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Faculty Experts

What Happens To Kids Who Are Sent To Adult Court And Adult Prison?

Finding “justice” for kids who commit serious or violent offenses has long plagued the justice system and has become a major issue in political debates. Over the last fifteen years, the trend in this country has been to make sanctions against these juveniles more harsh by processing them in the adult criminal justice system, as opposed to the traditionally more treatment oriented juvenile justice system. Northeastern University’s criminologists Donna Bishop and Simon Singer have studied both how such laws are implemented as well as the effects of transferring juveniles to adult court and adult prison.

In terms of deterring these juveniles from committing further crimes, Dr. Bishop and some of her colleagues in Florida completed what is considered perhaps the most expansive review of the effects of transfer processing. Using a sophisticated, highly respected research design comparing matched pairs of juveniles who were held back in the juvenile court with those who were transferred up to criminal court, Dr. Bishop and her colleagues found that not only do such policies generally not deter these individuals, in many cases, these juveniles go on to commit more frequent and more serious crimes. The results of their studies have been cited extensively by legislatures across the country.

Dr. Singer’s research has examined the creation and implementation of waiver legislation. He found such legislation has increased the level of disparity and discrimination against minority youth. In other words, minority kids are more likely to be sent to criminal court for less serious offenses, and if convicted more likely to be sent to prison. Similar to Dr. Bishop’s research, he found that transfer legislation has had no significant deterrent effect on rates of crime. The major impact that bringing kids into the criminal court seems to have is to further erode the purpose of juvenile justice, which he sees as largely to treat kids as being less responsible than adults. Dr. Singer has presented his research to United States congressional symposiums and to state legislators.

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