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Adult Courts Recidivism

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I. Thesis For generations, the argument whether juveniles should be waived to adult courts or not has been a prevalent one in our society. Some agree that waiving the juveniles to adult courts will reduce their recidivism rate, due to the harsh sentences and a lifelong record next to their name. However, in light of the argument these individuals fail to consider that the level of maturity of the juvenile is not the same as an adult. The cognitive development of the juvenile is still in process when they are underage, causing them to act impulsively without thinking about the consequences of their actions. In this paper, I will provide information as to why waiving juveniles to adult courts only causes their recidivism rate to increase rather …show more content…

During this time there was a rise in the rate of juvenile committed crimes. This rise gave the public the notion that the juvenile system had failed, and it also gave critics the chance to question the system and critique that the rehabilitation strategy was too lenient. At this point the juvenile court found itself at a crossroad where they believed nothing was working. By the end of WWII most states had most states including the District of Columbia had some sort of juvenile waiver law. This caused the initial rehabilitation attitude the court had toward juvenile to shift and the juvenile system started to parallel the adult criminal court. The change came with many issues, one of which was not being able to remove the juveniles out of the system once they were constantly coming in and out of prison. This stuck deep with the juvenile courts, and created the need for a reform. Producing the Juvenile Waiver, where juveniles convicted of serious crimes would go to a waiver hearing where a decision would be reached on the jurisdiction transfer of the juvenile to an adult criminal court (Jense & Metsger, …show more content…

(Rose 2003) IV. Juvenile Waivers: Not Effective. Although it has been constantly proved that this type of system does not work somehow our criminal system continues to use it. These are the following reasons why juvenile waivers do not work. • Criminal court judges inexperience with juvenile offenders, once they have been waived to criminal court (Steiner &Giacomazzi 2007). • Some children become the victims of this waiver, these are the ones who are being charged for a behavior that is not usually like them. Maybe they just needed a reality check or some sort of rehabilitation. These are the kids the juvenile system was supposed to protect and help. But waiving them to adult courts may just let them fall into the system and do more hard than good (Rose, 2003). • Since the Juvenile waiver was implemented judges started to focus on the actual crime committed not the individual himself and how they were able to help them. The rehabilitation aspect of the juvenile system was not a priority anymore (Park

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