Submitted by crinadmin on
Capital punishment is unlawful for persons under 18 at the time of the offence and sentences of corporal punishment are unavailable for all persons. However, life imprisonment is lawful in all parts of the country and life imprisonment without the possibility of release remains lawful for homicide-related offences in the vast majority of states and the federal criminal system.
Each state operates its own separate juvenile justice system and sets a maximum age for juvenile court jurisdiction, a minimum age of criminal responsibility, and provisions for transfer to adult court.1 The federal government also prosecutes a limited number of juveniles where state systems are unable or unwilling to do so. While there is no separate federal juvenile court, juveniles are generally accorded a special status within the federal system.2
Most states have set the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction at 16 or 17, although some set the age at 15.3 Minimum ages of criminal responsibility vary more widely; the majority of states do not specify a minimum age for prosecution as an adult, and those that do range from 7 to 14.
All states allow for persons under 18 to be tried in adult criminal court, although the extent to and means by which they do so varies. 44 states and the District of Columbia grant juvenile judges the power to transfer cases to the criminal court directly; 29 states exclude certain classes of offence from juvenile court jurisdiction; and 14 states and the District of Columbia allow prosecutors to file charges for some offences in either juvenile or adult court. Most states use a mix of these methods, and the overall trend through the past several decades has been toward increased rates of transfer to adult court and generally harsher and more punitive sentences.4
1For a table with information on key juvenile justice provisions by state, see National Conference of State Legislatures, Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP), available at http://www.ncsl.org/documents/cj/jlwopchart.pdf (Feb. 2010).
2For more information, see U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Juvenile Delinquents in the Federal Criminal Justice System (1997), available at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/Jdfcjs.pdf
3States with a maximum age of 15 for juvenile court jurisdiction are Connecticut, New York and North Carolina.
4See U.S. Department of Justice, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 Report, Chapter 4: Juvenile justice system structure and process, available at http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/nationalreport99/chapter4.pdf.