If your child is charged with a juvenile offense, you might not know where to turn. Now your family has to go through a court process that you probably aren’t familiar with. This situation can be even more confusing and frightening if your child is charged with a serious felony. Serious felonies have serious consequences. You can learn more about these issues and juvenile offenders here. You can also learn how to protect your child.

Serious Felonies and Juvenile Offenders

In most cases, juveniles do not receive punishments that are as serious as adult punishments. This is because the belief in the United States is that juvenile offenders can be rehabilitated. Also, they believe that this is more effective than severely punishing them. Regardless, in the case of serious felony, some juveniles can get tried as adults.

Most juveniles get tried in juvenile court. However, for some serious felony cases juvenile cases can be transferred to adult court. This will depend on the juvenile’s criminal history, age, and the severity of the alleged crime.

When juveniles are tried as adults for serious felony, they face the same punishments that adults do. In addition, they can spend time in adult jails or even prisons instead of a detention facility or juvenile hall.

Getting Help

If your child faces a serious felony, you want to avoid the transfer of their case to adult court. In order to do this, you should hire a criminal defense lawyer who can assist you with your case. A juvenile defense attorney can work with the court to try to keep your child’s case in juvenile court. While there is no guarantee that a lawyer can prevent the transfer of a serious felony case to adult court, they will have the best chance of stopping this from occurring.