State Legislative Responses to Violent Juvenile Crime: 1996-97 Update

• NCJ Number: 172835
• Author(s): Patricia Torbet; Linda Szymanski
• Date Published: November 1998
• Length: 16 pages
• Agencies: OJJDP

Annotation

This report analyzes laws enacted in 1996 and 1997 to target serious and violent juvenile crime; the laws focus on jurisdictional authority, judicial disposition and sentencing authority, corrections programming, confidentiality, and victims of juvenile crime.

Abstract

A previous report, "State Responses to Serious and Violent Juvenile Crime," documented the extensive changes that States made during their legislative sessions of 1992-95. The analysis for 1996-97 revealed that States have continued to modify age and offense transfer criteria and that some are beginning to study the impact of new laws on the transfer of certain juvenile cases to criminal court. States also continued to experiment with blended sentences and other sentencing options; changes in purpose clauses affected juvenile dispositions. States are also supplementing their continued emphasis on secure corrections programming with community-based intervention that emphasize public safety and offender accountability. In addition, States continued to deemphasize traditional concerns about confidentiality while emphasizing information sharing. Finally, victims and victim organizations increased their visibility and their active participation in the juvenile justice process. Tables, list of three agencies from which to obtain more information on juvenile justice, and 9 references