Americans’ Opinions on Juvenile Justice: Preferred Aims, Beliefs About Juveniles, and Blended Sentencing

Abstract

Feld asserts that juvenile justice is entering a new era, one that is based on the idea that kids are different from adults in a number of important ways. It is against this backdrop that we conducted a contemporary, national assessment of the public’s views of youth today and juvenile justice policy priorities, focusing specifically on an understudied policy, juvenile-blended sentencing. We find the public holds pessimistic views of youth today, which influences their support for blended sentencing. Support for blended sentencing is also found to be related to belief in the potential consequences of such a sentence as well as belief in the importance of the goals of juvenile justice.