Criminology Commons^™

Juvenile Penalties For “Lawyering Up”: The Role Of Counsel And Extralegal Case Characteristics, Gaylene Armstrong, Bitna Kim

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The presence of counsel for juveniles in the courtroom seems advantageous from a due process perspective, yet some studies suggest that juveniles receive harsher dispositions when represented by an attorney. This study tested whether a “counsel penalty” existed regardless of attorney type and, guided by prior sentencing literature, used a more comprehensive model to determine the influence of extralegal and contextual factors that may amplify the counsel penalty. Utilizing official data from a Northeastern state in a multilevel modeling strategy, this study found that regardless of the type of counsel retained, harsher sentences were received as compared with cases in …