Aaron Kupchip, Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts

Excerpt

In Judging Juveniles, Aaron Kupchik addresses some of the contextual and sociolegal issues that arise from the growing number of adolescents prosecuted in criminal rather than juvenile court. Testing the assumption held by policy makers and academics that juveniles processed in criminal court are subjected to an entirely different model of justice, Kupchik utilizes a rigorous, mixed-methods research design to determine how similar cases are processed at every stage in the two court systems. He finds that, especially during the sentencing of adolescent offenders, criminal court begins to resemble its juvenile counterpart. Kupchik also concludes that prosecuting youth in criminal rather than juvenile court is inconsistent with our cultural conceptions of youthfulness. …