a study has been released that shows that santa cruz county is more likely to try juvenile offenders as adults for serious crimes, than most counties in california. the study was conducted by the center on juvenile and criminal justice, to see the effects of proposition 21. prop 21 allows prosecutors to directly file juveniles as adults without REQUIRING review from a judge. from 2003 to 2009, over 4-thousand youth cases were tried in adult criminal court in california. for every 1000 juvenile cases whose charges qualified, santa cruz county filed 31 cases in adult court. the state average was 25 cases per 1000. the lowest rate was san francisco with an average of 1.5 per 1000.
