Juvenile Prisons

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kenny is an African American, 15 year old. He lives 8 houses away from me; he has lived 8 houses away from me for the past 7 years. During the summer I would watch him play basketball in the road with the other kids on the block, and during the winter I would watch him shovel his driveway, but the past summer and winter there was no sight of Kenny. He was gone. Kenny was arrested two weeks after his 15 birthday. According to his mother, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, according to my neighbor he was “bound to get arrested anyways”

Both youth and adult prisons are funded a large amount of money every year to provide for the people who are incarcerated. Government taxes fund the: living spaces, beds, food, clothes, electric, water, etc. anything that the prisoners use as an everyday necessity, it is something that the taxpayers money is used for. “One of the most harmful, ineffective and expensive forms of incarceration is the youth prison, the signature feature of nearly every state juvenile justice system. States devote the largest share of their juvenile justice resources to youth prisons at an estimated annual cost of over $5 billion per year.”(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. Compare these costs to the investments in education where the average annual per pupil cost of K-12 public education is substantially lower.”(Justice policy, 1). As a result of the high population in youths pentiatiarys, the public education field is rewarded with less money. With these actions, one is allowed to look upon the actions of the government system to be unfavorable to those who are not involved with crime, but highly involved with those who are involved with