Sentencing Transferred Juveniles in the Adult Criminal Court

• Author: Peter S. Lehmann,Ted Chiricos,William D. Bales
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204016678048
• Date: 01 April 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
2017, Vol. 15(2) 172-190
Sentencing Transferred
ª The Author(s) 2016
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Juveniles in the Adult
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DOI: 10.1177/1541204016678048
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Criminal Court: The Direct
and Interactive Effects
of Race and Ethnicity
Peter S. Lehmann1, Ted Chiricos1, and William D. Bales1
Abstract
Much prior research has demonstrated that race and ethnicity are associated with harsher pun-
ishment outcomes among adult defendants in the criminal court. However, few studies have
explored these disparities in the sentencing of juvenile offenders who have been transferred to the
adult court, and this research has reported conflicting findings. Moreover, the ways in which
offenders’ race and ethnicity may interact with their sex, age, and offense type have yet to be
explored among this population. Analysis of defendants sentenced in Florida (N ¼ 30,913) reveals
that Black transferred juveniles are more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison and are given longer
prison sentences than Whites, but Hispanic youth are only penalized in the sentence to jail. Inter-
action analyses suggest that Black males are sentenced particularly harshly regardless of age, and the
effects of race and ethnicity are conditioned by a violent, sex, or drug offense.
Keywords
race and ethnicity, juvenile transfer, adult court, sentencing
Between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the size of the American youth population expanded, and
juvenile crime rates across the United States began to increase (Zimring, 1998).1 In response to
these trends and the public concern they provoked, policy makers enacted a variety of legislative
changes designed to ‘‘get tough’’ on juvenile offenders (Butts & Mitchell, 2000; Mears, 2002;
Singer, 1997). One of the most notable and widespread of these reforms was the expansion of
policies that facilitate the transfer of youth offenders from the juvenile court to the adult criminal
court for prosecution and sentencing (Myers, 2005; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). Over the past
30 years, transfer to adult court has become a common feature of juvenile justice practice, and all
1 College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Peter S. Lehmann, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 112 S. Copeland St., Tallahassee,
FL 32306, USA.
Email: pl13@my.fsu.edu

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Lehmann et al.
173
50 states have either implemented or revised transfer legislation (Griffin, Addie, Adams, &
Firestine, 2011; Puzzanchera & Addie, 2014).2
In light of the punitive changes in criminal justice policy (Garland, 2001; Pratt, 1998; Tonry,
1995), an abundance of recent research has found evidence of unwarranted racial and ethnic dis-
parities in adult court sentencing. Specifically, scholars have documented that Black and Hispanic
defendants are treated more harshly than Whites across sentencing outcomes, including decisions to
incarcerate (Bales & Piquero, 2012; Doerner & Demuth, 2010), sentence length (Steen, Engen, &
Gainey, 2005; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001), and punitive sentencing guideline departures
(Johnson, 2003; Kramer & Ulmer, 2002). To explain these findings, it has been theorized that judges
rely on attributional stereotypes in the process of sentencing (Albonetti, 1991; Bridges & Steen,
1998), and certain offender characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, may indicate that a defendant
is more blameworthy or poses a particular risk to public safety (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer,
1998).
Despite the extensiveness of this body of theoretical and empirical work on adult offenders, the
role of race and ethnicity in sentencing among juvenile offenders who have been transferred to the
adult court has received little research attention, and the few extant studies have reported contra-
dictory findings (Jordan & Freiburger, 2010; Kupchik, 2006; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2004). In
addition, the conditional effects of other factors on race and ethnicity in the sentencing of transferred
youth, such as age, sex, and offense type, have received even less consideration. The lack of research
attention to the interactive effects of race and ethnicity in the punishment of transfers is notable in
light of the compelling arguments made by many sentencing scholars regarding the critical impor-
tance of examining race and ethnicity in relation to other legal and extralegal factors (Doerner &
Demuth, 2010; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001; Steffensmeier et al., 1998; Warren, Chiricos, &
Bales, 2012).
The present research is motivated by the notion that juvenile offenders who are transferred
to the adult criminal court represent a conceptually unique subgroup of offenders, considered
by the legal system to be children by age but adults by virtue of the seriousness of their
offenses or adjudication records (Bishop, Frazier, Lanza-Kaduce, & Winner, 1996; Myers,
2005). While youthfulness might be considered as a mitigating factor in sentencing because it
can denote reduced culpability (Kupchik, 2006), some evidence indicates that juvenile status
in the adult court potentially implies an increased level of dangerousness (Jordan, 2014;
Kurlychek & Johnson, 2004, 2010). Because transferred juveniles are likely perceived as
representing an ‘‘atypical’’ class of offenders (Johnson & Kurlychek, 2012, p. 530), court
actors may be inclined to evaluate them differently than other criminal defendants. Therefore,
transferred youth should be considered an exceptional population and deserving of special
empirical examination.
The current study makes use of data from Florida involving 30,913 transferred juveniles who
were sentenced in adult criminal court for felony crimes. In our analyses of these defendants, we
first investigate whether Black and Hispanic transferred youth are more likely than White
transfers to be sentenced to prison or jail rather than community supervision. Second, among
those sentenced to prison, we examine whether Black and Hispanic transfers receive longer prison
sentences than Whites. Next, we test whether the combined effects of age, sex, and either race or
ethnicity have distinctive consequences for sentence type and prison sentence length. Finally, we
test whether the effects of race and ethnicity on sentence severity are conditional upon offense
type. Before describing our methodology and findings in detail, we first review the prior research
on racial and ethnic disparities in criminal court sanctioning as well as the limited body of work on
race, ethnicity, and the sentencing of transferred juveniles. We then discuss the relevant theore-
tical perspectives that may explain the relationship between race/ethnicity and the sentencing of
transferred cases.

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174
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 15(2)
Prior Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Punishment
Many studies have examined unwarranted disparities between racial groups in criminal court sen-
tencing. According to Baumer (2013, p. 235), the primary conclusion to be drawn from this literature
is that ‘‘there are substantial racial disparities in the application of law in the USA’’ (see also
Mitchell, 2005; Pratt, 1998). For instance, Spohn and Holleran (2000) reported that young Black
and Hispanic males received harsher sentences than older offenders, Whites, and females. Using
data from Florida, Bales and Piquero’s (2012) research showed that both Black and Hispanic adults
were more likely than Whites to receive an incarceration sentence. Other research has found that
Black offenders receive harsher sentences than both Whites and Hispanics (Barnes & Kingsnorth,
1996; Demuth & Steffensmeier, 2004; Feldmeyer, Warren, Siennick, & Neptune, 2015; Steffens-
meier & Demuth, 2006; Steffensmeier et al., 1998) and that these associations are often conditional
upon other factors (Bushway & Piehl, 2001; Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steen et al., 2005; Warren
et al., 2012). Some studies, however, have reported that Hispanic adult offenders are punished more
harshly than both Blacks and Whites, although Blacks are typically sentenced more severely than
Whites (Johnson, 2003; Kramer & Ulmer, 2002; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000, 2001).
Despite the abundance of research investigating racial and ethnic disparities in criminal court
sentencing, one line of inquiry that remains surprisingly underdeveloped is the impact of race and
ethnicity on the sentencing of transferred juveniles in the adult court. Only two studies (Howell &
Hutto, 2012; Jordan & Freiburger, 2010) have made race and ethnicity the primary focus of analysis
in research on sentencing outcomes for juveniles transferred to adult court, and both engage the same
data. This relative lack of empirical attention to race, ethnicity, and sentencing of transferred
juveniles is surprising, given that perceptions of blameworthiness and dangerousness associated
with Black and Hispanic youth have been theorized as centrally salient in the proliferation of transfer
laws and other punitive juvenile justice reforms (Bishop, 2005; Bortner, Zatz, & Hawkins, 2000;
Feld, 1999, 2003).
With 1998 data from 19 of the largest counties in the United States, Jordan and Freiburger
(2010) found that Black juveniles convicted in adult court were less likely than Whites to
receive a probation as opposed to a jail sentence and more likely to receive a prison as opposed
to jail sentence. Hispanic ethnicity was irrelevant for defendants with regard to probation but
increased the likelihood of receiving a...