A recent op-ed in the New York Times, Children in Adult Jails reminds us that states continue to classify ever larger numbers of young offenders as adults.
Children who are confined to adult jails are at greater risk of being raped, battered or pushed to suicide. They also are more likely to become violent criminals than [...]
Courtney Fain recently published What’s in a Name? The Worrisome Interchange of Juvenile “Adjudications” with Criminal “Convictions” (.pdf) in the Boston College Law Review.
Abstract: Juvenile delinquency adjudications are increasingly considered to be criminal convictions for purposes of sentencing enhancement in subsequent adult proceedings, leading to a renewed call for extension of the right to a [...]
Lawyers have filed a certiorari petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in Pittman v. South Carolina, seeking review of the Constitutionality of Pittman’s sentence of 30 years without possibility of parole given that he was 12-years old at the time of the offense. Pittman’s trial was sensationalized by his age and his defense that his [...]
This Houston Chronicle report begins with a telling statistic on the rate of juveniles certified as adults in Harris County, where it is estimated that 90 percent of certification petitions filed by prosecutors are approved.
Since state and local authorities declared war on juvenile crime in the 1990s, Harris County courts consistently have prosecuted more underage [...]
