Judicial transfer is a process by which judges are granted the deciding power over whether a child is tried in juvenile or adult criminal court. This decision can have significant impacts on a child's life. While research exists on how judge partisanship and media attention affect sentencing in adult courts, study is lacking in the juvenile space. This project examines how demographic factors of the defendant, county-level characteristics, and temporal patterns may shape transfer decisions. By analyzing both historical shifts in juvenile justice laws and data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, this research examines the impact of factors like race and ethnicity, county partisan ideology, defendant age at time of offense, date of case outcome, and defendant prior record. The findings of this project will aid in the understanding of juvenile transfer decisions and in addressing inequities within the juvenile justice system. Understanding better which juveniles are more likely to be tried as adults and why this imbalance occurs will contribute to filling a significant gap in the research regarding the juvenile justice system.
