Pathways of transferred offenders into adulthood
In this article the authors discuss preliminary results of a research on 210 young offenders transferred
to Adult Court in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Long-term judicial pathways of these youngsters, now aged between 29 and 39, are explored. Drawing on the criminal records and detention records of the sample,
judicial pathways into adulthood are charted. The results show that the greater part of the sample is still
involved in the criminal justice system. More than 50% was convicted in the past three years and almost
a third of the population is imprisoned. This supports the idea that the sample consists of so-called persistent offenders. The question whether these pathways are a result of an accurate prediction of the
juvenile justice system (those who are perceived as ‘incorrigible’ indeed are incorrigible), an iatrogenic
effect of transfer, or a combination of both, will be answered in the next stage of the research.