Drawing, and Redrawing, the Line Between Juvenile and Adult Court Jurisdiction

• Author: Sonja E. Siennick
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12278
• Date: 01 February 2017
• Published date: 01 February 2017

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

RAISING THE AGE OF MAJORITY

Drawing, and Redrawing, the Line Between

Juvenile and Adult Court Jurisdiction

Sonja E. Siennick

Florida State University

Traditionally,the philosophy behind the juvenile court has been to balance sanctions

with services and offender accountability with rehabilitation. By doing this, and

by providing a separate venue for the processing and punishment of juveniles, the

court is assumed to offer juveniles some protection against the harms of being handled in

criminal (adult) court. Yet it is unclear exactly what effects juvenile court processing has,

or even should have, on juvenile crime and recidivism. If this processing results in more

effective treatments and supports than would criminal court processing, the result may be

lower juvenile recidivism. If, however, juvenile court processing is a weaker deterrent, the

result may be more juvenile recidivism and crime.

Much of the mixed evidence on these potential effects comes from studies of juveniles

who are transferred to criminal court—for instance, those prosecutors choose to charge in

criminal court or those automatically processed in criminal court by virtue of the specific

offense they committed (for reviews, see McGowan et al., 2007; Redding, 2010; Zane,

Welsh, and Mears, 2016). Although the aim of much research has tended to focus on

juvenile transfers, far more juvenile offenders—perhaps up to 90% of juveniles handled

in criminal courts—are affected by state statutes that set the upper age of juvenile court

jurisdiction younger than 17 years of age (Griffin, Addie, Adams, and Firestine, 2011). In

the early 2000s, 13 states had juvenile court upper boundary ages of 15 (3 states) or 16

(10 states; Snyder and Sickmund, 2006). In those states, the criminal court had original

jurisdiction over juveniles who were older than those ages at the time of their offense. Most

of these states implemented their statutes many decades ago, but two—New Hampshire

and Wisconsin—lowered their boundary ages to 16 in 1996, amidst a nationwide trend

toward “get-tough”policies (Willison, Mears, Shollenberger, Owens, and Butts, 2009; Zang,

2016).

I thank Mayra Picon for research assistance. Direct correspondence to Sonja E. Siennick, College of

Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Eppes Hall, 112 South Copeland Street, Tallahassee,

FL 32306-1273 (e-mail: ssiennick@fsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12278 C2017 American Society of Criminology 41

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 1