Impacting Re-Arrest Rates Among Youth Sentenced in Adult Court: An Epidemiological Examination of the Juvenile Sentencing Advocacy Project

Abstract

Examines the impact of a program aimed at reducing re-offending among juveniles transferred to adult court in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Initiated in 1998, the Juvenile Sentencing Advocacy Project (JSAP) worked to increase the degree to which defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and police officers considered the developmental status of youth charged with crimes, as well as the contextual basis for their behavior and their potential for rehabilitation. Through such activities, the goal was to increase the use of juvenile sanctions, rather than traditional adult sentences. Based on previous research, it was predicted that increased use of juvenile sanctions would be associated with fewer youth re-offending. This article examines 162 youth who were transferred to and sentenced in adult court during 1999. Re-offense patterns were monitored through June 2001. Analyses using epidemiological measures of effect found that the use of juvenile sanctions significantly increased following implementation of JSAP and that youth receiving adult probation or boot camp were 1.74 to 2.29 times more likely to re-offend than were youth receiving juvenile sanctions. The increased use of juvenile sanctions following implementation of JSAP corresponded to an 11.2% to 15.3% decrease in the number of youth one would have anticipated would re-offend had previous patterns of sentencing continued.