Intern Experience Reflection Essay

Children that are born into poverty and less than desirable conditions are more times than not, destined to become involved in the juvenile justice system. This may be due the child’s destructive behaviors or for placement out of concern for the child’s safety and well-being. Neglect and abuse is more prevalent in disadvantaged environments and causes sometimes-irreversible emotional problems. For whatever reason the child enters the system, we know that it is not a place for youth to grow, be nurtured and become productive members of society.

Placing a juvenile in a detention center early in the court process increases the risk that youths will be found to be delinquent and damage their prospects for future success. A majority of the youths that are placed in these facilities pose little or no threat to the public and essentially do not need to be there. This portion of the juvenile court process is detrimental to the future and mental aspects of a youth’s life. We desperately need to change the way that we handle the juvenile court system because we are only reinforcing the delinquent behavior that these youths have been exposed to. We need to focus on the rehabilitation and prevention efforts for these youths not the punishment aspect and until then (insert a better ending).

This research is important because understanding what makes a juvenile delinquent is necessary to know. Parents can be educated on what is affecting their teen to contribute to delinquent behavior. The family structure has been avoided by many citizens. Educating the public on the family structure can make a different in a teen’s life.

Being the child of an incarcerated parent has substantial amounts of negative influences on youth today. As young children, many consider their parents as role models. Someone who they can confide in, someone who will preserve them, and someone who will guide them through life. For most youngsters having an incarcerated parent, means that their admirable example in life is absent. Not having a parent present in one's childhood leads to innumerable negative outcomes and impacts.

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

Many juveniles who entered the juvenile justice system are victims themselves of parental mistreatment such as neglect, physical, and emotional abuse. Once children into the juvenile system and is labeled a juvenile similar to adults being labeled a felon. These young offenders are stigmatized as criminal with little distinction between adults and juvenile offenders entering the prison system for the first time. Bernstein (2014) paints a vivid picture of how incarcerated juveniles expose to a new set of challenges such as posttraumatic stress syndrome, curtailed education, gang affiliation, and a gladiator mentality. These challenges that can develop in juvenile facility has

Many of these incarcerated men and women play various roles in their communities. They are parents, siblings, sons, and daughters and have family members who depend upon them for social and economic support. The incarceration of a parent has a particularly destabilizing role in a child’s life, oftentimes leaving the child in the care of a single parent, relative, or foster home (Levy-Pounds, 2006). Parental incarceration is considered an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), a designation for certain

The author attempts to glide over the emotional health and well being and the extent to which the child will be affected by parental incarceration. Most children with incarcerated parents experiance a broad range of emotions, including fear, anxiety, anger, sadness,loneliness, and guilt (The Osborne Association 1993). They may also act out inapproperiately, become disruptive in the classroom or engage in other anti sociol behaviors. Often, their academic performance deteriorates and they develop other school related difficulties. The emotional and behavioral difficulties have been linked to a variety of factors, including parent child seperation and social stigma which the author fails to discuss. The book did not contributed to my understanding of the scope of the problem of parental incarceration and the effects on the children. However reviewing existing literature, though scarce re interated my hypothesis that children of incarcerated parents experience a variety of negative consequences. Nature of the parents, crime, length of sentence, availability of family support or all important factors to be considered affecting these children.

The number of children with incarcerated parents continues to increase, thus the long-term ramifications of parental incarceration has become a topic of interest to many concerned people. In addition to understanding the effects of parental incarceration on children, school officials and penal institutions must be involved in support services available to incarcerated parents and their families.

According to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, children who have at least one parent in prison at the age of six are twice as likely to be involved in criminal activities as their peers (ASPE n.d.). We have heard it said many times; like father, like son. It means that, in traits such as looks, speech, or character, children are much like their parents. Growing up in a difficult situation often has some negative effects. Children of incarcerated individuals in particular have a rough time. They struggle to have good relationships with their parents, if any at all. Many develop mental and physical health issues due to such hardships. Therefore, the best method of ensuring healthy development

In Dallaire’s (2007) study she states incarcerated mothers of adult children report that their adult children were 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than adult children of incarcerated fathers. This pattern is detrimental to society as prison because a family lifestyle, the prospect of having a generation not see the inside of a jail cell diminishes. This study also shows incarcerated mothers of minor children were significantly more likely than incarcerated fathers of minor children to report that their children were in nonfamilial care situations such as foster care or orphanages (Dallaire 2007). This is important to note for the rehabilitation of incarcerated mothers. Since, incarcerated fathers do not bear responsibility of taking care of their children like the mothers do, there needs to be programs in which the partners of incarcerated mothers can be helped to keep their children from entering the system.

At the same time the Texas Department of Criminal Justice maintain public safety, help offenders achieve a change of maladaptive into more acceptable behavior, and make the reintegration of offenders favorable into society; they also emphasize the importance of maintaining together the families of these offenders, especially the children that can be seen as vulnerable targets. The “Giving Offenders’ Kids incentive and Direction to Succeed”, is a program created by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice which main goal is to prevent children of incarcerated offenders follow the same steps of their parents. As it mentioned in GO KIDS home page, children from an incarcerated parent have more probability to become a criminal and to be

Many children become familiar with the Juvenile Justice System without knowledge of why they continue to commit crimes. Many of them suffered years of being abuses, which caused socialization changes that pushed them to withdraw or act out. This research is important because it shows the long terms effects child abuse has on children that become juvenile delinquents. Statistics show increasing numbers of children who are the victims of child abuse and neglect, although they decrease in delinquency may reflect a greater nation focus on the issue and the use of more effective programs to attack the problem. This research is important to me because the Criminal Justice System doesn’t address the causes of deviant behavior in juvenile delinquents to its full potential. They rather just focus on policing and tough sanctions. Hopefully with this paper and many others child abuse can be prevented along with the long-term effects of child abuse and better programs can be invented to treat child abuse victims. The Office of Justice Programs came up with a “Safe Kids Safe Streets” Program, which acknowledge the correlation between child abuse and juvenile delinquency and is aimed at breaking the cycle of early childhood victimization and later delinquency (Safe

It has been a while since I started at the internship and I am really glad I decided to work here. I think the experience in this area is a good preview of my career and future. I am learning some important skills and finding out some things about myself and the tough skin I will need in order to stay in the area of juvenile support.

Teen delinquency can also arise when a teen’s parent is incarcerated. Teens that have a parent in prison are affected emotionally, behaviorally and psychologically (Johnson 461). The incarceration of a parent can gravely affect an individual because the parent is not prevalent throughout the teen’s life. The teen then becomes angry and acts out because they have so much emotional pain bottled up inside. “The children of incarcerated parents are at a high risk for a number of negative behaviors that can lead to school failure, delinquency, and intergenerational incarceration” (Simmons 10). Teens with incarcerated parents lack the assistance of parental figures. In True Notebooks, Sister Janet says that the incarcerated teens never had anyone to lead them in the right path or show that adults care about them. She says that because of the lack of direction the teens never had the opportunity to do better for themselves (Salzman 26). There is also a major cycle that exists between incarcerated parents and their children that puts these teens at risk. On April 10th of 2008, a conference at Bryant University was held to discuss the concerning issues of teens with incarcerated parents. During the conference, Patricia Martinez, director of the Rhode Island Department of Children: Youth and families stated that “We want to break the cycle of intergenerational crime. I have heard of so many caseloads managing 18-year-olds who had a parent