Increasing the Minimum Age for Adult Court

• Published date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12259
• Date: 01 February 2017
• Author: Rolf Loeber,James C. Howell,David P. Farrington

POLICY ESSAY

RAISING THE AGE OF MAJORITY

Increasing the Minimum Age for Adult

Court

Is it Desirable, and What Are the Effects?

David P. Farrington

Cambridge University

Rolf Loeber

University of Pittsburgh

JamesC.Howell

Comprehensive Strategies for Juvenile Justice, LLC

It is difficult to establish factors that influence or cause offending or reoffending

(Farrington and Loeber, 2014). The article by Charles Loeffler and Aaron Chalfin

(2017, this issue) focuses specifically on one particular influence on offending: the

impact of legislation in Connecticut that raised the minimum age for processing young

offenders in the adult court. We are, of course, pleased to see an attempt to evaluate the

effects of important legislative changes such as this one. This policy essay reviews some of the

many factors that might influence offending, points out the important distinction between

first offending and reoffending, summarizes our previous work on raising the minimum age

for adult court processing, assesses the validity of the conclusions drawn by Loeffler and

Chalfin, and sets out what we consider to be desirable methods of evaluating a legislative

change such as this one.

Many factors influence whether adolescents commit crimes. Some factors encourage

offending, whereas others discourage offending. There are distal influences such as effec-

tive socialization by parents, which may encourage internal inhibitions such as a strong

conscience or high self-control, and being raised in a high-crime neighborhood, which

may foster antisocial attitudes. There are more proximal influences, such as incitement by

peers, that may encourage offending, and security devices that may discourage offending.

For helpful comments, we are very grateful to Lia Ahonen, Britt Larsen, Howard Snyder, and Andr´

e van der

Laan. Direct correspondence to David P. Farrington, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, Sidgwick

Avenue, Room 2.3, Cambridge CB3 9DA, U.K. (e-mail: dpf1@cam.ac.uk).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12259 C2017 American Society of Criminology 83

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 1