fully developed to allow for adult level reasoning and weighing of consequences. During adolescence, behavior is controlled by the region of the brain associated with impulse and aggression (the amygdala). Executive functions, including decision-making, consideration of alternatives, planning, setting long-range goals, and organization of sequential behavior, are associated with the prefrontal cortex, which does not fully mature until well beyond age eighteen.

In a historic decision on March 1, 2005, the Supreme Court struck down the constitutionality of the death penalty for youths under eighteen at the time of the crime, citing the clear distinction between the age of adolescence and adulthood. This decision confirms what health professionals know to be true about adolescents’ abilities and needs. In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy states that juveniles under eighteen have an “underdeveloped sense of responsibility…result[ing] in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions,” “are more susceptible to negative influences and peer pressure,” and that “[their] character is not as well formed as that of an adult.” He concludes by saying:

Their [juveniles under eighteen] own vulnerability and comparative lack of control over their immediate surroundings means juveniles have a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for failing to escape negative influences in their whole environment… The reality that juveniles are still struggling to define their identify means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of an irretrievably depraved character.

Read PHR’s Health Professionals’ Call to Abolish the Juvenile Death Penalty.

How Are Youth Transferred to the Adult System?

Since 1992, nearly all states have enacted policies that make it easier for youth to be tried in adult criminal system.

• Most jurisdictions have lowered, if not eliminated, the lower age at which a child can be tried as an adult for serious crimes.
• A number of states have also changed policies to set the upper age of juvenile jurisdiction to 16 or 17 rather than 18, the legal age of adulthood.
• The number of offenses and criteria that warrant being waived into the adult criminal system, even some non-violent offenses, has been expanded.
• Although judges had been given full discretion in the decision of disposition in the past, prosecutors are now being given more authority on deciding if a juvenile should be waived into the adult system.
• In 1998, Congress provided additional incentive for states to "get tough," by making some federal grants contingent on states having policies that allowed for prosecution of youth over age 14 as adults.


• Judicial/Discretionary Waiver
  46 states allow juvenile court judges to decide whether or a not a youthful offender should be transferred.
• Direct File/Prosecutorial Discretion
  15 states give the prosecutor in juvenile court discretion to transfer a youthful offender.
• Automatic/Mandatory Waiver
  15 states automatically transfer youthful offenders based on age and crime criteria. These cases are initiated in juvenile court, but juvenile judges must transfer youthful offenders after confirming that the criteria have been met.
• Statutory Exclusion
  29 states exclude certain youthful offenders from juvenile court jurisdiction based on age and crime criteria. These cases are initiated in adult criminal court because, by law, the youthful offenders are considered adults.
• "Once an Adult, Always an Adult"
  In most states, once a juvenile has been prosecuted as an adult in criminal court, all subsequent cases involving that youth, regardless of the crime, will be under criminal court jurisdiction.