Judicial Process Article Review - Research Paper Example

Juvenile Offenders Transferred into Adult Criminal Court Jurisdiction Transfer Laws generally have not been shown to deter Crime al AffiliationReference heading Personal HeadingPatrick Griffin Date submittedOffice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention CourseDate September 2011 AssignmentTransfer laws generally have not been shown to deter Crime Juvenile courts of the state with law-breaking jurisdiction hold cases where juveniles accused of actions that are considered criminal acts if committed by persons considered to be adults.

In general the terms are exclusively defined by the age limit. Most state laws stipulate that youths accused of violation of the law before reaching the age of eighteen years are to be subjected to juvenile courts original jurisdiction, however, the youths accused of violation of the law after or on the day of their eighteenth birthdays have to be processed and subjected to the adult criminal justice process. Some states in the US define the juvenile-adult transition at seventeenth birthday, and some few states define the line of transition at sixteen years of age.

Generally, states have laid down transfer procedure laws that govern or call for criminal prosecution of young offenders, even if they are considered juveniles under the jurisdictional definition. The laws are intended to reduce or deter further criminal activities. Research has not established any inherent fact that they are effective, questioning their efficiency. Are the laws efficient in deterring crime? Research on effects of the law on deterring crime has produced totally inconsistent results.

Prompting the question of their effectiveness. Many studies have not realized a drop in juvenile crime rate that can be associated with the transfer laws. Nonetheless, much evidence demonstrates that transfer laws governing the states have a diminutive or no effect in deterring crime by the juveniles. Possible reasoning attributes it to general ignorance, tendency to ignore risks involved in decision making and low impulse control. A research comparing youths prosecuted criminally and youth processed under the juvenile system demonstrated a counter effect of transfer laws on criminal deterrence.

Youths prosecuted criminally were also found to recidivate frequently and sooner into criminal activities. These negative results can be attributed to various causes, which include indirect and direct effects of conviction criminally, absence of rehabilitative means in the criminal correctional facilities, and the risk of association with criminal mentors in the adult correctional system. Studies showing the counter-productive nature of transfer system do not all agree that the effect is true in all types of offences, creating a possible assumption that criminal conviction may be effective on some juvenile offenders and non-effective on some offenders.

A research conducted by Schubert in 2010, comparing rearrests rates between non-transferred offenders and transferred offenders found that though transfer seemed to have zero effect on rearrests rate for the samples used, persons transferred had much lower rearrests rate in comparison to their counterparts. Even though it has been perceived that transfer of juveniles to adult convictional jurisdiction has a deterring effect on their chances of falling back to criminal activities, the impacts of the transfer has produced counter-deterring impact stretching as far as elevating the tendency of transferred juveniles to fall back to crime once they are released in to the society.

The article demonstrates how transfer laws have had a negative impact on the correctional and rehabilitation system placing the society at a much greater risk than before conviction. ReferencesGallinat, J., Kunz, D., Lang, U., Neu, P., Kassim, N., Kienast, T., . Bajbouj, M. (n.d.). Association between cerebral glutamate and human behaviour: The sensation seeking personality trait. NeuroImage, 671-678.Griffin, P. (2011, September 10). Transfer laws generally have not been shown to deter crime.

Retrieved November 26, 2014, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/232434.pdfHammergren, D. (n.d.). The Role of Juvenile Detention in a Changing Juvenile Justice System. Juvenile Justice, 46-49.Transfer Factor Has No Effect In Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. (n.d.). Inpharma, 9-9.TRYING YOUTH AS ADULTS NEW BULLETIN ANALYZES STATE LAWS TO TRANSFER JUVENILE OFFENDERS TO ADULT COURT. (2011, October 7). States News Service. Retrieved November 26, 2014, from http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-268987196.html?