College students are tough juries when it comes to juvenile crime.

An attitude study of 480 UC Davis undergraduates found that students think that juvenile offenders, even as young as 11 years old, are more competent to stand trial when they kill than when they injure a person, regardless of their intent. What's more, the students are ready to throw the book at them, according to a recent study by a UC Davis graduate student in psychology.

Study co-authors Simona Ghetti, a doctoral student at UC Davis, and Allison Redlich, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, looked at how psychology students responded to scenarios about a juvenile -- age 11, 14 or 17 -- who committed a crime. The students were asked to determine a prison sentence and rate perceptions of the juvenile's accountability and legal competence.

The study has implications not only regarding public opinion about juvenile delinquents but also for the way juveniles are judged when being prosecuted as adults in criminal courts, Ghetti says.

"Although limited to a student population, this study may imply that people link crime severity with legal competence, when the relation between the two is yet to be demonstrated," she says. Ultimately, people may overestimate juveniles' competence."

The study was published in the most recent issue of the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law.

Media contacts:
-- Simona Ghetti, Psychology, (530) 754-8543, sghetti@ucdavis.edu
-- Susanne Rockwell, News Service, (530) 752-9841, sgrockwell@ucdavis.edu