Racial Determinants of the Judicial Transfer Decision: Prosecuting Violent Youth in Criminal Court

Abstract

In the past decade, juvenile justice policy has shifted from “the best interests of the child” to approaches blending punishment and rehabilitation. The result has been efforts to narrow juvenile justice system jurisdiction, especially for violent, serious, and chronic offenders. Judicial transfer is the most widely applied mechanism to remove juvenile offenders to criminal jurisdiction. Transferred youth, particularly violent offenders, often receive lengthy prison sentences. A disproportionate share of male, minority adolescents are arrested for serious and violent crime. Thus, the harsh consequences of transfer, compounded by racial disparities in both juvenile and criminal justice processes have major implications for serious juvenile offenders considered for transfer. Transfer as a juvenile court disposition has received little scholarly attention, and racial determinants of transfer have yet to be analyzed. This study examines racial differences in judicial transfer decisions for chronically violent delinquents in four urban juvenile courts. Though minority youth were transferred more often, race was not predictive of transfer in multivariate models combining offense and offender characteristics. Rather, offense characteristics and defendant's age at the time of the offense are the strongest contributors to the transfer decision. Murder, in particular, is a determinant of transfer. The results suggest that juvenile court judges have adopted implicit policies to reserve transfer for older violent offenders, especially those charged with capital crimes.