The seven-deadly-sins law for juvenile offenders is a law intended to address the increasing rates of violent crime among youth. The law has taken many forms in different state legislatures in the United States, however the "seven deadly sins" aspect always refers to the jurisdiction of the superior court over the trial of any juvenile 13–17 years old who allegedly committed murder, rape, armed robbery with firearm, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, aggravated sexual battery, or voluntary manslaughter. In the mid 1990s, numerous US states enacted seven-deadly-sins laws to combat so-called teen "superpredators," a predicted wave of remorseless teenaged criminals. However, this prediction did not come to fruition.
Among the states in the US to pass such a bill was Georgia, whose State Bill 440 attempted "to provide that certain juvenile offenders who commit certain violent felonies shall be tried as adults in the superior court." However, in 2009, a bill softened the effects of that law, regressing from the default to try violent minor offenders as adults.