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Overcrowding In The Criminal Justice System

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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Juveniles that go through the rehabilitation process will be able to have a clean record after they reach 18, whereas the exact opposite if they went through the adult justice system. Stevenson feels that, “We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken.” (289) This quote represents the treatment towards juveniles in prison and how the potential of these children is wasted. The goal of rehabilitation is to help the youth understand the consequences of their actions and learn how to make better choices in the

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970 Words | 4 Pages

Adolescents can then be put into rehabilitation programs and detention centers to help them recover without going through the struggle of prison. However, most programs and centers are “meant to be transitional placements, yet over half of the youth they hold are there longer than 90 days” (Sawyer). This proves that juveniles are not being helped and they will not mentally improve. In conclusion, there are many valid arguments that individuals could share about never trying juveniles as adults but it’s unethical to always let them off

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In order to eliminate crime, we must recognize the negligence that lies within the juvenile prison system. These major criminals often started out in the juvenile system, so if they receive the help they need as teenagers, we can curb the negative behavior and diminish

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941 Words | 4 Pages

High rates of violence, unchecked gang activity, and overcrowding persist in Division of Juvenile Justice facilities where many youth sentenced as adults start their incarceration. Fights frequently erupt in facility dayrooms and school areas”. If the system continues to expose juveniles to more violence by sending them off to adult prison then problems get worse by slowing their development to

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1297 Words | 6 Pages

“Case management service coordinators identify a youth’s general treatment needs to determine the appropriate services for that youth. The service coordinators also develop community-based partnerships related to job placement and alternative education,” (Steward, 1997). The intensive case monitoring (trackers) system has been a huge help for case workers. College students are used to track a young offender’s whereabouts throughout the day. This system encourages juveniles to stay in school and keep a job.

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Overcrowded prisons lead to a whole host of issues, but most notably, it is a safety concern (not only for the prisoners’ lives but also corrections officers) because it creates a stressful environment (Portland State University). A stressful environment leads to increase tension and agitation which can then lead to acts of violence and corrections officers calling in “sick”. An increase in the number of cases handled by parole officers has led to members of the VBBC gang to go either unpunished for parole violations or to return back to prison for violations. As a result, what we are seeing now is that VBBC is using its numbers and control to work the corrections

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As said by Jessica Lahey, a contributing writer to New York Times and the Atlantic, "On any given day, 10,000 juveniles are housed in adult prisons and jails. These children lose more than their freedom when they enter adult prisons; they lose out on the educational and psychological benefits offered by juvenile-detention facilities." An adult prison does not have the structuring it needs to give adolescents the chance to prosper after prison. A teenager who is locked up at the age of 13 is ultimately missing out on 5 years of

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138 Words | 1 Pages

Youth courts are programs in which youth sentence their peers for minor delinquent and status offenses and other problem behaviors. The program philosophy is to hold youth responsible for problem behavior, educate youth about the legal and judicial systems, and empower youth to be active in solving problems in their community. Youth courts function to determine fair and restorative sentences or dispositions for the youth respondent. Youth court programs can be administered by juvenile courts, juvenile probation departments, law enforcement, private nonprofit organizations, and schools. Youth court programs operate under four primary models: Adult Judge, Youth Judge, Peer Jury, and Youth Tribunal Models.

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Two, that adult prison will lower Juvenile crime rates. Author of The Recidivism of Violent Youths In Juvenile and Adult Court David L. Myers writes that “This expectation of greater deterrence is based on the perception that juvenile courts are too lenient and that criminal courts can provide increased accountability and stronger punishment, which will reduce youthful offending” (Myers). These assumptions and perceptions false and are supported by opinion, not by

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1078 Words | 5 Pages

A correctional facility is not the place for a child. It is a chance that they can become terribly engaged into miscreant behavior. Multiple behavioral scientist and psychologists go to local detention centers and study the teens. It is found that when bringing minors together, it increases the chances of them engaging in even more delinquent behavior. It was also found that gathering minorities for special treatment in youth group settings would make it more likely for them to receive higher recidivism rates.

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473 Words | 2 Pages

Ten key issues facing juvenile justice are youths that there needs to be a good juvenile justice Administrator or Community to handle to handle and keep up with all the juvenile in the system. Have mental health issues and substance abuse issues. The screening processes for juveniles. Some juveniles are left to take care of themselves once they have been sent to different group homes, detention, or rehabilitation centers. Parents are not informed on the whereabout of their children.

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799 Words | 4 Pages

Youthful offenders go to juvenile justice charged with the different detention custody, diagnosis. They have a Department of Youth Services (DYS) is for comprehensive and coordinated program also have youth referred. They DYS has to employ medical, dental, psychiatric, social work, psychological, investigative, legal. The History of Juvenile was Massachusetts in the (1906-1996) and children charged with crimes and any other defendant under age seven. Initial Theory and treat juvenile offenders also guidance rather than as criminals.

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915 Words | 4 Pages

The cost of creating and maintain juvenile detention centers is insane. During the 1990s “the juvenile justice system saw a 43% increase in spending, mainly as a response to the expenditures that accompanied the increased confinement of juvenile offenders” (Gaudio, 2010). It has been proven that juvenile’s brains are not as developed as adults and the threat of detention does not affect them as much as it would in an adult so it would not be as affective at deterring crime. Being incarcerated also may make a juvenile more likely to reoffend once they are released.

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805 Words | 4 Pages

To better understand both sides of trying juveniles as adults, data on of trying juveniles as adults will be looked at. In doing this, evidence for why trying juveniles as adults is harmful will become clearer. The data will show that alternate programs such as community based program geared towards restorative justice and programs such as diversion will be most beneficial in helping juveniles learn social skill and learn the effect their behavior has on the community and the victim. Bringing both the juvenile and the community together with have a lasting effect and has been shown to reduce recidivism rate. Literature review Researchers look at the trying juveniles as adult in one of two ways, they look at juvenile delinquency as learned through peers, the second way they look at it is trying juveniles as adults is through a critical lens where the researchers believe that policy makers and judges benefit by keeping minority juveniles in detention centers or prison.

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1483 Words | 6 Pages

In places like Chicago with high crime rates a study was conducted and found that juvenile detention increases recidivism by 22-26 percent and lowers chance of getting a high school degree by thirteen percent (Economic Perspectives on Incarceration 40). With all these teens getting into trouble at such a youthful age, their chance of being arrested again increases and as their chance of getting a high school degree decreases. There is less opportunity for young people every day and their only disadvantage is being a minority. By losing out on so many opportunities at an early age they are more likely to be incarcerated later in life which does not help the problem of incarcerating too many people. The worst part is that by incarcerating all these people both rightfully and unjustly, it just makes them more likely to go back to prison later, “70 percent of released [prisoners] are rearrested within five years of release” (Economic Perspectives on Incarceration 39).

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