Not only does Berstein call for an overall reform of this nation’s juvenile prisons, she goes as far as saying the practice of locking up youth is in need of a “more profound than incremental and partial reform” (13). The fact that Bernstein outlines the numerous failed strategies and goals of this practice with her compelling use of studies and statistics is enough to promote an audience to reject the practice of locking up youth. The statistic she shares that “four out of five juvenile parolees [will be] back behind bars within three years of release” as well as the studies she conducted on numerous instances when a guards abuse of power lead to the death of a child work to further prove her point: being that “institution[s] as intrinsically destructive as the juvenile prison” have no place in a modern society (13, 83). Bernstein refutes this false sense effectiveness further by sharing her own ideas on what she believes works as a much more humane solution to rehabilitating
While charging young offenders as adults could potentially protect people on the outside, children who are housed in the same facility as adults is not a good idea nor a good mix. “I watched Joe, who laughed like a little boy, but I saw the lines in his face and even the emergence of a few prematurely gray hairs on his head. I realized even while I laughed, that his unhappy childhood had been followed by unhappy, imprisoned teenage years followed by unhappy incarceration through young adulthood. All of the sudden, it occurred to me what a miracle it was that he could still laugh.” (Stevenson 217-224) Children in adult prisons are prone to rape, suicide and assault than in juvenile detention centers according to studies on juvenile suicide in adult institutions and youth facilities in the 1980s.
My Three Tenets: A Blueprint for Juvenile Justice Reform After reading Chapter thirteen in our textbook, I learned about the Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG) and how they created the Blueprint for Juvenile Justice Reform for the entire United States. In that blueprint is the nine basic tenets that is the ground work for juvenile justice reform. The nine basic tenets are: reduce institutionalization, reduce racial disparity, ensure access to quality counsel, create a range of community-based alternatives, recognize and serve youths with specialized needs, create smaller rehabilitative institutions, improve aftercare and reentry, maximize youth, family and community participation, and keep youths out of adult prisons. All of the nine basic tenets are important to juvenile justice reform.
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
Before the Progressive movement, child labor conditions were terrible and child crime rates were soaring. The Progressive movement, notably through the women, fought to end child labor and succeeded in getting new policies passed to protect children in the workplace. The Progressive movement also called attention to the issue of child crime rates. Source 3, a Harvard Law review on “The Juvenile Court”, comes to the defense of juvenile delinquents and argues for reforming over punishment, and focusing on turning them into worthy citizens rather than criminals. This led to changes taking place in the way juveniles were dealt with by the government.
In the early 1800s the punishment of juveniles altered to the notion to rehabilitate juvenile offenders among with separate juveniles from adults in the system, and to keep the juvenile recidivism rate low, therefore the creation of the New York House of Refuge began (ABA Dialogue Program, n.d., p.5). The House of Refuge was the first prison to separate juveniles from adults and “were supposed to provide a home for unruly and troubled children, where they would be reformed, educated, and disciplined (Roberts, 1998, p. 96).” The program did not concentrate on punishment or pain, but on life skills that the juveniles could utilized once released. According to Roberts (1998), “Order, discipline, and moral teachings were emphasized (p.97).” The
Juvenile justice policies have determined how juveniles are handled in the criminal justice system. During the colonial period, juveniles were treated like adults and were prosecuted accordingly. Children were arrested, tried and held in institutions with adult criminals and many of them were mistreated. Reformers saw a need to separate juvenile offenders from the adults and rehabilitate them. Reformers campaigned for the focus of punishment to be shifted to rehabilitation by changing the juvenile’s behavior.
I believe the development of juvenile justice to have had a creditable change because of the cases included, re Gault 1967, Kent v. United States 1966 and Schall v. Martin 1984. Gerald Gault age 15 already on probation for stealing and his friend Ronald Lewis was taken in to custody on June 8,1964, after Allegedly making a prank phone call. When Gault was taken into custody his parents weren’t contacted, and not even a notice was left at home. Gault was never given the chance to contact a lawyer, along with his parents not even knowing that he was taken to the juvenile detention center. According to (Margot Adler, 2007, para.
The Juvenile Justice System is something that is often overlooked but there are so many things wrong with it. The things I know about the Juvenile Justice is that when a minor begin to commit crimes they have to deal with the juvenile system which is associated with lawyers, judges, police officers and probation officer. They court hearing and deal with the crimes that the juvenile has done. Most systems place the minors in juvenile centers or detentions but other gets trial as adults. Two articles found on the Florida Southwestern College Library database discussed the Juvenile Justice System, how to make it better and the child trial as adult problem.
We have seen today in society of how crime rates have been rampant and how statistics show that most of the crimes were being made by minors. I believe that when most of them look at the bottom of these young offenders come disproportionately from impoverished single-parent homes that are located in the neighbourhoods desinvertido and have high rates of learning disabilities, mental health, and substance abuse and problems with the help of the system of juvenile justice that can make a great return on a successful transition to adulthood. Their ages ranged from 20 and under, most are under fifteen years of age. Juveniles tried as adults must assume the same consequences as any other criminal and are subject to state prisons with inmates much higher and that have probably committed crimes much more tortuous then you could ever have. These minors between the ages of nine to twenty according to the offence committed or of the number of times that are prosecuted and believe that it is immutable.
The establishment of the United States juvenile court system in the early 20th century marks a significant milestone in the history of juvenile justice. Prior to the creation of this system, children and youth who had committed crimes were punished in the same matter as adult offenders, rather than through rehabilitation. The juvenile courts’ historic claims to rehabilitate young offenders prompt a contradiction between treatment and punishment, something the system has disputed throughout decades (Feld, 2017). Through a historical analysis approach, I will explore both the changes and the goals of juvenile courts in the United States, examining news articles from the 1920s and the present day, while connecting to the idea of structural functionalism.
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
However, the structure and processes of the juvenile justice
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.
How/what was the juvenile system before the system was changed. The main aim of the youth justice system is protection of the public by preventing children from offending.
