Doctoral Dissertation Research: Transferring Juvenile Offenders to Adult Court

1994年佛罗里达州的一项法律将州少年司法系统与社会福利机构分开，标志着少年司法背后的意识形态发生了变化。少年司法系统与成人刑事司法系统一样，曾经侧重于保护和改造儿童，现在则更多地侧重于惩罚。以前的法律反映了这样一种信念，即儿童尚未成形，不能对自己的行为完全负责，他们需要指导而不是惩罚，而新的法律则摒弃了这种信念。这个项目考察了法律的转变如何反映了对受其影响最大的儿童，特别是非洲裔美国儿童的态度的变化。它使用两种主要的研究策略来了解佛罗里达州少年司法系统改革的来源和后果。首先，对佛罗里达州少年法庭处理的所有案件随机抽取样本的定量数据进行分析，揭示了新的全州政策对问题青少年治疗的影响。其次，对该政策是如何制定并被纳入法律的详细立法分析，确定了指导新政策的童年价值观和意识形态的变化。研究结果有助于研究儿童的社会建构、刑事司法系统的运作以及刑事司法政策的形成。

A 1994 Florida law that separates the state juvenile justice system from social welfare agencies marked a change in the ideology behind juvenile justice. Once focused on protection and rehabilitation of children, the juvenile justice system, like the adult criminal justice system, now focuses more on punishment. Where previous laws reflected beliefs that children are still unformed and not fully responsible for their actions, and that they require guidance rather than punishment, the new laws reject such beliefs. This project examines how the shift in the law reflects changing attitudes toward the children it most affects, particularly African-American children. It uses two major research strategies to understand the sources and consequences of the reform of Florida's juvenile justice system. First, analysis of quantitative data on a randomly selected sample of all cases processed by Florida's juvenile courts reveals the effects of the new statewide policy on the treatment of problem youth. Second, a detailed legislative analysis of how the policy was developed and adopted into law identifies the changes in values and ideologies of childhood that guided the new policy. The results contribute to research literatures on the social construction of childhood, the workings of the criminal justice system, and the emergence of criminal justice policy.