ipl-logo

Essay On Prison Kids

994 Words4 Pages

Sarah Ariel Prison Kids: A Crime Against America’s Children Overview: The documentary titled Prison Kids: A Crime Against America’s Children is one that addresses a very prominent and pressing issue within our society. The problem is one that is negatively affecting the future of this country as it disrupts the healthy development of future generations. The proportion of children who are being placed in the legal system on a regular basis is outstanding and astonishing. It is beyond upsetting to see how the system has failed the youth in America. The documentary documents how an abnormal amount of children are being placed into the system along with the same negative outcomes placed on them. Many of the children would benefit from guidance …show more content…

Punishing them causes a world of damage that is unrepairable. Those who have once had so much potential and drive just become a shell of themselves or worse. This has to do with the circumstances of the system they were placed in. So not only are they being punished for having mental health struggles, but they are placed in an environment that makes those struggles unmanageable. Lastly, the concept of solitary confinement for children is very upsetting. It serves no purpose other than to interfere with one's sanity. There have been so many studies on the harsh outcomes of solitary confinement and no child should be faced with such a brutal punishment. If we are not going to help the youth, then who will? The trouble is that this is the future generation we are speaking about. They shape our society and there has to be more of an effort to guide them appropriately and give them the tools to thrive in a healthy manner. Most youths are not stuck in their ways. They may be in troubling circumstances which lead them down the wrong path or struggling internally which may translate into behavioral issues. However, they should not be labeled and treated as criminals. They have the ability to grow and start on a healthier path with the appropriate …show more content…

According to the article titled Mental illness hospitalizations more common among juvenile prisoners, “detained juvenile offenders were more likely to be hospitalized for mental illness…”. The article continues to mention that “detained youth are a high-risk population with numerous unmet medical and mental health needs”. Additionally, the article mentions that “63% of juvenile prisoners who were hospitalized had a primary diagnosis of mental health disorder…”. These facts are very troubling and only strengthen the fact that most of the youth who are being punished and locked up truly need guidance and

Show More
Related
315 Words | 2 Pages

Essentially, they believe that juveniles experience a lesser form of true segregation. Nevertheless, Psychiatrists expressed that juveniles should not be in solitary confinement. Teens are forced to live in an 8ft.by 6ft. cell, those cells are even

Read More
905 Words | 4 Pages

Richard Ross has interviewed over 1,000 juveniles in over 200 facilities all over the United States, he has gone to detention centers, correctional centers, and treatment centers. He has also worked alongside with the police department and juvenile courtrooms in order to get a better inside on how juveniles feel while they are locked up. All the people he has interviewed are as young as 10 years old to their late 20’s there are both females and males, who are placed behind bars. Almost 3 of every 4-youths detained in a facility for delinquency are not in there for a serious violent crime (Ross, 2012).

Read More
859 Words | 4 Pages

A punishment warns someone or something that to do whatever they did again will end in bad consequences. It, hopefully, prevents them from making the same mistake twice. It should never hurt the person to the point of psychological damage which many people claim solitary confinement does. If it scares some people into doing the right thing, however, then the results outweigh the means. For example, my mother dated a boy her senior year of high school who had spent time in solitary confinement in his freshmen year.

Read More
739 Words | 3 Pages

Thousands of people across America are experiencing near-hell while they are locked inside a type of prison called solitary confinement. Solitary confinement must come to an end in America, even for the worst of criminals. The effects of solitary confinement consist of mental illnesses, wrongful convictions, staff members receiving trouble, the long-lasting suffering for the criminals, and the number of people experiencing it must end now. Solitary confinement can change the life of a person behind bars forever. Prisoners are left with multiple mental illnesses, and some are worse than others.

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

Their stories depict how our education systems track those who are going to be placed into the cycle of the criminal justice system. Interviewees illustrate how our criminal justice system is locking up “people we are mad at” instead of the “people we are afraid of.” Demetra had 11 charges by the age of 14, diagnosed with anxiety, placed in juvenile jail 3 times, and placed into juvenile housing after assaulting her aunt (guardian). She stated multiple times throughout the documentary, that being incarcerated never taught her a life lesson, and only made her angry. She had barely entered high school, and already had been a placed into the cycle of incarceration.

Read More
446 Words | 2 Pages

One very obvious way to fix this would be to get rid of solitary confinement overall. Some people may say, well solitary confinement can be used to isolate the weaker and younger inmates from conflict. This should not be a problem, to begin with as children should not be put in adult

Read More
515 Words | 3 Pages

The article, The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons by Jessica Lahey states that “due to the imbalance of power between children and adults, not to mention between children and prison staff, sexual abuse of juveniles in adult prison is underreported; fewer than one in 10 of the juveniles surveyed reported their abuse.” ( ). The adult prison is not safe because of the abuses between the staff and juvenile, they need to be aware of what happens in the adult system. Lahey wants to show how dangerous the adult system is by stating what actually happens in prison to the juveniles because of the adult prisoners and the staff. Lahey also explains about how the lack of services and safety, “juveniles housed in adult prisons are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than juveniles housed apart from adult offenders.”

Read More
1818 Words | 8 Pages

These children are ripped from their homes and passed from family to family without being told a single detail. The rate at which children are put into the system continues to climb. As well as those leaving the system, but not nearly as fast. Most children in the system are too young to know what's going on or why they have new and changing parents. These children are our future, but they don't know if they even have a future or what it means to have a real life.

Read More
1396 Words | 6 Pages

By law, adolescents with serious mental disorder must obtain mental health treatment while incarcerated. Federal courts have affirmed that prisoners with genuine mental disorders have a privilege to get required treatment as part of the states obligation to provide needed medical care under the U.S constitutions 8th and 14th Amendment. Many youths have met the criteria for a major depressive episode, or psychosis within the past six months. More than 1 in 6 adolescent prisoners have a major mental disorder and related functional impairments.

Read More
1302 Words | 6 Pages

Juveniles whom experience disrupted thinking experience a mild case of psychosis. The length of their stay in solitary will determine the severity of their case. Maztner (2010) notes, “the stress, lack of meaningful social contact, and unstructured days can exacerbate symptoms of illness or provoke recurrence.” Adolescents experiencing hallucinations are reported and placed on medication resulting in them becoming medically ill patients for the remainder of their life (Corcoran, 2016). Facilities have stated approximately fifteen percent of the population incarcerated has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

Read More
353 Words | 2 Pages

In my honest opinion solitary confinement in the U.S. is not justified and only does more harm than good. Not only is it a rash punishment, but it is one of the worst kinds of psychological tortures that could be inflicted upon an inmate. Human beings are undoubtedly social creatures and without the mere contact of another person the mind decays and ultimately leads a person to anger, anxiety, and hopelessness. Psychologists also claim that solitary confinement and isolation in general also cause depression or the loss of ability to have any "feelings", cognitive disturbances, such as confused thought processes and disorientation, perceptual distortions, such as hypersensitivity to noises and smells, distortions of sensations, and hallucinations affecting all five senses, as well as paranoia and psychosis which often times involve schizophrenic type symptoms, and finally, the worst of all symptoms, being self-harm such as self-mutilation, cutting and even suicide attempts.

Read More
849 Words | 4 Pages

There are differences between a juvenile court and criminal court in the United States. The focus of the juvenile justice system is on rehabilitation, in hope of deterring the minor away from a life of crime so they will not commit a crime again as an adult. In contrast, the criminal justice system focuses on the punishment and often bases the sentencing outcome on the criminal history of the youth. In a study conducted, Butler (2011) showed that the participants’ experience with adult jails and prisons show that those facilities may instill fear but are otherwise emotionally—and often physically—dangerous for youth. Many of the adult prisoners, who were minors when they enter the adult institution, felt they were forced to “grow

Read More
1043 Words | 5 Pages

Annotated bibliography Childress, S. (2016, June 2). More States Consider Raising the Age for Juvenile Crime. Retrieved from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/more-states-consider-raising-the-age-for-juvenile-crime/ More states are considering to raising the age for juvenile crimes before being tried as adult because young offender's mental capacity. The idea is to cut the cost of incarcerate young offender in adult prison and ensure offenders to receive proper education and specialized care to change their behavior. Putting children in adult prison does not deter crime.

Read More
1339 Words | 6 Pages

Et al.), especially in how they are processed within the justice system. These pieces of support bring to light the idea that the way the government has been handling the current mental health crisis in its prisons has been inadequate in more ways than

Read More
1281 Words | 6 Pages

“Research shows around 61 percent of the general population has had at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE), a potentially traumatic event that occurs to people younger than 17, and that number is closer to 97 percent for people in prison” (Nembhard and Lima, 2022). This shows that most people in prison have experienced some sort of childhood trauma. With a proven record of childhood trauma being linked to people who have engaged in criminal activity, it is safe to say that it can and has caused juveniles to engage in

Read More

More about Essay On Prison Kids

Open Document