The Automatic Waiver of Juveniles and Substantive Justice

Abstract

Legislative waiver bypasses juvenile court and juvenile justice officials by initially transferring jurisdiction over juveniles arrested for serious offenses to criminal court. Supporters of legislative waiver argue that the exclusion of offense categories from juvenile court jurisdiction best meets the punishment-oriented objectives of waiver. However, a logistic regression analysis of case processing decisions in a state with automatic transfer provisions revealed that juvenile offenders from single-parent households were more likely to face a grand jury indictment than juveniles from dual-parent households.