Juvenile Sentencing Research Paper

Sentencing is an “imposition of a penalty on a person convicted of a crime” (Schmalleger, 2014). Generally, sentencing is the last thing that occurs when an offender charged with a crime and the trial has ended. During a trial, each side will argue their case in front of a jury (if it is a jury trial); at which time said jury would deliberate and return with a verdict. Once the verdict comes back to the court, a date is set for sentencing. According to our textbook, “most sentencing decisions are made by the judge” (Schmalleger, 2014), there have been exceptions to this rule when there is the possibility of a death sentence at which time the jury may be involved.
When a judge has to make a decision on a sentence it can be a very difficult
In recent studies states with high statistics in unemployment, substantial discretion by the prosecutor, and a high rate of African American incarceration are “the states most likely to pass blended sentencing provisions.” (Shaffer, 2016) This type of sentencing allows juvenile courts to impose adult criminal sanctions when certain categories are present. When this type of sentencing is in use it imposes a sentence that blends a juvenile disposition and an adult sentence, however, it is generally for certain serious youth offenders. Only some states allow this type of sentencing. When imposed there must be detailed descriptions of all procedures, standards, burdens of proof, and threshold offense and minimum age requirements are provided. Because blended sentence emerged when there was great need for a response to youth violence, much debate has surrounded this type of sentencing. These debates were because blended sentencing not only increased the number of youth that were transfer-eligible; it also shifted the power from judges and probation staff to prosecutors via the law of direct transfer. Direct file transfer is what is historically a judicial waiver. With this type of transfer, a juvenile judge issues a waiver to the young adult to an adult system. Another way to say this is, the juvenile court is the original court of jurisdiction and a judge in that division decides whether to retain the case in their court system or send the case to adult court for processing. Generally, with these decisions judges send the more serious cases or cases that have extensive prior record, both case types suggest that the defendant is not open to any treatments offered by the juvenile