Blended sentences
Blended sentences are a legal response to rising concerns about violent juvenile crime, allowing courts to impose both juvenile and adult sanctions on serious youthful offenders. This approach aims to enhance accountability and facilitate rehabilitation for juveniles who commit serious offenses. Approximately half of U.S. states have implemented blended sentencing laws, which enable judges to consider factors such as the severity of the crime, the maturity of the offender, and their potential for rehabilitation when determining sentences. Under this system, juveniles can be adjudicated as delinquents and simultaneously sentenced as adults, although the adult portion of the sentence is typically suspended while they fulfill the conditions of their juvenile sentence. Once juveniles reach adulthood, courts have the discretion to enforce any remaining adult sentences. This framework reflects a balance between ensuring public safety and recognizing the unique developmental needs of young offenders.
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Blended sentences
Definition: Types of sentences in which judges simultaneously impose both juvenile and adult sanctions on juvenile offenders
Significance: A relatively new form of sentencing, blended sentences allow juvenile courts to impose penalties on youthful offenders that can move them directly into the adult correctional system when they reach the age of maturity.
Trends indicating increases in violent juvenile crimes such as aggravated assault and robbery captured the attention of the criminal justice system during the late 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century. In response to those trends, about one-half of state legislatures have enacted blended sentencing (also called “blended jurisdiction”) statutes directed at the growing numbers of serious youthful offenders. Blended-sentencing laws allow courts to impose either juvenile or adult correctional sanctions, or a combination of the two, on violent juvenile offenders whose cases are adjudicated in juvenile courts or convicted in criminal courts.
Major justifications for the use of blended sentencing include making juveniles who commit serious or violent crimes more accountable for their actions and promoting the rehabilitation of young criminals. In the matter of choosing whether to invoke blended sentencing, most statutes direct courts to consider three significant criteria: the seriousness of the offenses and need to protect communities; the maturity of the juvenile offenders; and the amenability of the offenders to treatment and rehabilitation while in the juvenile justice system.
Juvenile offenders who are given blended sentences are adjudicated as delinquents and sentenced as adults at the same time, for the same offenses. However, their adult sentences are suspended through the time they spend completing the conditions of their juvenile sentences. When they reach the age at which they pass from the juvenile justice system to the adult justice system, the courts can decide whether to impose what remains of the adult sentences that have hitherto been suspended.
Bibliography
Barrington, Richard. Juvenile Court System. [N.p.]: Rosen Publishing Group, 2015. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 May 2016.
Champion, Dean John. The Juvenile Justice System: Delinquency, Processing, and the Law. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 2003.
Clarke, E. E. “A Case for Reinventing Juvenile Transfer.” Juvenile and Family Court Journal 47, no. 1 (1996): 3–21.
Cox, Steven M., John J. Conrad, and Jennifer M. Allen. Juvenile Justice: A Guide to Theory and Practice. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.
Howell, James C., John J. Wilson, and Mark W. Lipsey. A Handbook for Evidence-Based Juvenile Justice Systems. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 May 2016.