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152 CHAPTER SIX Judging the Court, Judging Transfer My goal in this ethnography has been to document the law in action and shed light on how youths are constructed, or not constructed, as adults through the process of criminal prosecution. I tried to uncover how the criminal prosecution of adolescents was undertaken in one court in one jurisdiction and, in the process, discover what could be learned about trying youths as adults and about legal responses to adolescent transgression more generally. Invariably, whenever I discuss this research I am asked some version of the same basic question, though it is worded differently from person to person and place to place: “So, do these kids re-offend less than others?” or “What are the recidivism rates for these kids?” or the simply skeptical, “Does that really work?” These are important questions, whether one’s interest is in helping disadvantaged, troubled kids (childsaving ) or in protecting the public from violent and/or delinquent youth (social control). Was the Manhattan Youth Part’s experiment successful? An evaluation of the existing, albeit limited, evidence on Juvenile Offenders in New York City and in the Manhattan Youth Part sheds light on the potential success of the court’s model of case processing. An examination of research on the deterrent effects of transfer laws on adolescent offending and reoffending questions the efficacy of transfer as a viable response to adolescent offending . Both of these lines of inquiry lead to a broader discussion of what the proper legal response to serious adolescent offending should be. Judging the Youth Part Does the Manhattan Youth Part’s experiment in justice work? There are different ways to try to answer that question. Recidivism rates are one common measure by which criminal justice practices are judged. Available data on recidivism among kids who went through Corriero’s court are limited, but the nonprofit Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) releases annual quantitative reports on the case processing of Juvenile Offenders in New York City that provide some insight. In 2005 and 2007, the CJA also produced two studies looking specifically at the rearrest rates for JOs in the city: The 2005 study compared case processing and rearrest data among JOs processed in Queens and Manhattan; the 2007 study compared the same data for JOs in all five boroughs.1 One important caveat about using these studies to assess the Youth Part is that they look only at JOs, whereas in the Manhattan Youth Part there were, on average, three times as many 153 Judging the Court, Judging Transfer non-JOs as JOs. Despite this limitation, the CJA reports still shed some important light on Manhattan Youth Part practices. One important finding of these studies is just how much the practice of prosecuting JOs differs among the New York City boroughs. The first study focused on a comparison of Queens and Manhattan largely because of the striking differences in case-processing style in the two boroughs. The researchers found that, although case and offender characteristics were similar in both boroughs, “the experiences afforded to juvenile offenders prosecuted in Manhattan and Queens are so divergent that they actually seem to constitute different models of youth crime prosecution.”2 Comparisons of case processing across all five boroughs support what court actors have long known about the Manhattan Youth Part’s unique style of JO case processing:3 • Youth Part Concentration: In Manhattan nearly all JO cases were handled in the Youth Part, while in other boroughs many more JOs were handled in all-purpose parts. For example, between 2002 and 2006, 89% to 100% of JO cases in Manhattan were handled in the youth part, compared with a citywide average of only 51% to 79%. For some years in Queens, less than one-third of JO cases were handled in the borough’s specialized youth part.4 • Length of Court Interaction: Kids in Manhattan spent significantly longer time with a youth part than kids in any of the other boroughs. For example, between 1997 and 2000, the average length of time for case processing (first appearance to case completion) of JO cases in Manhattan was 17.2 months, compared to just 9.4 citywide (8.2 in Brooklyn, 7.6 in the Bronx, 4.1 in Queens, and 3.7 on Staten Island).5 • Reliance on Alternative to Incarceration Programs: ATI programs were more heavily utilized in Manhattan than elsewhere: The 2007 CJA study concluded: “The opportunity for nearly every juvenile prosecuted in the Manhattan Supreme...

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