• Do you think we should close juvenile prisons? If so, what alternatives would you recommend?
• Do you agree with the U.S. Supreme Court decision that juveniles 17 or under should not be sentenced to life?
• Juveniles constitute 1,200 of the 1.5 million people housed in federal and state prisons in this country, and nearly 200,000 youth enter the adult criminal-justice system each year, most for non-violent crimes, do you agree this is an effective practice in reducing juvenile crime and rehabilitating them?

References:

https://youtu.be/1HxG9AcyPZE

https://web.archive.org/web/20240719200948/https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/the-cost-of-keeping-juveniles-in-adult-prisons/423201/

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-meaning-of-life-without-parole

UMC. (n.d.). Delinquency and Criminal Justice

This week we will examine the three mechanisms designed to deal with juvenile offenders in the criminal justice system, they are discussed below. First, is the process of waiver to adult court. Waiver to adult court is the process by which a juvenile court relinquishes jurisdiction over a juvenile offender, and the case is processed in adult court. A juvenile who has been waived to adult court is treated like an adult and in many cases subject to the same punishments as adults. Second, are blended sentences. Blended sentencing refers to the imposition of juvenile and/or adult correctional sanctions for serious and violent juvenile offenders who have been processed in the juvenile or adult court. The differences between waiver to adult court and blended sentencing are discussed. Third is the imposition of the death penalty on juvenile offenders along with the major United States Supreme Court cases that address this issue. Waiver to adult court is also called certification, transfer, remand, and binding over. Juveniles are waived to adult court for three reasons: their charges are violent offenses, they are chronic offenders, and the potential sentences in adult courts are longer than in juvenile court. The age at which a juvenile can be waived to adult courts varies from state to state. There are different types of waiver to adult court. A judicial waiver is when a juvenile court judge makes the decision to waive a juvenile to adult court. A discretionary judicial waiver involves the prosecutor filing a petition with a juvenile court requesting that the juvenile court waive the juvenile to adult court. Before a judge makes the decision to waive a juvenile to adult court under discretionary judicial waiver, a waiver hearing is held in juvenile court and the prosecutor and defense attorney present evidence on whether or not the juvenile should be waived to adult court. The factors established by the United States Supreme Court in Kent v. United States state that a juvenile court judge should take certain factors into consideration when deciding to waive a juvenile to adult court. Another judicial waiver is the mandatory judicial waiver. This is when a juvenile court judge must waive a juvenile to adult court if the juvenile court judge finds probable cause that the juvenile committed the offense. A legislative waiver is when a juvenile is automatically sent to adult court because of the type of crime he committed. In the case of a legislative waiver, the legislature has deemed that the crime was so heinous that the juvenile must be tried in adult court. A prosecutorial waiver occurs when there is concurrent jurisdiction between the juvenile and adult courts and the prosecutor has the option of filing charges against the juvenile offender in either court. A blended sentencing involves the imposition of juvenile and/or adult correctional sanctions for serious and violent juvenile offenders who have been processed in either the juvenile or adult court. There are five types of blended sentences: juvenile-exclusive blend, juvenile-inclusive blend, juvenile-contiguous blend, criminal-exclusive blend, and criminal-inclusive blend. Lastly, is the death penalty for juveniles. Under the case brought by William Wayne Thompson, the Court ruled that executing juveniles who were under age 16 at the time of the offense would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Then on March 1, 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the imposition of the death penalty on juvenile offenders is unconstitutional. The court ruled that the Eight and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who are under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed. This is not the first time the Court has changed its mind, but it is rare.