The Legacy of Dreikurs: A Discussion of Juvenile Transfer to Adult Court

Juvenile transfer is the mechanism by which juveniles who offend are charged, tried, and sentenced by the adult judicial system with the goal of enacting harsher punishments and deterring criminal behavior. Using Rudolf Dreikurs’s ideas on belonging, goals of misbehavior, reward and punishment, and delinquency, we argue that the transfer of juveniles to adult court is unnecessary and also harmful to juveniles and to society.