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Images of youngsters in handcuffs and prison uniforms have become common on the nightly news in the United States. As America's fascination with crime and justice has grown, so has attention to the ways in which youthful offenders are charged, tried, and sentenced. While they may once have been viewed as misguided youth, more and more juveniles are being charged as adults and sentenced to adult prisons. Myers questions whether doing so is an effective deterrent for young offenders, if rehabilitation is out of the question, and if youth and society are better served by sending children away to adult prisons rather than juvenile detention facilities. These questions and others are addressed in this careful analysis of the history and evolution of transfer laws that are increasingly prevalent throughout the United States.

The move toward charging juvenile delinquents as adult criminals initially coincided with an increase in violent crimes committed by youthful offenders. However, as such policies have grown and expanded, the methods by which youth are formally treated as adults in the criminal justice system have changed. Here, Myers examines the demographic, legal, criminal, and social characteristics of those youth who are waived to adult courts, assessing the nature, use, and effectiveness of punishment and rehabilitation efforts in modern juvenile and criminal justice systems. He concludes that as long as separate juvenile and adult justice systems are maintained, there will be a desire and perceived need for transferring some youth to adult court. However, he suggests that such transfers should be facilitated on a much more limited basis, while greater resources and funding for prevention and early intervention should be implemented to prevent youth from offending in the first place. This controversial topic receives a thorough accounting in this volume, which will open readers' eyes to the realities of juvenile delinquency and its treatment by the criminal justice system.

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In this exceptional overview of the process of juvenile waivers to adult court, Myers (criminology, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania) includes a detailed account of the history of the juvenile court system and does an excellent job of discussing the social and political context surrounding increases in transfers. He also gives clear descriptions of types of transfers as well as the process by which transfers occur, with a fair synopsis of prosecutorial and judicial discretion that should be easily understood by undergraduates and others not familiar with the juvenile justice system. Myers's personalization of the waiver process with the specific example of Nathaniel Abraham, the youngest defendant to be convicted as an adult, is appealing on a personal level but occasionally detracts from the broader contextual perspective of the rest of the book. Myers's research assessment nicely summarizes the ineffectiveness of waivers in reducing crime by juveniles and the failure of waivers to achieve general or specific deterrence. However, while the author does discuss the failures of specific institutions in juvenile programming, he gives less time to promising rehabilitative efforts, and does not expand on services beyond institutional borders, such as juvenile assessment centers, probation, or parole. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries. R. K. Murray Creighton University

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David L. Myers is Associate Professor of Criminology and a Dean's Associate in the School of Graduate Studies and Research at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he also directs the Doctoral Program in Criminology and the Center for Research in Criminology. He is a member of the IUP Research Institute Advisory Board and the Institutional Review Board of the National Center for Juvenile Justice, as well as an Associate Editor and Columnist for Criminal Justice Research Reports. He is the author of Excluding Violent Youths from Juvenile Court: The Effectiveness of Legislative Waiver (2001), and his articles have appeared in such journals as Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice , Journal of Juvenile Justice and Detention Services , Criminal Justice Review , Justice Research and Policy , and Criminal Justice Studies .