Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Volume 71
Issue 2 Summer
Article 4
Summer 1980
Fighting Crime: e Problem of Adolescents
Barbara Boland
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Recommended Citation
Barbara Boland, Fighting Crime: 5e Problem of Adolescents, 71 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 94 (1980)
990
1-4169/80/7102-0094S02.00/0
THE
JOURNAL
OF
CRIMINAL
LAW
&
CRIMINOLOGY
Copyright
0
1980
by Northwestern
University
School
of
Law
FIGHTING
CRIME:
THE
PROBLEM
OF ADOLESCENTS
BARBARA
BOLAND*
Crime
rates
are high
not
because large
numbers
of
people
commit
one
or
two crimes
in
a
lifetime
but
because
a
relatively
small
number
of
people
are
habitual
offenders.
This
commonly
recognized
fact
about
crime
is
beginning
to
provide
a
major
impetus
for
devoting
extra
police
and
prosecutorial
resources
to
apprehending,
prosecuting,
and
incar-
cerating
the
"worst" recidivist
offenders.
In
the
past
five
years,
one
hundred
district
attorneys
have
initiated
formal
programs
to
deal
with
adult
ha-
bitual
offenders.
Many
rely
heavily
on
prior
crim-
inal
records
to
designate
individuals
as
career
of-
fenders.
There
is
little
doubt
that
in
the
end
such
a
strategy
punishes
most
severely
the
most
hardened
criminals. But
this
strategy
will
not
result
in
the
incarceration
of
the
most
active
offenders.
Most
crime
is
committed
by offenders
when
they
are
young,
either
as
juveniles
or
young
adults.
Currently,
the
criminal
justice
system
is
not
orga-
nized
to
restrain
active
young
offenders.
If
the
idea
of
focusing
on career criminals
is
to
incapacitate
or
to
deter,
as
well as
to
punish, the
system
may
be
incarcerating
the wrong
people.
This
problem
is
not
unique
to
specialized
career
offender
programs.
The
criminal
justice
system
is
more
likely
to
punish
an
older
and
often
wornout
offender
than
a
young
and
very
criminally
active
one. Studies
now
show
that
while
individual
crime
rates
decrease
with
age,
the
severity
of
official
sanctions
rises.
As
a
consequence, significant
pun-
ishment
does
not
occur
for
many
offenders
until
they
reach
their
middle
twenties,
when
they
are
at
or
near
the
end
of
their
criminal
careers.
ACE
AND
CRIME
Joan
Petersilia
and
her
colleagues
at
RAND
have
made
a
detailed
study
of
the
criminal
careers
of
fifty
habitual
offenders.
Their
study
found
that
the
most
active
period
in
those
criminal
careers
occurred roughly
between
the
ages
of
sixteen
and
twenty-two.
However,
the
greatest
punishment
came
at
considerably
later
ages.
Specifically,
the
offenders
they
studied
(all
of
whom
were
serving
a
second
prison
term
for
armed
robbery
in
a
Califor-
nia
state
prison)
committed
between
eighteen
and
*
Senior
Research
Associate,
Institute
for
Law
and
Social
Research.
forty
felonies-including
drug
sales-per
year
of
"street
time"
between
the
ages
of
sixteen
and
twenty-two.
Between
the
ages
of
twenty-two
and
thirty-two,
their
average
offense
rates
fell
to
about
eight
per
year
of
"street
time."
Conversely,
the
amount of
time
these
offenders
spent
in
jail
in-
creased from
30%
between
the
ages
of
sixteen
and
twenty-two
to
80%
between
the
ages
of
twenty-two
and
thirty-two.
The
increasing
time
in
prison
oc-
curred,
in
part,
because
judges
gave increasingly
stiffer
sentences
as
the
offenders'
official
records
grew
longer;
however,
offenders
were
also
more
likely
to
be
arrested
and
then
convicted
as
they
grew
older.'
James
Collins
has
reported
findings
very
similar
to
those
of
the
RAND
study
in
a
reanalysis
of
data
that
Marvin
Wolfgang
previously
collected
from
a
large
sample
of
offenders
arrested
in
Philadelphia.
2
Collins
examined
the
careers
of
those
offenders,
termed
chronics,
who
had
at
least
five
contacts
with
the
police.
The
chronics
accounted
for
only
18%
of
all
the
persons
who
committed
serious
crimes,
but
they
committed
52%
of
the
offenses.
Although
most
of
them
had
criminal
careers
that
spanned
a
considerable
number
of
years
(at
least
ten),
their
rate
of
committing
serious
crimes
against
persons
and
property
peaked
at
age sixteen.
But
the
greatest chance
that
the
criminal
justice
system
would
apprehend,
convict,
and punish
them
did
not occur
until
offenders
were in
their
early
twen-
ties.
The
decline
in
crime
rates exhibited
by
young
men
as
they
grow
older
is
an
established
crimino-
logical
fact
that
practitioners
have
long
acknowl-
edged
and
scholars
have
sought to
explain.
A
ques-
tion
that
has
not
been
examined
systematically
is
why
official
sanctions
are
likely
to
be
more
lenient
at
a
time
when
offenders
are
young
and
crime
rates
at
a
peak
and
more
severe
when
offenders
are
older
and their
behavior
has
begun
to improve.
To
un-
derstand
how
this
happens,
it
is
first
necessary
to
understand
how
the
court
system
is
organized
to
handle
juvenile
and
young
adult
offenders.
'J.
PETERSILIA,
P.
GREENWOOD
&
M.
LAVIN,
CRIMINAL
CAREERS
OF
HABITUAL
FELONS
34-38
(RAND
Corp.
R-2144-DOJ
1977).
2j.
COLLINS,
OFFENDER
CAREERS
AND
RESTRAINT:
PROBABILITIES
AND
POLICY
IMPLICATIONS
(1977).
Vol.
71,
No.
2
Printed
in
U.S.A.
CAREER
CRIMINAL
SYMPOSIUM
How
THE
Two
SYSTEMS
WORK
When
juveniles
commit
crimes,
their
acts
fall
under
the jurisdiction
of
the juvenile
court.
Since
its
beginning
at
the
turn
of
the century, the
juvenile
court
has
not
been
viewed
as,
nor
was
it
intended
to
be,
a
formal
court
of
law
whose
duty
was
to
establish
guilt
and
decide
punishment.
Rather,
it
has been
viewed
as
a
special
kind
of
social
service
agency
whose
motive
is
benevolence
and
whose
goal
is
to
help
children,
including
large
numbers
who
have
not
committed
any
crime.
Thus,
the
procedures
of
the
court
have been
intentionally
nonadversarial,
the
terminology
intentionally
non-
criminal,
and
its
powers
intentionally
vast.
One
radical
difference
between
the juvenile
and
criminal court
system
that
affects
the
outcome
of
many
cases
is
the
manner
of
determining
in
which
cases
a
prosecution
should
be
initiated.
When
an
adult
is
arrested,
the
police
bring
him
to
a
prose-
cutor
who
reviews
the
facts
surrounding
the
arrest
to
determine
if
the
legal
evidence
warrants
prose-
cution
and,
if
so,
what
the
charge
should
be.
When
a
juvenile
is
arrested, he
is
not brought
to
a
prose-
cutor,
or
even
a
lawyer,
rather,
he
is
seen
by
a
probation
officer,
who often
works
directly
for
the
juvenile
court. In
making
a
decision
as
to
.how a
case
should
be
handled,
the
probation
officer,
like
the
prosecutor, should
consider
the
facts
of
the
particular
case.
But
the
probation
officer
is
also
authorized
to
weigh
the
child's
social
and
family
background.
Given
both
the
legal
and
social fac-
tors,
he
may
decide to
drop
or
"adjust"
the
com-
plaint
or
to
file
a petition,
the juvenile
court
equiv-
alent
of
prosecution.
The
decision
to
adjust
rather
than
petition
a
case
in
juvenile
court
does
not
necessarily
mean
that
the
facts
are
insufficient
to
support
a
prosecution;
it
may
mean
that
under the
particular
circumstances
some
kind
of
informal
assistance,
such
as
counseling
or
referral
to
a
social
agency,
or
no
intervention
at
all,
is
thought
to
be
a
more
appropriate
disposition.
It
is
a
matter
of
considerable
significance
that
probation
officers,
charged
with
a
social
mission,
rather
than
prosecutors,
charged
with a
legal
re-
sponsibility,
handle
the
crucial
function
of
screen-
ing
in
the
juvenile
court.
Prosecutors
are
lawyers
whose
duty
is
to
enforce
the
law
according
to
a
set
of
predetermined
legal
rules.
Probation
officers
are
social
workers
whose
primary
task
is
to help
people
in
trouble.
They
are
more
concerned
with analyz-
ing
and
dealing
with
human
situations
and
tend
to
deemphasize
the
legal
technicalities
of
assessing
guilt
and
convictability.
When
questioned
about
their
work,
probation
officers
are
likely
to
assert
that
decisions
concerning
individual
delinquents
cannot
be
made
according
to
a
given
set
of
rules.
Proper
handling,
according
to
probation
personnel,
requires
intuition
or
"feel."
3
Given
the
organizational
structure of the
juve-
nile
court,
it
is
not
surprising
that
a
large
number
of
cases
fall
out
at
probation
intake
and
that
little
relationship
has
been
found
between
the
way
in
which
the
case
is
handled
and the
seriousness
of
the
offense.
One national
study
of
intake
decisions
found
that
roughly
the
same
proportion
(approxi-
mately
two-thirds)
of
status
offenses,
misdemean-
ors,
and
felonies
involving
property
were
either
dropped
or
adjusted
at
intake.
Violent
crimes
against
persons
were
somewhat
less
likely
to
be
adjusted,
but
still
only
50%
resulted
in
a
formal
petition.
4
Another
recent
study
in
New
York
City
reported
that
the
rate
of
adjustment
for violent
crimes
(54%)
was
only slightly
lower
than
the
rate
for
property
crimes.
5
Even
if
a
determination
is
made
to
file
a
petition,
it
does
not
necessarily
mean
that
a
formal
sanction
will
follow.
In
many
jurisdictions
a
judge
may
decide,
regardless
of
the
legal
facts
of the
case,
that
a
formal
finding
of
delinquency
is
not
in
the
best
interest
of the
child,
and
at
the
judicial
hearing,
he
would
then
decide
that
the
case
should be
"ad-
justed."
Even in
those
cases
where
a
"finding"
results from
the
hearing,
the
most
common
dispo-
sition
is
probation
with
a
suspended
sentence
or
release
subject
to
future
incarceration.
A
Vera
Institute
study
ofjuvenile
violence
in
three
counties
around
New
York
City
illustrates
the
infrequency
with
which
juveniles
actually
are incarcerated
in
a
juvenile
facility.
Fewer
than
9%
of
violent
juveniles
"adjudicated
delinquent"
by
the
court
eventually
were
placed
in
a
juvenile
facility.
This
9%
repre-
sented
only
2%
of
the
juveniles
arrested
for
violent
6
crimes.
GRADUATION
TO
ADULT COURT
At
approximately
the
age
of
eighteen,
7
when
criminal
offenders
graduate
from
the juvenile
to
the
adult
system
of
justice,
one
might
expect
to
3
Office
of
Children's
Services,
Probation:
Problem
Oriented-Problem
Plagued
(undated
unpublished
re-
port).
4
Creekmore,
Case
Processing:
Intake,
Adjudication,
and
Disposition,
in
BROUGHT
TO
JUsTICE?
JUVENILES,
THE
COURTS,
AND
THE
LAW
(1976).
5
p.
STRASBERO,
VIOLENT
DELINQUENTS
90
(1978).
6
1d.
at
96-98.
7
The
age
varies
from
state
to
state.
In
New
York
state,
for
example,
the
age
is
sixteen.
N.Y.
JUD.
LAw-FAMmY
COURT
Aar
§
712
(McKinney
1975).
BARBARA
BOLAND
TABLE
1
OFFENSE
RATES
BY
PRIOR RECORD
AND
AOE
[Vol.
71
Number
of Adult
Felony
Convictions
4
or
0
1
2
3
More
Offenders
Age
18-25
Number
of
offenders
847
434
139
32
19
Felonies/year/offender
4.5
5.5
10.5
15.0
17.5
Offenders
Age
25-30
Number
of
offenders
295
242
88
56
43
Felonies/year/offender
1.5
2.5
4.0
7.0
8.5
Offenders
Age
30
and
Over
Number
of
offenders
561
337
210
147
219
Felonies/year/offender
0.5
1.0
2.0
2.5
5.0
Source:
Federal
Bureau
of
Investigation's
computerized
history
file.
The
sample
includes
all
adults
arrested
in
the
District
of
Columbia
in
1973
for
an
index
crime
(except
larceny)
with
at
least
one
prior
arrest.
Offenders
with
at
least
one
prior
arrest
represent
70%
of
all
adults
arrested.
An
average
annual
offense
rate
was
computed
for
each
offender
by
dividing
all
arrests
(index
or
felony)
before
1973
by
the number
of
years
between
age
18
and
age
just
prior
to
the
1973
sampling
arrest,
less
time
in
prison.
Each
arrest
was
presumed
to
represent
five
crimes.
A
modified
version
of
this
table
appeared
in
Boland
&
Wilson,
Age, Crime
and
Punishment,
51
PUB.
INTEREST
22
(1978).
find
a
greater
correspondence between
the
serious-
ness
of
criminal
behavior
and
the
seriousness
of
sanctions.
Ultimately,
this
is
the
way
the adult
court
system
operates.
However,
offenders
are
likely
to
discover
that
at the
outset,
as
in
juvenile
court,
little happens
when
they are
caught committing
serious crimes.
Although
witness
and
evidentiary
problems
are significant
factors,
they
form
only
part
of
the
explanation.
An
important
influence
on
the operation
of
a
criminal
court
is
the
existence
of
a
prior
criminal
record
for
the
accused.
The
de-
fendant's
prior
record
has been
found
to
be an
important
factor
that
enhances
convictability,
al-
though
it
is
not clear
exactly
how
a
prior
record
enters
into
the
prosecutor's
decisions.
8
In
addition,
numerous
studies
of
sentencing have
found
that
a
defendant's
prior
criminal
record
is
one
of
the
most
important
factors
in
predicting
the
severity
of
his
sentence.
9
While
the
existence
of
a prior
criminal
history
is
an
important
factor
for
a
court
to
consider,
the
question
is
why
do
courts
consider only
the
adult
portion
of
an
offender's
criminal
record?
Because
of
the separation,
both
in
theory
and
in
practice,
of
the
juvenile and
the
adult
court,
there
are
no
8
Forst
&
Brosi,
A
Theoretical
and
Empirical
Analysis
of
the
Prosecutor,
6J.
LEGAL
STUDIES
177
(1977).
9
See,
e.g.,
VERA
INSTITUTE
OF
JUSTICE,
FELONY
ARRESTS:
THEIR
PROSECUTION
AND
DISPOSITION
IN
NEw
YORK
CITY'S
COURTS
(1977);
L.
WILKINS,
J.
KRESS,
D.
GOTTFREDSON,
J.
CALPIN
&
A.
GELMAN,
SENTENCING
GUIDELINES:
STRUC-
TURING
JUDICIAL
DISCRETION
(1977).
formal
mechanisms
for
tracking
an
offender's
entire
career.
The
confidential
nature
of
juvenile
records
follows
from
one
of
the
central
tenets
of
the
juvenile
court
system:
because
of
juveniles'
immaturity,
their
offenses
should
not
be
considered
criminal.
It
is
thought
that
maintaining
the
secrecy
of
juvenile
records
is
one
way
of
minimizing
the
aftereffects
of
juvenile
crime.
As
a
result
of
this,
when
an
offender
turns
eighteen
(or
whatever
age
adult
status
is
obtained),
the
adult
criminal
justice
system
consid-
ers
him
a
first-time offender,
even
though
he
may
be
at
the
peak
of
his
criminal
career.
The
figures
in
table
1
illustrate the
significant
consequences
this
discontinuity
has
for
crime
con-
trol.
The
figures show
the
annual
rate
at
which
criminals commit
serious
crimes-when
they
are
free-by
the
age
of
the
offender
and
the
number
of
prior
adult
convictions.
The
youngest
group
of
offenders,
controlling
for
prior
record,
has
the
high-
est offense
rates.
In
fact,
young
offenders
with
fewer
than
two convictions
have
higher
offense
rates
than
most
of
the
older
offenders
with
two
or
more
prior
convictions.
Consequently,
offenders
with
fewer
than
two
adult
convictions
commit
80%
of
the
crimes.
In
general,
most
crime
is
committed
by
offenders
who
are
young
and
who
have
not
had
time
to
acquire an
extensive
record
of
adult
con-
victions.
The
result
of
this
system
is
that
an
offender's
incarceration
rarely
will
reflect
the
degree
of
his
current
criminal activity.
When a
criminal
begins
his
career
as
a
juvenile,
his
first
few
offenses
rarely
CAREER CRIMINAL
SYMPOSIUM
will
result
in
a
penalty.
The
penalties
he
does
receive
frequently
are imposed
for
reasons
related
to
the
child's
social
or
family
background
as
op-
posed
to
the
seriousness
of the
crime.
Later,
when
the
criminal
turns
eighteen
and
is
theoretically
a
responsible
adult,
he can
expect
leniency
the
first,
and
perhaps
the
second,
time
he
is
convicted
in
an
adult
court.
The
fact
that
he
has
had
considerable
criminal
experience
and
is
now
in
the
most
pro-
ductive
stage
of
his
criminal
career
either
is
not
known
or
is
considered
a
matter
of
little
conse-
quence.
Ironically,
it
is
only
when
an
offender
nears
the
end
of
his
career
and
has
begun
to
shift
his
energies
from
illegitimate
to
legitimate
pursuits,
sometime
in
his
mid-twenties,
that
courts
begin
to
impose
severe
prison
sentences
for
crimes
that
were
overlooked
in
the
past.
WHAT
THE
PROSECUTOR
CAN
Do
To
improve
the
way
the
criminal
justice
system
handles
adolescent
offenders,
in
general,
and
career
criminals,
in
particular,
one
must
be
able
to iden-
tify,
convict,
and
incarcerate them
at
the
peak,
rather
than
the
end,
of
their
careers.
To
reach
this
goal,
improvements
must
first
be made
in
the
juvenile
court
system.
Although
traditionally the
prosecutor
has
played
a
minor
role
or
none
at
all
in
the
juvenile
court,
district
attorneys
can
be
influential
in
juvenile
court
reform.
This
is
illustrated
by the
recent
se-
quence
of
events
in
Washington.
The
former
pros-
ecuting
attorney
in
King County
(Seattle),
Chris-
topher
Bayley,
believed
that
the
seriousness
of
the
juvenile
crime
problem
dictated
the
need
for
vig-
orous
prosecution.
Even
without
formal
statutory
authority,
he
found
he
was
able
to
involve
his
office
in
the
juvenile
court
process.
With
the
cooperation
of
the
police,
his
office
was
able
to
establish
a
system
to
monitor
polic6
referrals to
probation
case
workers.
The
case
workers
could,
and the
prosecut-
ing
attorney's
office
thought
they
frequently
did,
adjust
cases
involving
serious
crimes.
Under the
new system,
prosecutors
were
able
to spot
and
act
on
serious
cases
about
which
nothing
was
being
done.
Once
the
position
of the
office
was
estab-
lished
firmly
in
the juvenile
court
(after
about
four
years),
the
office
was
able
to
institute
a
juvenile
career
criminal
program.
The
office
even
began
to
act
as
an
advocate
at
disposition
hearings,
recom-
mending
sentences
based
on
guidelines
they
devel-
oped.
In
enacting
the
state's
new
juvenile
code
in
1977,0
the
state
legislature
formalized
many
of
the
informal
reforms
that
the
King County
office
ini-
tiated.
Prosecutors
also
can
improve
the
criminal
justice
system
by
making greater
use
ofjuvenile
records
in
adult
court
screening.
This
is
especially
true
for
career
criminal
cases.
Although
most
state
statutes
prohibit
public
inspection
ofjuvenile
court
records,
juvenile
court
judges
generally
have
the
discretion-
ary
power
to
make
these records
available.
The
RAND
Corp.
is
conducting
a
study
of
the
role
juvenile
records
play
in
adult
court
processing.
Preliminary
results
reported
by
Peter
Greenwood
at
the
Career
Criminal
Workshop
suggest
that
some form
ofjuvenile
record
is
generally
available
to
the
prosecutor,
but that
prosecutors
rarely
take
advantage
of the
availability
of
these
records."
An
exception to
this
situation
is
the
career
crim-
inal program
in
Dallas,
Texas. Last
year
District
Attorney
Henry
Wade
and
the director
of
the.
Career
Criminal
Program,
Robert
Whaley,
switched
the
program's
emphasis to
young
offend-
ers
at
the
intensive
point
of
their
careers.
Accord-
ingly,
they
established
routine
procedures
for
ob-
taining
juvenile
records
from
the
probation
de-
partment.
As
a
result,
the
average
age
of the of-
fenders
in the
career
criminal
program
dropped
from
about
twenty-nine
to
about
twenty-two.
Devising
better
ways
to
handle
young
offenders
is
a
complex
problem.
The
current
system
has
been
in
place
for
at
least
three-quarters
of
a century.
But
that
does
not
mean
that
immediate
improvements
are
impossible.
The
evidence
currently
available
indicates
that
for
short-term
improvements,
the
prosecutor,
more
than
any
other
public
official,
can
have
the
greatest
impact.
10
WASH.
REV.
CODE
ANN.
§§
13.04.005-13.04.278
(Supp.
1978).
"
Greenwood,
Career
Criminal
Prosecution:
Potential
Objec-
tives,
71
J.
CRIM.
L.
&
C.
85 (1980).
1980]