Our group has decided to discuss waivers and blended sentencing and the pros and cons of each. There are several types of waivers including prosecutorial, judicial or discretionary, demand, presumptive, and once an adult, always and adult. There are several types of blended sentencing including juvenile exclusive blend, juvenile inclusive blend, juvenile contiguous blend, criminal exclusive blend, and criminal inclusive blend. We will begin by identifying the waivers followed by us with the kinds of blended sentencing. We will present the pros and cons of each.
Waivers.
There are 4 different types of waiver actions in the juvenile systems. Depending on the case, different waivers are used in the juvenile system. Prosecutorial waivers are also known as direct file or concurrent jurisdiction. This is used by the prosecutor has the authority to decide whether a particular juvenile case will be heard in criminal or juvenile court.
Judicial or discretionary waivers transfers juveniles to criminal courts by judges, at their discretion or in their judgment. Legislative or automatic waivers are provisions that compel juvenile courts to remain certain youths to criminal courts because of specific offenses that have been committed or alleged. Demand waiver actions are requests or motions filed by juveniles and their attorneys to have their cases transferred from juvenile courts to criminal courts. There is also something called a presumptive waiver provision which is a judicial waiver in which the burden of proof shifts from the state to the juvenile to contest whether the your is transferred to criminal courts. And lastly, the once an adult, always an adult provision that once a juvenile has been transferred to criminal court to be prosecuted as an adult, regardless of the criminal court outcome, the juvenile can never be subject to the jurisdiction of juvenile courts in the future. In other words, once a juvenile is transferred to adult court they will always be classified as an adult even if the juvenile is not of legal age.
