Burning Down The House By Neil Bernstein

By reading this book, I learned a lot about teenagers’ critical situations at juvenile hall. This book gave me a greater insight and deeper understanding of what their lives are like and the challenges they face in this place. I also learned that the legal system is not doing a great deal to help these young kids mend their lives. They are not being offered counseling or therapy which could help facilitate a great deal of things for them such as, getting a better orientation of a path for them to follow, dealing with the excessive amount of stress they face in a healthy way

Childhood is a time in which memories are created, adventures are explored and social awareness begins to develop. The events that occur during childhood are pivotal in the development of a healthy and substantial life. However, what if those experiences were taken from a child? What would the outcome be if a child could not experience what it is like to be young? Juvenile incarceration strips a person of their childhood and essentially takes away the experiences necessary for them to develop into healthy functioning adults. Even though juvenile incarceration is an effective method of punishment for those who have committed heinous crimes, the justice system should not convict children and adolescents as adults because of the child 's circumstances that lead to the crime as well as the disastrous effects it causes on the mental and emotional state of the child.

Transferring an adolescent offender to adult court is a tight decision. It has far-reaching implications for the adolescent involved and significant symbolic meaning for the justice system. For the adolescent, transferring to the adult system, it holds the possibility of harsher punishment (including physical, sexual, or psychological victimization by other inmates. Also the endurance of developmental costs (Chung, Little, and Steinberg, 2005; Mulvey and Schubert, 2012). For the system, transferring an adolescent to adult court is an unambiguous statement that the criminal justice system will no longer shelter the adolescent, by virtue of his or her acts, from harsh justice. Transfer to adult court indicates that the demand for proportional

The history of the juvenile justice system came into play because young people who were accused of a crime were imprisoned with adults. They made the juvenile justice system because they thought that they should deal with youth separate from adults because of their lack of maturity to grasp what they have done wrong. “In many jurisdictions, African-American youth were overrepresented in felony charges filed in adult courts compared to their percentage in the felony arrest population; this was most evident in charges for drug and public order offenses” (Juszkiewics, J., & Schindler, M, 2001). These have always been a differential difference in the treatment of African American males and

Derron is also part of the estimated 250,000 juveniles who are tired, sentenced and incarcerated each year by the American Justice System, a practice that’s occurred in the United States for the past couple centuries, where children and teenagers are tried in court as adults and later sent to maximum security prisons with murderers, rapists and other violent criminals. The thrill of performing dangerous actions and the unwillingness of the consequences, a void of adult influence in the home has facilitated to an increase probability in suicide, sexual assault and the likelihood to commit another crime after release. The ineptness to hold a juvenile accountable in a safe manner can change but it’ll require the realization of the state and federal government to choose a rehabilitation recovery rather than throwing adolescents in with violent adults .

Juveniles committing crimes, being arrested and going to jails and prisons, is a sad fact that has hit every city, in every state in the United States of America. It is not a hard thing to comprehend, turn on the TV and watch the news. Every night there is surely to be a report about a crime committed by one of America’s youth. Many people question the reason for such high numbers of juveniles committing crimes; others turn a blind eye and refuse to acknowledge the fact that every day more children of this country are slipping into the life of crime. Some concerned members of society ask what can be done to stop it; how can they help? The answer is action! Law enforcement, as well as Local, State, and

In 2005, the supreme court banned the death penalty for youth offenders, because of them being undeveloped, immature, and irresponsible. But they haven’t used that same logic when they send juveniles to violent adult prisons. “In my observation, the incarceration of young prisoners in adult prisons has an extremely destructive effect. Young prisoners are more susceptible to negative influences than adults” (Scott). When a young prisoner is in this type of environment, they will try to do anything they can to fit in.

Discussed earlier was the idea of rehabilitating youths in reformatories at the House of Refuge, but only youths deemed reformable (Fox, 1996). What about the youth who were not reformable? What about the youth that commit a serious violent offense such as murder, rape, torture, or armed robbery? In the 1980’s during the “get tough” on juvenile crime movement, states passed waiver legislation that allowed for the transfers of youths to adult court (Kupchik, 2003). Not only has there been no significant findings that trying juveniles as adult does not lower the potential for recidivism, but it has not been found to be an effective means of crime control (Fagan, 2008). Although being tried as an adult opened up even more constitutional safeguards than had been provided post-Gault, the transfer of juveniles to adult court went against the moral notion of keeping youths out of court and out of the system (McGowan, A., Hahn, R., Liberman, A., Crosby, A., Fullilove, M., Johnson, R., … Stone, G., 2007). How does the juvenile justice system, after years of reform and change get back to being a therapeutic and focused on individualized justice? Is it possible?

Putting juveniles who have a range of offenses in the same facility is not a good idea, for the fact that lower and higher offenders can trade tricks and secrets to perfect their next crime or come up with a new one. Although some of these facts are disturbing none are as horrifying as, “75 percent of confined juveniles live in facilities that violate at least one critical physical design standard” (Ahranjani, Maryam, et al. 24), such as overcapacity, not enough sleeping areas, and the size of living space is smaller than supposed to be, which The American Bar Association found out in their studies. This has to do the lack and misuse of funding and the overcapacity of kids being sent to detention centers.

Those who support placing juveniles in adult prison indicate juveniles should be able to distinguish right from wrong. The loved one of those affected by juvenile crime are looking for someone to be accountable for the loss of their family member. “Protecting the public from these vicious juvenile criminals became the primary concern of juvenile justice policymakers. The decline in the crack market in the mid-1990s removed much of the drug 's influence on the U.S. violent crime rate, with one exception. While crack left the inner cities, the weapons remained in the hands of juveniles and young adults” (Snyder 967).

There have been thousands of juvenile programs which have been developed and undergone comprehensive recidivism analysis by outside auditors over the past thirty years. Despite the good intentions of the late Judge Lindsey and other advocates, the collapse of the rehabilitative model can be attributed to: (1) the sacrifice of public safety, (2) not promoting the welfare of youths in the system, and (3) classifying youths as children in the regulation of crime (Scott & Steinberg, 2008 p. 83). Judge Lindsey and other progressives during much of the twentieth century believed in being parental role models, handling youthful offenders as neglected children whose welfare was of primary concern when the state intervened in response to their criminal conduct. The mantra of progressives and professionals for years has been that there are no wicked children, just inadequate parents or guardians; however, now there are psychiatrists who acknowledge that previous thinking was flawed and that some children, through no fault of the parents or their environment, are simply bad seeds (Appleyard, 2010). This thread will offer a brief synopsis of changes to the law in regards to juveniles due to the changes in theory and reality.

There is a direct relationship between juveniles that are convicted and held in adult prisons and the depression it inflicts, creating a poisonous cycle of crime that they will be unable to escape from. After an increase of murders committed by juveniles during the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s, a quick adjustment was made by the supreme court and state courts to increase the abilities of the law to condemn violent juveniles with bleak futures into adult prisons to protect the children who had more optimistic chances. While the protection of the less violent children is important, however, there has been a great many studies that prove it is not the wisest way of seeing the situation at large. Juveniles in prisons designed for their age groups create a sense of value to them as human beings, are generally safer, and are more focused on rehabilitation into society as young adults. Sentencing a juvenile to an adult prison leads to feelings of worthlessness, depression, alienation and a fearful environment where they are unsafe and more likely to be encouraged to further their crime abilities to survive in an adult world.

The American juvenile justice system is consistently developing to adhere to societal values, just as any individual or system in our surroundings. It is important to note that there is not one but several juvenile justice systems within the United States. Each state has its own set of laws governing their juvenile justice system (National Research Council Institute of Medicine, 2001, p. 155). 1899 was the beginning of a substantial shift in the rights of juveniles. However, with two opposing views of the protection of society and the rehabilitation of youth, several states have battled between adopting policies less stringent on youth and adopting policies like the 1990’s, “Get Tough” depriving youth of the protection of the Justice System (University of Pittsburgh, 2009).

Juvenile offenders are increasing day by day regardless of the efforts to control the youth crime. It is important to understand the fact that even though the offenders fall in the young age bracket, they are still a part of human species. Human nature responds to violent actions with violent reactions. Violent reactions cause an increase in the violent actions instead of controlling them. However violent reactions may cause a temporary stop in the violent actions which may lead the authorities to believe that they have contained the crime. However, that doesn't stand true as a temporary stop does not result in a permanent solution.

It may seem shocking that America has one of the highest crime rates per capita compared to other similar industrialized nations. Over the years, there have been many discussions and efforts in order to reduce this problem. Perhaps one of the more sensitive issues when discussing crime in America is the problem of juvenile crime. Recently, juveniles make up 3% of all felonies committed each year and 6% of all violent crimes (criminamerica.net). These statistics have troubled politicians for decades as they have worked to find a solution. Starting in 1994 the Clinton administration started putting stricter punishment on juvenile offenders, but it was quickly realized that this harsh punishment may not be the best solution. Various studies and programs put into action have shown that early prevention in a child’s life is much more effective and more cost efficient in reducing crime. Because of these efforts, juvenile crime has reduced 68% since the violent boom of the 1990s. In light of these discoveries, it is important for states to focus on these results in order to reduce crime.