Juvenile Transfers to the Criminal Justice System: State of the Art

This article reviews the research literature on the main mechanisms for transferring juveniles to the criminal justice system: judicial waiver, prosecutorial direct files, and legislative exclusion from juvenile court jurisdiction. The main criteria guiding this review are the extent to which these transfer mechanisms capture serious, violent, and chronic offenders; convict and incarcerate them; and protect the public safety. Most of the research to date focuses on judicial waiver. The article makes an overall assessment of current knowledge and discusses unintended consequences of transferring juveniles to the criminal justice system.