PROBLEM DEFINITION

There has been an ongoing debate as to what age should youth be tried as an adult. During the early 1990s, there was an increase in homicides being committed by juveniles, and this led to many prosecutors and crime conservatives believing that the juvenile systems were not equipped to handle severe and violent youth offenders (Tanenhaus & Drizin, 2003). Bradley (2003) argued that before any determination is made on the age of criminal responsibility, consideration should be given to the developmental age of the youth. According to Grisso & Kvanaugh (2016) the premise for establishing juvenile court systems in the United States was to afford special considerations for juveniles who were less mature and less responsible for the crimes they committed.

It was not until 1994, due to the growing numbers of criminal activities committed by youth, the State of Georgia voted and implemented the SB 440, the Juvenile Justice reform. This bill stated that the youth between the ages of 13-17 could be charged as an adult if found guilty for crimes such as murder, rape, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, and robbery if committed with a firearm (SB 440, 1994).

Youth commit only a small portion of the nation's crime, but the United States locks more youth than other countries. According to the FBI nationwide 2012 report, 11% of the violent crime arrests and 18% of the property crime arrests nationwide involved youth. Since 1995, the rate of confinement for youth has decreased by 40%. Majority of the youth prosecuted in the superior courts are charged with non-violent charges (Ryan, 2016).

Even though the total numbers of juvenile arrests and detentions have decreased, racial and ethnic commitment disparities between minority youth and white youth remain profound (Zane et al., 2016). The office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention commitment rates by race shows that almost every state, except Vermont, has a significant juvenile commitment disparity between Blacks and Whites.

African American youth are five times likely to be detained or committed compared to white youth, according to the data from the Department of Justice collected in October 2015. Juvenile facilities, juvenile jails, and prison held 48,043 youth as of October 2015, and 44% of those youth were African American (Prison Policy Initiative website). 

Georgia

Georgia is not the only state that shows a higher number of minorities involved in the juveniles and adult systems. In California from 2003-2018, more than 11,500 youth ages 14-17 were tried in adult court, with the effects being felt particularly by Blacks and Latinos (Sernoffsky & Palomino, 2019). In Seattle Washington, they saw a decrease of 24% in the number of youths held on any given day and a 24 % drop on total admissions of youth in a detention center. However, in 2018 findings showed that minority youth were 6.6 times more likely to be detained as white youth (Sernoffsky & Palomino, 2019).