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How The Steep Costs Of Keeping Juveniles In Adult Prisons

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In the article,” The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons,” author Jessica Lahey subsequently claims, “ Juveniles constitute 1,200 of the 1.5 million people housed in federal and state prisons in this country, and nearly 200,000 youths enter the adult criminal-justice system each year, most for non-violent crimes. On any given day, 10,000 juveniles are housed in adults prisons and jails.” Reluctantly, juveniles are not given the opportunity in these circumstances to plead for their background story, nor do they receive the opportunity to engage towards their future. As the arguments began to rise throughout the years, the percentage on juveniles being tried as adults has also rose resulting in a more repetitive solution for these …show more content…

The more thought there is towards how the teenage brain develops, the more the questions grow towards what capabilities teenagers really can do, and what goes through their mind while doing the most reckless things. The questions rise, but the answers are never given. On the website, “ Debate.Org,” it states, “ They lack the prefrontal cortex, the lobe of the brain that helps with reasoning and judgment. Teens also do not have a fully developed cerebellum, the area of the brain that helps control impulse. Without these two physical characteristics that separate the men from the boys, teenagers can not possibly be expected to endure the same consequence as fully matured adults.” Lacking the prefrontal cortex is like a car with no wheels, how do we transport from one place to another without our wheels? As tempting as it is to argue against this, the ideal picture here is to show how a teenager will make irrational decisions due to their lack of development. No teenager can be fully development and undertaken as an adult when it is scientifically proven that their brain is still in the process of developing. The connection to their decisions are literally off set and no where near to one another, they make decisions without thinking the consequences, expecting to get out of their troubled actions easily. Teenagers committing a serious crime is something dangerous out the world, having them being tried as adults when they aren’t even fully developed only shows how corrupted the systems

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The article “ Inside the Teen Brain” by Marty Wolner, states that recent resherchers on the human brain provides parents with shocking evidence abou there teenager that probably explains there irational, ilogical, and impulsive behavior. As it turns out, brain developement during the teenage years is radically more active than previously thought. Even though the brain is almost matured the grey matter in the thinking part of the brain is still making connections. The information proccesed in the limbic system, without benefit of higher level processing in the pre-frontal cortex may result in impulsive, egocentric,, and even risky behavior. Because of the construction of the teenage brain is that its not capable of fully processing information

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In the article “Should Juvenile Offenders Be Tried as Adults” written by Laurence Steinberg, Mr. Steinberg debates that the government should reevaluate how juveniles are punished in the court system. Mr. Steinberg mentions that in modern society’s approach to sentencing minors is to reduce the severity of the crime or treat the offender as an adult. Laurence gives many points as to the minor’s development, both mentally and physically, which may hinder their judgement and understanding of their actions. He also emphasizes on the lack of fairness in the court system for non-violent crimes in regards to minors.

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”(healthychildren.org) It is true that the adolescent brain is still developing and not fully mature, but they should

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` In the article Beautiful Brains by David Dobbs, evolutionary research conveys that during the adolescent and teenage years the brain encounters an astonishing amount of growth and transformation. Dobbs states that these developments contribute to many of the irresponsible decisions made by teens. In the past, the brain was thought to cease maturing around the age of ten, however, new investigations have found that between the ages of twelve and twenty five, the brain continues to develop, undergoing a considerable metamorphosis. During this metamorphosis, myelin insulates a greater number of neuron’s axons, increasing the speed in which messages are exchanged, dendrites branch out and become broader, accelerating the rate at which messages are received, and synaptic pruning occurs which causes the brain’s cortex to become slimmer and more adept. During teenage years, the brain is still learning to network as well as deal with day to day obstacles such as stress, exhaustion and problems.

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There is hope for parents of teenagers that feel like their child is a lost cause. In a 2015 issue of Scientific American titled The Amazing Teen Brain, author Jay N. Giedd explains why the teenage brain is not “biology gone wrong”. With the help of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) the brain of people of different ages can be studied to provide more accurate information. One of those findings is that the adolescent brain does not mature by getting larger, that it matures by having its structures more interconnected and by becoming more specialized. MRI scans show that greater volumes of white matter indicate the increase in connectivity among brain regions.

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Imagine that you are 17 and assaulted or killed a person by accident. They have found you guilty and decided to put you in an adult institution with level 4 maximum security, which is very violent. How would you feel? This has happened to juveniles before, they were tried as adults and some sent to life in prison. Juveniles should be rehabilitated and given a second chance instead of being tried as an adult and placed in jail or sentenced to death because a kid’s brain has not yet fully developed and it could help make them a better person.

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they are far more able than adults to learn new skills, find new values, and re embark on a better, law-abiding life” (“Minors Are Not…”). Juveniles can rehabilitate from their mistakes and change their lives. They may need a little help to change, but the help and resource they need are not found in prisons. Sentencing juveniles as adults causes them to lose hope in their future. It makes these teens feel as though they can never accomplish anything in the future because of their one mistake; however, that is far from the truth.

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The Article the Amazing Teen Brain is a very brief, but a very interesting chunk of text. The article goes in depth with many inferences to the field of Neuroscience. This article is tied to the introduced topics of Neuroscience. The relation to the article and neuroscience starts with the lobes mentioned in the article are lobes that are learned about. The networking of the brain is talked about in that the article makes inferences about how greater networking bring forth maturity.

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Juvenile Justice System. As the years go on, the debate of whether or not juveniles should be tried as adults, or if they should be sentenced to life in prison seems to become more of a bigger issue everyday. Many believe that adolescents who commit heinous crimes should face consequences no matter the circumstances. Others however, find it unfair and argue that these young criminals have yet to fully mature, and due to their lack of brain development, should be tried as juvenile criminals.

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Brain development affects adolescents decisions teens make through the fully developed limbic system. Because your limbic system is your emotional core. Your limbic system takes the information and stores it into your brain and forgets the stuff that 's not important. My example of “the limbic system where your aonydata and hippicapus evaluates the information to if its useful or not. The main idea is that your limbic system stores the good stuff and throws away the bad

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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

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”(Ryan, 2) What has been brought to attention is, not only does the most government money go into incarceration, but a higher amount is funded in the process of incarcerating young Americans. As much money it cost to take care of young child is typically doubled when you are putting them in prison. A Lot of thought is put into the decision of incarcerated someone under the age of 18, an even bigger arrangement for a minor under 16. The Justice Policy reviews the comparisons of funding towards youth confinement centers versus public education cost “Thirty-three U.S. states and jurisdictions spend $100,000 or more annually to incarcerate a young person, and continue to generate outcomes that result in even greater costs.

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Destiny Ware Mrs.Ortiz ERWC 12 15 February 2023 Juveniles Teens in prison, also called juveniles, tend to have a negative connotation, which is reckless kids who don’t listen and like to break the rules. Some of these juveniles though are kids whose home life wasn’t a place for a child to grow. Juveniles are children who haven't developed the proper habits to deal with their impulses. Rehabilitation can help them, but only and only if they are willing to put in the work to change their mindset.

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In fact they are quite clever. If juveniles are capable of committing heinous crimes who knows what else they are capable of. Yet not all crimes juveniles execute aren’t evil crimes and should not be treated in such a harsh way. Juveniles should be tried as

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Juvenile Justice Should juveniles get treated as adults that’s one of the biggest controversy in our nation now days, with many juveniles committing crimes that are inconceivable according to their age. Judges have the last word on how to treat this young people. Many people argue that “the teens that are under eighteen are only kids, they won’t count them as young adults, not until they commit crimes. And the bigger the crime, the more eager this people are to call them adults” (Lundstrom 87). This is why people can’t come to a decision as how these young people should be treated like.

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