Since the turn of the century, when juvenile courts were put in effect, there have been instances where juveniles have been tried as adults. These states used this method to deal with the worst of the juvenile cases, while the juvenile court was still reserved for the remainder. Gradually, the other states began to also use this method of transferring juveniles into adult courts. If their crime was too heinous or the juvenile courts could not handle them, they were transferred. During recent years, an increasing number of juvenile offenders have been transferred out of the juvenile and into the adult courts.

By the 1990's, every state had some kind of method for moving these young offenders. The line between the two courts has always been a penetrable one, but when and how it should be crossed is under debate. Do these moves or "transfers" actually work to help the problem, or is it a way not to help our most troubled youth.

Although these types of cases have usually been transferred on a cases by case basis, in recent years there has been an increase in laws in which entire classes of young offenders are moved into the adult courts. Many states have these types of laws that automatically transfer certain types of offenses, as in capital murder, into the criminal court system. Other states leave it to a prosecutor to decide whether the juvenile should be tried as an adult. The case facts as well as past offenses and background information are looked at to determine where the case should be tried. These types of transfers are popular and very appealing to the public in our society, partly because of the incredible number of violent crimes that now occur in our society. The people believe that these offenders should be tried in adult courts in order to get more certain convictions and steeper, harsher punishments. Yet, many of the cases that are tried in adult courts do not fit this profile. There is even a popular political slogan that reads, "do an adult crime, do adult time," (Leeper, 2).

When you send a juvenile into an adult court and prison setting regardless of the crime committed, all that can come is harm. You send a juvenile into a jail as a youth and he or she comes out as a hardened. There can be no good results with sending a juvenile into an environment with criminal adults. Also, if you take a youth and put him into prison for a number of years his options are very limited when he is returned to society less than that of an adult offender. Critics disagree that with murders and the like, juvenile courts are too easy. They just do not believe that these children are too far from help, and disagree that they belong with adults. They criticize that it is wrong to put them with the adult criminals and they believe that another alternative must be found. Yet, so far for a lack of a better alternative, this is how soc

Some common words found in the essay are:
COURTS Juvenile, adult courts, juvenile offenders, adult court, juvenile court, juvenile courts, people believe, court system, juvenile adult, juveniles adult courts, tried adult, types crimes, juvenile justice system, juvenile offenders transferred, juveniles tried adults, juvenile adult court,
Approximate Word count = 1512
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)