Delinquency compared with a criminal prosecution, custody and questioning of a minor, the transfer hearing that moves a case to adult court, detention pending adjudication, the adjudication itself and the absence of a jury, disposition and the range of orders available, records and sealing, and status offenses.
A delinquency case is brought by petition rather than indictment, decided by a judge in most states rather than a jury, and resolved by a disposition rather than a sentence. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt applies, but the purposes clause of the juvenile code shapes what the court may order afterward. An adjudication is not a conviction, yet it carries consequences that survive the case.
A search by school authorities must be justified at its inception and reasonable in scope, measured against the student's age and sex and the nature of the suspected infraction. Statutes in several states codify the standard, declare lockers school property, and bar strip searches outright. Courts remain divided over the standard that governs a school resource officer, and the division tracks whose investigation the search served.
A child's age is part of the objective custody analysis when it was known or apparent, so a setting that would not confine an adult can be custodial for a minor. Warnings must be delivered in comprehensible terms. California, Washington and North Carolina go further and condition any admissible waiver on consultation with counsel or the presence of a parent, and each attaches a different remedy for a violation.
Transfer occurs by judicial waiver after a hearing, by statutory exclusion that removes an offense from juvenile jurisdiction outright, or by a prosecutor's election to file directly in criminal court. A waiver hearing requires notice, counsel, access to the records the court relies on, and a statement of reasons. California requires clear and convincing evidence of unsuitability; Ohio separates mandatory from discretionary transfer.
A juvenile court chooses among community control, placement and commitment, guided by the code's purposes clause and by a requirement that the least restrictive available alternative be selected. Commitment is usually indeterminate and administered by a state agency, which shifts control of release away from the judge. Federal law caps official detention by reference to age and the guideline range for an adult.
State codes require a detention hearing within a fixed period, commonly the next judicial day or seventy-two hours, and permit continued custody only on specific findings about flight, danger or the absence of supervision. Federal funding conditions restrict holding juveniles in adult facilities and bar secure detention for status offenders outside a narrow exception. Detention also starts a speedy adjudication clock in some systems.
State statutes close juvenile case files to the public and then name the officials, agencies and parties entitled to inspect them. Sealing is available in most systems, sometimes automatically on a favorable termination or satisfactory completion of supervision, and it restores the right to deny the incident. Serious adjudications are commonly excluded, and a sealed file can still reach an adult sentencing court in some states.
Federal constitutional law tests a juvenile waiver by the totality of the circumstances, with age, experience, education, intelligence and the conditions of questioning all in the calculation. There is no constitutional requirement that a parent or lawyer be present. Several states have imposed one anyway, converting an open-ended inquiry into a threshold question, and the burden of proving a valid waiver rests on the prosecution in either design.
Delinquency jurisdiction turns on the age at the time of the act in most states, not the age at filing. The lower boundary is set by statute in some states and left to common law in others. The upper boundary is usually the eighteenth birthday, but continuing jurisdiction runs well past it, and extended or blended sentencing schemes stretch a juvenile case into adult sanctions without a transfer order.
Truancy, running away and habitual disobedience are handled through petitions that carry different names in each state and a common structure: intake diversion, services, and a court order backed by contempt. Federal funding conditions bar placing status offenders in secure detention, subject to a narrow exception for violation of a valid court order. States differ sharply in how heavily they rely on that exception.
Some states require the physical presence of a parent before a juvenile's custodial statement is admissible, some require only notification, and some require consultation with a lawyer instead. The distinctions matter because a parent is not counsel, cannot give legal advice, and may have interests that diverge from the child's. Courts have generally held that parental encouragement to speak does not by itself make a statement involuntary.
