Abstract
Courting Kids is a case study of Manhattan’s Youth Part (MYP)—a hybrid adult-juvenile court established in New York to process young people being charged as adults for participation in serious crimes. Carla Barrett’s conclusions are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork completed during the MYP’s weekly general case processing sessions, reviews of official transcripts of court proceedings, and interviews conducted with various court and alternative sentencing program personnel. Her research was conducted between 2001 and 2005.
While many states have passed legislation facilitating the prosecution of juveniles as adults, New York is unique in that this legislation was passed in 1978, a decade before national calls for “getting tough” on juvenile offenders had gained momentum. Young people 16 years or older have been charged as adults in New York since the turn of the twentieth century—what New York’s 1978 Juvenile Offender Law (JOL) accomplished was the creation of a younger class of “juvenile offenders” (JOs). The law carves out a range of mostly (though not exclusively) violent offenses for which juveniles as young as 13 must be charged as adults. Unlike their youthful counterparts in the family courts, young people convicted under this new law face mandatory detention in secure facilities and a lifetime felony record. Barrett attributes the passage of the JOL to the convergence of three phenomena: (1) politicians trying to win elections by asserting a “tough on crime” stance, (2) public outrage over murders committed by 15-year-old Willie Bosket, Jr., and (3) media sensationalization of juvenile crime, especially crime attributed to young people of color.
Youth Parts was developed fourteen years after the JOL was passed, due in large part to the efforts of an activist judge. It is in these Parts where most JOs (and their co-defendants) are processed. Unlike defendants in other courts, juvenile offenders have severely limited plea bargaining options—plea bargaining for a lesser charge would require transfer to family court as the offense no longer statutorily qualifies for mandatory processing as an adult. Though provisions are made in the legislation for “transferring down” cases to the family court, the specificity of criteria for transfer and the resistance of courtroom personnel toward initiating these proceedings means that the bulk of JO cases are processed in the adult courts. During the period of Barrett’s study, only about seven percent of cases annually were transferred down.
Defendants in Youth Parts are overwhelmingly young men of color from New York City. Missing from Barrett’s consideration is how the predominantly white courtroom personnel come to terms with this racial reality—what narratives do they construct to make sense of the overrepresentation of young men of color on court dockets? Most of the young people in these courts face robbery charges—each year since 1984, no fewer than 66 percent of cases are for first- or second-degree robbery. Interestingly, though the JOL includes burglary in its list of offenses, this crime is rarely seen in the Youth Parts. Certainly young people are committing burglary—it is likely that police and prosecutors are using their discretion to funnel these cases out of the Parts. Burglary provides an interesting example of criminal justice personnel manufacturing legal loopholes within even the most prescriptive legislation.
In Chapters Three through Five, Barrett provides details on processing in the MYP. The courtroom is an uncomfortable space—the benches hard, the air cold, and the room overcrowded. Though there are occasional dramatic or humorous episodes to break the monotony, delay and waiting are integral to the courtroom routine. Sometimes delay is circumstantial (e.g., an attorney has not yet arrived), but often it is strategic. Barrett describes the judge’s deliberate use of delay as a means of determining a young person’s amenability for rehabilitation. During delays, the judge orders various official reports, requires participation in alternative programming, solicits feedback from guardians, and assesses a young person’s presentation of self in court. The entire process of vetting a young person’s potential could take as long as two years. At the end of the vetting process, young defendants are sentenced or awarded “youthful offender” status—it is not clear if young people ever contest their guilt or opt for trials, or if court actors ever drop or dismiss cases. In fact, Barrett documents little protest over guilt/innocence or long delays from other courtroom actors, including defense attorneys, or from the young people and their families.
“Youthful offender status with five years of probation” is considered the best outcome in the MYP. Earning the youthful offender distinction requires defendants to conform to a broad range of expectations of the courtroom work group, with some of these expectations seemingly beyond the purview of the court. If the young person successfully completes probation after being awarded youthful offender status, his record is sealed and he need not report his transgression on job applications. Ironically, it is in acting responsibly (as defined by the court), that young people are able to earn back their youthful designation. In spite of young people’s involvement with the MYP lasting much longer than other Parts in New York (17.2 months versus 9.4 months on average, citywide) and their higher levels of involvement with alternative programs, JOs in the MYP are less likely to earn youth offender status than JOs in other jurisdictions.
Barrett’s discussion of the strategic use of bail is also revealing. The judge’s decision to detain a young person is either preventive (i.e., to minimize the possibility that a young person would be rearrested and jeopardize his potential to earn youthful offender status), punitive (i.e., to punish him for not following through on the court’s wishes, such as abiding by a curfew), or conciliatory (i.e., to appease a district attorney who is pushing for jail time.) Like delays, bail decisions reflect judicial discretion—this discretion includes considerations beyond those typically accepted as appropriate by the legal community. In addition to illustrating the use of discretion, Barrett’s discussion of bail illustrates the importance of the courtroom workgroup—at least some courtroom decisions have as much to do with conforming to workgroup expectations as they do with serving the needs of the defendants.
During many of their interactions with the judge, young people are treated with parental or paternalistic concern. A considerable amount of the judge’s time is spent lecturing, encouraging, or admonishing the young people on his dockets. In addition, the court often tries to involve parents, though it is not legally required to do so. Courtroom personnel recognize that parental support is instrumental to the legal success of defendants; defendants rely on adults for transportation and housing, as well as for financial and emotional support. Not all defendants receive such support; they face homelessness, abuse, victimization, and more. Some young people’s lives are further complicated by their involvement with multiple state agencies beyond the MYP, including family court and child welfare services. Though defendants in the MYP are adults according to the law, the reality is that they occupy a blurred place between juvenile and adult. Describing how the judge negotiates within, and sometimes takes advantage of, this fuzzy place is Barrett’s fundamental contribution.
As she rightly notes, whether or not the MYP is successful is a matter of debate; drawing such conclusions depends on what considerations are prioritized (e.g., costs, recidivism rates, defendant satisfaction, etc.) and the availability of quality data. Perhaps the most powerful conclusion about the MYP is that made by the judge who created it: the mandatory model of trying young people as adults should be abandoned for a discretionary transfer model. Such a model better reflects both empirical patterns in youthful offending—most young people “age out” of offending—and broad-based support from the public and the legal community for rehabilitative programs for juveniles. Until a discretionary model is implemented, works like Barrett’s help to reveal how legal actors attempt to “cultivate an active, rehabilitative justice in the age of retribution” (p. 20).