Juvenile Court Waiver: A Study of Juvenile Court Cases Transferred to Criminal Court

• NCJ Number: 107365
• Author(s): E Nimick; L Szymanski; H Snyder
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 8 pages
• Grant Number(s): 85-JN-AX-0012
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Corporate Author: National Ctr for Juvenile Justice
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

To determine the characteristics of juvenile cases waived to adult courts and factors in waiver decisions, this study examined the automated court records of 552 juvenile courts in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia, yielding 127,162 petitioned delinquency cases for 1982.

Abstract

Within these courts, 2,335 (2 percent) were waived to criminal court. Ninety-five percent of the juveniles involved were males. One-third of the waived juveniles were charged with a violent offense. A greater percentage were charged with index property offenses, usually burglary. Generally, the probability of waiver increased with the seriousness of the alleged offense. Seventeen-year-olds, the oldest youth normally seen by the courts, comprised two-thirds of the waiver cases. Factors in the waiver decisions were generally those mandated in Kent v. United States (1966): offense seriousness, community protection, the aggressiveness or premeditation of the offense, prosecutive merit of the complaint, prior record, and the likelihood of rehabilitation. 3 figures and 2-item bibliography.