The Juvenile Penalty Revisited: Sentencing Transferred Youth Under Presumptive Guidelines in the “Kids Are Different” Era

Abstract

Objectives

As the frequency with which youth defendants are transferred from the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal court has declined in recent years, questions remain regarding how transferred juveniles are punished relative to adults in a contemporary sentencing context. Moreover, little prior research on the effects of juvenile status in sentencing has considered potential variations in these patterns according to presumptive sentencing guideline recommendations, which can have notable implications for the exercise of judicial discretion.

Methods

The current study analyzes data on felony cases disposed under the Minnesota sentencing guidelines between 2011 and 2022 (N = 189,835).

Results

The findings reveal that transferred youth are more likely to receive sentences to prison than members of all adult age groups, though limited age-related disparities in sentence length are observed. Further, the differential assignment of prison sentences to juvenile defendants is more pronounced in cases involving upward dispositional departures, and greater juvenile-adult inequalities also emerge among cases with shorter presumptive sentence durations.

Conclusions

The increased sentencing penalties for transferred youth observed in some prior studies have persisted since the “get tough” era. Additionally, the presumptive severity structures these disparities in ways that align with the expectations of the liberation hypothesis.