Drift at the Door: Indiana’s Juvenile Transfer Laws and the State’s Rehabilitative Commitment

https://doi.org/10.65161/recO8P80NYPygfbeA

Indiana’s juvenile code promises both rehabilitation and public safety, yet most recent juvenile cases entering adult court bypass individualized juvenile-court waiver hearings. This study traces the historical, statutory, and doctrinal development of Indiana’s transfer system and analyzes state reports on juveniles under adult-court jurisdiction. Indiana’s modern structure emerged incrementally: the 1978 Juvenile Code reorganized judicial waiver, a 1981 enactment added legislative exclusion, the 1997 act recodified those rules, and later amendments altered their reach. In State Fiscal Year 2025, 282 of 301 adult-court juvenile cases, or 93.7%, were filed directly rather than transferred after waiver. This finding is a one-year snapshot and does not establish a stable historical trend or causal disparity. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that individualized rehabilitation was not assessed at the transfer stage in most reported cases. Indiana could better reconcile its statutory purposes by introducing limited individualized review for categorical transfers and publishing more detailed longitudinal data.