Variation Among Juveniles Committed to Adult Prisons: A Preliminary Typology (WITHDRAWN)

Background: Research on the treatment of juveniles as adults in the justice systems has found that policy changes that eased the process of treating juveniles as adults have led to a number of harmful consequences. In conjunction with these findings, research on adolescent and brain development suggests that young people are different than adults and that these differences are relevant to the question of how young people should be punished. These findings have led to calls for a rethinking of existing policies and practices and the development of alternative sentencing structures or models for young people.

One of the limitations of these calls, however, is that they often treat transferred juveniles as a homogeneous group. This is problematic because there is evidence that young people treated as adults in the justice system vary in significant ways. For example, many juveniles convicted in the criminal court receive a probation or jail sentence. Presumably, sentencing considerations for this group of offenders, the majority of transferred youth in many states, differ from sentencing considerations for juveniles subject to long or extreme sentences. Yet, a great deal of the current focus on sentencing reform concerns juveniles serving long sentences and relatively little attention is being placed on the large proportion of youth who are serving community-based sentences or spending relatively little time in adult prisons.

Methods: The goal of this study is to examine variation among juveniles committed to adult prisons in order to contribute to debates over where, how and to what extent persistent and/or serious youthful offenders should be punished in the justice systems. The data include all youth committed to adult prisons in a Midwestern state (N= 2027). Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), the study identifies subgroups of youth and uses bivariate and multivariate techniques to examine how these youth differ based on demographic, offense, prior history, incarceration, and other characteristics.  

Results: The LCA revealed four groups – Serious Offenders/Long Sentences (14%), Chronic Offenders/Short Sentences (27%), Younger Offenders/Moderate Sentences (31%), and Older Offenders/Moderate Sentences (28%). Bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal significant geographic, demographic, prior history, offense, incarceration experience, and recidivism differences. For example, youth in the Chronic Offenders/Short Sentences group have substantial prior histories in the juvenile system whereas the other three groups do not. A significantly higher percentage of young people in this group are white and come from non-urban counties. Young people in this group spend shorter periods of time in prison and recidivate at much higher rates than youth in other groups.   

Conclusions and Implications: These findings corroborate arguments that transferred juveniles vary and this variation is relevant for questions regarding the punishment of juveniles. While more research is clearly necessary to better understand this variation and its implications, the results suggest that debates over the punishment of juveniles, currently centered on long or extreme sentences, need to account for the variation among juvenile offenders and focus on questions concerning where, how and to what extent persistent and serious juvenile offenders should be punished.