National trends in juvenile justice discuss how juveniles should be tried, whether it is in a juvenile or a criminal court. Juveniles can be tried in all 50 states. Juvenile's age varies from state to state when dealing with transfers. The group of offenses that can send a juvenile in the direction of criminal court is: any crime, capital crimes and murder, specified violent felonies, and specified crimes plus a prior record. There are three types of transfer laws: automatic, judicial-discretionary, and prosecutorial-discretionary. The automatic transfer law is a law stating that any juvenile who commits either murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, rape, aggravated assault, arson, or any crimes committed with a fire arm. In many instances the older the juvenile is, the more likely he or she will be transferred to adult court for the above felonies. The judicial-discretionary juvenile law is when the prosecutor files a petition or motion with the juvenile court and the judge decides whether to transfer the case or not. The other option is prosecutorial-discretionary juvenile law; this is when the prosecutor uses his or her discretion to decide whether to file a case in juvenile or criminal court. The sentencing of juveniles in criminal court varies. It has been found that a large number of incarcerations will lead to few prison sentences and a lot of probation. It seems that criminal courts are a lot less likely to incarcerate juvenile offenders. Even if a juvenile is transferred to criminal court, he or she is likely to spend only a fraction of the given sentence. Studies found that the average prison time for a juvenile sentenced in adult facilities is 3.5 years, which is only about 27% of the imposed sentence. Sentences given in juvenile court may initially be shorter, but the juveniles have a much smaller chance of getting out early. Studies also found that the practice of transferring juvenile offenders to criminal court does not seem!.
