THE “TRUE” JUVENILE OFFENDER: AGE EFFECTS AND JUVENILE COURT SANCTIONING

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12034
• Author: BRIAN J. STULTS,SARAH J. GREENMAN,DANIEL P. MEARS,AVINASH S. BHATI,MARK A. GREENWALD,JOSHUA C. COCHRAN
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Date: 01 May 2014

THE “TRUE” JUVENILE OFFENDER: AGE EFFECTS

AND JUVENILE COURT SANCTIONING

DANIEL P. MEARS,1,* JOSHUA C. COCHRAN,2

BRIAN J. STULTS,1SARAH J. GREENMAN,3

AVINASH S. BHATI,4and MARK A. GREENWALD5

1College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University

2Department of Criminology, University of South Florida

3Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland

4Maxarth

5Florida Department of Juvenile Justice

KEYWORDS: juvenile court, age, sanctioning

Age is the only factor used to demarcate the boundary between juvenile and adult

justice. However, little research has examined how age guides the juvenile court in de-

termining which youth within the juvenile justice system merit particular dispositions,

especially those that reflect the court’s emphasis on rehabilitation. Drawing on schol-

arship on the court’s origins, attribution theory, and cognitive heuristics, we hypoth-

esize that the court focuses on youth in the middle of the range of the court’s age of

jurisdiction—characterized in this article as “true” juveniles—who may be viewed as

meriting more specialized intervention. We use data from Florida for court referrals

in 2008 (N =71,388) to examine the decision to proceed formally or informally and,

in turn, to examine formally processed youth dispositions (dismissal, diversion, pro-

bation, commitment, and transfer) and informally processed youth dispositions (dis-

missal, diversion, and probation). The analyses provide partial support for the hypoth-

esis. The very young were more likely to be informally processed; however, among the

informally processed youth, the youngest, not “true” juveniles, were most likely to be

diverted or placed on probation. By contrast, among formally processed youth, “true”

juveniles were most likely to receive traditional juvenile court responses, such as diver-

sion or probation.

The origins of the juvenile court derive from a conceptualization of juveniles as dif-

ferent than adults. To the court founders, for example, youth were viewed as less cul-

pable than adults and more responsive to rehabilitation (Bernard and Kurlychek, 2010;

Feld, 1999). They were considered to be more deserving of society’s benign intervention.

The guiding philosophy of the juvenile court, captured in the philosophy of parens pa-

triae, emphasized the notion that the juvenile court should act much as a caring parent

would, intervening where appropriate with a firm hand (Mears, 2012). Punishment fea-

tured prominently in this vision, but accountability and rehabilitation were, if anything,

more central (Butts and Mitchell, 2000; Fox, 1996; Mack, 1909). In addition, the court’s

∗Direct correspondence to Daniel P. Mears, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida

State University, 634 West Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306–1127 (e-mail: dmears@fsu.edu).

C2014 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12034

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 52 Number 2 169–194 2014 169

170 MEARS ET AL.

founders, and the “child-saving” Progressive Movement that contributed to the develop-

ment of juvenile justice, expressed concern about the harms that occurred to children in

the adult justice system (Tanenhaus, 2004; Zimring, 2005; cf. Platt, 1977).

In the more than 100 years since the establishment of the first juvenile court, a large

and robust literature has emerged that has examined processing decisions and their ef-

fects (Greenwood and Turner, 2012; MacKenzie and Freeland, 2012; Scott and Steinberg,

2008). In the 1960s and 1970s, attention focused broadly on diversion, deinstitutionaliza-

tion, and informal versus formal processing of youth (Klein, 1979; Mears, 2012). The “get

tough” reforms that began in the 1980s and escalated in the 1990s prompted greater at-

tention to understanding the factors that influence sanctioning (see, generally, Feld and

Bishop, 2012). Particular emphasis was given to identifying why some youth are incarcer-

ated and which youth are transferred to adult court (see, e.g., Fagan and Zimring, 2000;

Kupchik, 2006; Mulvey and Schubert, 2012; Rodriguez, 2013).

However, remarkably little is known about the extent to which age itself influences

court decision making in determining which youth referred to the court merit the special-

ized interventions, including diversion and probation, envisioned by the court’s founders.

The situation is striking because age is used to demarcate the legal boundaries of juvenile

court jurisdiction. As of 2011, the latest year for which national data exist, 37 states use

17 years of age as the upper age of original jurisdiction; 11 states use 16 years of age; and

2 states, New York and North Carolina, use 15 years of age (Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention, 2012).

The theory, or philosophy, underlying the juvenile court suggests that its involvement

should attend primarily to youth who clearly constitute the image of a “true” juvenile,

such as those who are most culpable and most likely to reform if given a chance. Age was

used as a dividing line between the juvenile and adult justice systems, and for that reason,

it serves as a potential basis on which distinctions about the youth who most merit court

intervention can be made. This possibility accords not only with the theory underlying

the court’s philosophy but also with attribution theory and scholarship that highlights

the importance of conceptual “heuristics” to make decisions about which youth warrant

specific sanctions (Albonetti, 1991; Bridges and Steen, 1998; Dannefer and Schutt, 1982;

Mears and Bacon, 2009; Rodriguez, 2013).

The goal of this article is to argue that a juvenile court can be recreated within the ju-

venile court, that is, that age itself serves as a central basis on which to determine how

to proceed with cases and, for either informal processing or formal processing, whether

and what type of court intervention is warranted. Drawing on scholarship on the juvenile

court’s origins, attribution theory, and cognitive heuristics, we argue that the court fo-

cuses on youth in the middle of the age spectrum of jurisdiction to serve as a focal group

that represents the idea of a “true” juvenile. Accordingly, they can be anticipated to be

more likely to be formally processed and, regardless of the mode of processing, to receive

juvenile court intervention.

BACKGROUND

ORIGINS OF THE JUVENILE COURT

The juvenile court emerged out of concern that youth constituted a vulnerable popu-

lation that was harmed by sanctioning them alongside of adults (Tanenhaus, 2004). They