Juvenile Boot Prisons

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).

Juvenile delinquency is a relatively new phenomenon. For this reason, society’s reactions and solutions to the problem of delinquency are also modern developments. The United States developed the first youth court in 1899 and is now home to many new and formerly untested methods of juvenile rehabilitation and correction. One of many unique programs within the Juvenile Justice system, boot camps are institutions designed to keep delinquent juveniles out of traditional incarceration facilities and still provide a structured method of punishment and rehabilitation. Boot camps developed in the early 1990s and quickly proliferated throughout the nation. Specifically, they are “…short-term residential programs modeled after

In order to properly address mandatory incarceration for chronic juvenile offender’s criminal activities, it is important to begin with psychological assessments and evaluations. Half of our youths have experienced some type of psychological trauma such as depression, PTSD, personality disorders, anxiety, anger issues, or dissociation, just to name a few (Moroz, K. 2009). In order to determine mandatory incarceration, all of these factors must be considered. I will agree with most of our society that is , if they are a danger to society and serious of the crime, they need to be put into detention, where they cannot cause harm but where they can received the right intervention program and mental health treatment for them, it’s the law. The juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate not punish young offenders. Punishment is not the answer in solving their delinquent behavioral patterns.

“The effects of the juvenile justice programs are “profound and crippling,” setting youth back instead of helping them.” (Just Learning: The Imperative to Transform Juvenile Justice Systems into Effective Educational Systems) These centers do much more harm than good when it comes to the children staying in these facilities. The “education” that these centers are giving

This paper evaluates the history of correctional boot camps, the eligibility of whom is accepted into the program, the graduation statics, and crime recidivism after completion of the program.

Introduction: Recidivism or, habitual relapses into crime, has time and time again proven to be an issue among delinquents, which thereby increases the overall juvenile prison population. This issue has become more prevalent than what we realize. Unless a unit for measuring a juvenile’s risk of recidivism is enacted and used to determine a system to promote effective prevention, than the juvenile prison population will continue to increase. Our court system should not only focus on punishing the said juvenile but also enforce a program or policy that will allow for prevention of recidivism. So the question remains, how can recidivism in the juvenile prison population be prevented so that it is no longer the central cause for increased

San Jose Police Chief, Bill Landsdowne, stated that, “[l]ocking up kids is the easiest way. But once they get in the juvenile justice system, it’s very hard to get them out” (Holman & Ziedenberg, date). Detaining youth, in particular non-violent offenders, has more of a negative, long-term impact on youth as well as the community. With the inception of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, the use of retribution is being pushed aside for more restorative and rehabilitation efforts. States that have embraced this initiative are finding that not only are the numbers of youth being detained decreasing but that alternatives to detention are providing opportunity for juveniles to become productive members of the community. All this effort without increasing risk to the community and safety issues. More importantly this initiative works in addressing the underlying issues causing delinquent behavior.

Juvenile boot camps are what are known as a shock incarceration technique. The purpose of shock incarceration is to scare the convicted into changing their ways. Unlike most other shock incarceration techniques, the boot camp method is designed as a way to promote structure and discipline into the lives of the juveniles. They do this by having a highly structured routine that includes physical training, marching in formation, and professional development activities. The use of juvenile boot camps has been used in the United States since the early 1980’s, but has recently been under fire for not being effective in reducing the rate of recidivism in the juveniles who participate in it. They were first created as an alternative to traditional sentences such as incarceration and parole. Boot camps also benefited the system by being more cost effective to run than those traditional techniques because the programs are much shorter than traditional sentences. The other benefit to the system was it reduced prison overcrowding. The ultimate goal of boot camps is to reduce recidivism, but the question is, are juvenile boot camps accomplishing this goal.

Juvenile Detention Centers were created with the intention of rehabilitation. However, over time rehabilitation has been forgotten. Education is part of rehabilitation. In

The goals of juvenile corrections are too deter, rehabilitate and reintegrate, prevent, punish and reattribute, as well as isolate and control youth offenders and offenses. Each different goal comes with its own challenges. The goal of deterrence has its limits; because rules and former sanctions, as well anti-criminal modeling and reinforcement are met with young rebellious minds. Traditional counseling and diversion which are integral aspects of community corrections can sometimes be ineffective, and studies have shown that sometimes a natural self intervention can take place as the youth grows older; resulting in the youth outgrowing delinquency.

Currently to deal with juvenile offenders involved in the youth crime, there are two options available. The first option that prevails to a larger extent is known to us as incarceration while the second option that is slowly gaining trends is known to us as rehabilitation programs. This paper focuses on thorough analysis of both these options and the impact that they have on the offenders as well as the society as a whole. The paper also assesses the viability of these options in order to determine which of these will prove to be more effective and beneficial.

“Much is known about effective prevention programs from research and practice and the question of how to optimize such programs for cost-effective impact on juvenile behavior is worthy of careful consideration”("Improving The Effectiveness Of Juvenile Justice Programs”).

In recent decades, juvenile crime has become somewhat of a controversy due to the young age and immaturity of these criminals. Incidences of juvenile crime skyrocketed in the 1980s and 1990s, and policymakers pushed for laws that sent children as young as thirteen years old to trial, and even made them eligible for prison sentences. The general public has expressed a common desire to reduce the incidence of juvenile crime and find effective legislation to discipline these youths, but there are questions about these methods. What is more effective, incarceration or rehabilitation? Does criminal punishment intimidate more youths away from a life of crime, and would productive rehabilitation efforts influence these youths to becoming more valuable members of society?

Finally, literature on the juvenile justice system often focuses on program implementation and effectiveness at addressing rehabilitation, as well as diversion techniques within the system (Greenwood, 2008). This review audits these problems in detail and establishes them within the bigger struggle in the juvenile justice system to rehabilitate youth offenders.

It is a common believe that adolescents require a special system thru which be processed because they are “youth who are in a transitional stage of development…young offenders that are neither innocent children nor mature adults…” (Nelson, 2012). Because juveniles are in a process of constant development sociologically, psychologically and physiologically, the juvenile court system focuses on alternative sentences and the creation of programs that will offer them rehabilitation instead of incarceration. However, in cases of extraordinary circumstances, the juvenile system shifts from looking at rehabilitation as a first choice to accountability and punishment (Read, n.d). All levels of society are collectively involved in delinquency