Waiver of Jurisdiction (From Juvenile Justice Standards Symposium, P 315-380, 1979 - See NCJ-76912)

• NCJ Number: 76918
• Author(s): H E Szabo
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 66 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Conference Material
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This document is available on microfiche under NCJ 76912.

Annotation

A symposium presentation and subsequent discussion examine the issue of the juvenile court's authority to transfer a case to adult court and assess three sets of proposed standards on this issue.

Abstract

The standards are those of the Joint Commission of the Institute for Judicial Administration/American Bar Association (IJA/ABA), the National Advisory Committee for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (NAC), and the Task Force on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Task Force). The IJA/ABA standards reject the rehabilitative model in favor of a due process approach, but support the juvenile court's handling of even serious habitual youthful offenders. They consider it the obligation of the juvenile justice system to devise appropriate dispositional alternatives for such individuals. On the other hand, the NAC and Task Force standards attempt to siphon off those offenders who are youthful in years rather than in criminal activity, thereby preserving the juvenile court's jurisdiction where it may be most effective. As a result, the transfer process is used in these standards as a safety valve to relieve the pressure that would otherwise exist to greatly reduce the maximum age for the juvenile court's jurisdiction. While all the standards prescribe a range of procedural protections, the Task Force standards appear to permit a more informal hearing than the other standards would allow. The IJA/ABA standards recommend that transfer be permitted only on the basis of the seriousness of the latest offense plus a past record of violence, whereas the other standards would permit waiver based on either the present offense or the juvenile's past adjudication record. As an alternative to any of these standards, it is recommended that transfer procedures focus on two categories of alleged offenders: those who are dangerous and those who have been frequently and ineffectively treated in juvenile court. The following discussion focuses on the effects of transfer on future court proceedings for a juvenile and various other topics.