Citation

Trulson CR, Caudill JW, Belshaw SH, DeLisi M. Crim. Justice Policy Rev. 2011; 22(3): 263-284.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0887403410370618

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

One of the most significant changes to juvenile justice processing in recent decades has been blended sentencing. Unlike traditional juvenile court or adult court waiver processes, blended sentencing statutes provide authority to juvenile or adult court judges to sanction delinquent offenders with juvenile and adult dispositions. Although state variations abound, most blended sentencing schemes feature a fail-safe postadjudication stage where decisions are made to suspend or invoke the adult portion of the original blended sentence. Based on data from 1,504 serious and violent male delinquents sanctioned via a blended sentencing statute, this study explored the relationship of a battery of delinquent background, commitment offense, and postadjudication institutional misconduct variables on decisions to invoke or suspend the adult portion of a blended sentence. Results of the analysis revealed that commitment offense type, age at commitment and, to a lesser extent, institutional misconduct behavior weighed most heavily in decisions to invoke the adult portion of the blended sentence.