Doctoral Dissertation Research: Between Two Worlds: Prosecuting Adolescents in Juvenile and Criminal Courts

该项目将审查与少年法庭相比，青少年如何在刑事法庭上因犯罪行为而被起诉和判刑。特别是，将在新泽西州的三个不同的少年法庭和纽约的三个不同的刑事法庭之间比较案件处理的不同阶段--审前拘留、放弃、判决和判刑。该项目将审查这些法院之间存在差异的几个假设来源。也就是说，论坛的组织和结构安排是否影响每个法院的行动。这些安排包括法院的实际和建筑布局、法院行为者通过的目标和规范性框架、法院的运作和组织规则以及法律机构的正式组织结构。该项目还将探索这样一种假设，即个别案件或被告的质量将影响案件的处理和结果。该项目将利用人种学和访谈数据来检验这些假设。对少年法庭和刑事法庭审理的青少年进行比较研究很重要，因为它既涉及社会学问题，也涉及政策问题。它通过测试其在少年和刑事法院对青少年的起诉的适用性，增加了组织文献。

This project will examines how adolescents are prosecuted and sentenced for delinquent acts in criminal courts compared to juvenile courts. In particular, different stages of case processing - pretrial detention, waiver, adjudication, and sentencing - will be compared between three different juvenile courts in New Jersey and three different criminal courts in New York. The project will examine several hypothesized sources of differences between these courts. Namely, whether the organization and structural arrangements of the forums shape the actions of each court. These arrangements include the physical and architectural layout of the court, the goals and normative frameworks adopted by the court actors, the rules of operation and organization of the courts, and the formal organizational structures of legal institutions. The project will also explore the hypothesis that the qualities of the individual cases or defendants will affect the processing and outcome of a case. The project will utilize ethnographic and interview data to test these hypotheses. A comparative study of adolescents processed in juvenile and criminal courts is important because it bears on both sociological and policy questions. It adds to the organizational literature by testing its applicability to the prosecution of adolescents in juvenile and criminal courts.