to deter juvenile crime. More extensive research needs to be done to find out whether transfer laws do or could produce their intended effect of reducing and deterring juvenile crime. Again, more studies show that juveniles tried in criminal court have greater recidivism rates after release than juveniles tried in criminal court. One possible suggestion as to why this happens is that juveniles attribute greater injustice to criminal court processing, which causes them to react defiantly through re-offending. Juveniles who are sentenced in adult facilities also have a hard time making it through their term. These juveniles have a very high suicidal rate, have 5 times greater risk of being sexually assaulted, are 2 times more likely to be assaulted with a weapon, and are also 2 times as likely to be beaten by staff. There is a much smaller chance in seeing events like the above occur in a juvenile facility. .
The rising juvenile crime rate is causing the public to be at outrage with the system for letting these crimes be committed without proper sentencing. This is why states have revised their transfer statues to make it easier to transfer juvenile offenders for trial and sentencing in adult court. Researchers in these studies come to the conclusion that the number of juvenile cases transferred to criminal court should be minimized, and imprisonment of juveniles in adult facilities should be avoided whenever possible. They believe this for many reasons, most of them listed above in the statistics. The public disagrees. Many people believe that juveniles should be sentenced just the same as an adult would be for the same crime. The public has the right to worry about the leniency of the juvenile and criminal court sentencing. They want strict community protection and by letting the juveniles get away with crimes by giving them short sentences or none at all, causes fear to be put into that community.