Trying youth as adults:

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Trying youth as adults Redefining the period of
adolescence
Francisco A. Villarruel, Ph.D. University
Outreach and Engagement Senior Fellow Professor
of Family and Child Ecology
Juvenile Justice Reform 40 years after Gault
October 26-27, 2007 Berkley, CA

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LanguageAdolescence or Youth?

• Adolescence

• Youth

• Introduced G. Stanly Hall (early 20th century)
• A period of turmoil and transition (13-18)
• A developmental period of transition in which
  youth transition from dependence to
  independenceto adulthood.

• Began being used in research in 1980s
• Generally refers to the 2nd decade of life, but
  extended up to age 25
• Preferred because of the implications that this
  is a life stage where tenants of adulthood exist

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Current trend, future reality?

• By 2016, estimated that 1.4 million youth
  currently aged 14 will be
• Prison
• Homeless
• Dead
• Based on 2006 population estimates, this is
  approximately 1 in 12 youth

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Research summaries

• The majority of youth who enter adult courts
• Are not there for serious or violent crimes
  (estimated to be over 200,000 per year)
• Once an adult, always an adult
• On any given day, approximately 7,000 youth are
  detained in jails with adults
• Increased likelihood of sexual assault
  victimization, physical abuse, psychological
  distress

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Challenges in understanding of the issue

• While statistics have long been available for
  judicially waived cases, data collection efforts
  have not kept pace with statutory changes
  authorizing transfer via direct file and
  statutory exclusion, so there is as yet no
  national reporting program on cases removed by
  exclusion or prosecutorial wavier (Bishop
  Frazier, 2000, p. 229).

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Contributing factor to underestimates

• States have no uniform reporting system to record
  the number of juveniles tried as adults, because
  definitions of juvenile defendants vary across
  states and because state statutes that define
  juvenile court jurisdiction change frequently
  (Burgess-Proctor, Holtrop, Villarruel, 2006
  Strom, Smith, Snyder, 1998).

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Research summaries

• African-American and US Latino youth are more
  likely to be tried as adults than non-Hispanic
  white youth
• In sum, data on the national level and for
  specific jurisdictions throughout the country
  demonstrate conclusively that youths of color are
  transferred to adult courts far in excess of
  their proportion in the population and in excess
  of their proportion of the overall cases
  processed by juvenile justice systems. (Bortner,
  Zatz, Hawkins, 2000, p. 289)

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(Un)intended consequences

• Voter disenfranchisement
• Economic costs of detention, reentry
• Family stability
• Mental health (individual and family)
• Employment, life wage earnings, and health care
  costs

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Impact of time in adult facilities

• Increased exposure to criminogenic surroundings,
  thereby offering youth opportunities to gain
  criminal training from incarcerated adults
  (Myers, 2003 Podkopacz Feld, 1996).
• higher rates of recidivism than their
  non-transferred counterparts (Myers, 2003
  Podkopacz Feld, 1996).

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Impact of adult convictions

• problems associated with criminal conviction
  (Bishop, 2000 Bishop et al., 1996 Gaarder
  Belknap, 2002)
• Redeemable to unsalvageable
• stigmatization

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JJ v Adult facilitiesLoss of safety nets

• Deprived of opportunities for rehabilitation that
  exist in juvenile facilities (Gaarder Belknap,
  2002 Podkopacz Feld, 1996),
• Fewer mental health services than they otherwise
  would in a juvenile facility (Schindler
  Arditti, 2001).

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Waiver decisions

• Variable by state
• Generally based on statutory decisions as opposed
  to an understanding of youth development (Ryan
  Ziedenberg, 2007)

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There is no yellow brick road

• Loss of funding opportunities for postsecondary
  education
• Loss of employment opportunities because of lack
  of skill development
• Impact on interpersonal relationships
• (Bishop, Fraizer, Lanza-Kaduce, White, 1999
• Fagan, 2006 Ruben, 2006)

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So what????

• Research shows that waiver does little to enhance
  community/public safety (Bishop, Fraizer,
  Lanza-Kaduce, White, 1999 Fagan, 2006
  MacAurther Foundation Research Network on
  Adolescent Development, 2006)