Overcrowding In The Criminal Justice System

In American criminal justice systems a youth detention center, also known as a juvenile hall is a secure prison or jail for children and young adults 21 and under, often termed juvenile delinquents, to which they have been sentenced and committed for a period of time, or detained on a short-term basis while awaiting court hearings and/or placement in such a facility or in other long-term care facilities and programs. Juveniles go through a separate court system than adults, the juvenile court, which sentences or commits juveniles to a certain program or facility. Once processed in the juvenile court system there are many different pathways for juveniles. Some juveniles are released directly back into the community to undergo community-based

As a result, the systems have become overpopulated and overcrowded and many times this leads to the issue of too many residents and not enough empty beds.

Crowding can create extremely dangerous environments in juvenile detention centers and juvenile correctional facilities. Many times the administration is not prepared to handle the large number of residents and therefore the facilities can become unstable and create instability in simple logistics. Overcrowding can also bring about an increase in violence. Overcrowding has been found to exist in many facilities for juveniles. It may also lead to the decrease in availability to provide the youth with much needed and promised programs and services while they are in the facility. If funding is an issue with a specific facility, overcrowding can be problematic in terms of the availability of services such as education and mental health to all of the

The incarcerated youth population requires careful and structured intervention, which must be provided by the facilities.

Many different mental health treatment strategies exist for juveniles. It is the responsibility of case management to decide what type of intervention strategy works best for each youth in his or her mental health treatment plan. Mental health services that can be provided to the youth include, individual counseling, group counseling, crisis counseling, family intervention, medication management, and transition planning.

Statistics show that 66% of youth who have been arrested will become repeat offenders within 24 months, and 49% of youth become repeat offenders within the first year. 44% of repeat offenders are rearrested for a felony.

According to a new study by a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teens that are sent to jail tend to have far worse outcomes later in life than teens who avoid serving time for similar crimes. “We find that kids who go into juvenile detention are much less likely to graduate from high school and much more likely to end up in prison as adults,” said co-author Dr. Joseph Doyle, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of