Should Juvenile Offenders Be Tried as Adults?

• Author: STEINBERG, LAURENCE
• Position: Rehabilitation at issue

"... Transferring juveniles into a criminal justice system that precludes a rehabilitative response may not be very sensible public policy."

FEW ISSUES challenge a society's ideas about the natures of human development and justice as much as serious juvenile crime. Because people neither expect children to be criminals nor expect crimes to be committed by them, the unforeseen intersection between childhood and criminality creates a dilemma that most of us find difficult to resolve. The only way out of this dilemma is either to redefine the offense as something less serious than a crime or to redefine the offender as someone who is not really a child.

For the past 100 years, American society has most often chosen the first approach. It has redefined juvenile offenses by treating most of them as delinquent acts to be adjudicated within a separate juvenile justice system that is theoretically designed to recognize the special needs and immature status of young people and emphasize rehabilitation over punishment. Two guiding beliefs about young people have prevailed: first, that juveniles have different competencies than adults (and therefore need to be adjudicated in a different type of venue); and second, that they have different potential for change than adults (and therefore merit a second chance and an attempt at rehabilitation). States have recognized that conduct alone--that is, the alleged criminal act--should not by itself determine whether to invoke the heavy hand of the adult criminal justice system.

In recent years, though, there has been a dramatic shift in the way juvenile crime is viewed by policymakers and the general public, one that has led to widespread changes in policies and practices concerning the treatment of juvenile offenders. Rather than choosing to define offenses committed by youth as delinquent, society increasingly is opting to redefine them as adults and transfer them to the adult court and criminal justice system.

Most reasonable people agree that a small number of young offenders should be transferred to the adult system because they pose a genuine threat to the safety of other juveniles, the severity of their offense merits a relatively more severe punishment, or their history of repeated offending bodes poorly for their ultimate rehabilitation. However, this does not describe the tens of thousands of young people who currently are being prosecuted in the adult system, a large proportion of whom have been charged with nonviolent crimes. When the wholesale transfer to criminal court of...