Juvenile Justice Facilities : Protecting The Health And Wellness Of Our Youngest Inmates

Society implemented policies like the Anti-drug Abuse Act of 1986 and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that targeted racial minorities, people with disabilities and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. On an institutional level, health disparities continue to rise between the prison and general population because the private prison industry is focused solely on monetary gain. The cost of providing healthcare to prisoners diminishes profit. A lack of quality education and exorbitant high school dropout rates increase the likelihood of unemployment and criminal behavior leading to incarceration. Policy, privatization of prisons and education are upstream factors impacting incarceration and healthcare in prisons. Employment, income and criminal behavior are downstream factors. Prisoners aren’t being given resources or opportunities for rehabilitation. Instead, they are thrust back into the social inequalities that predisposed them to a life of drugs and crime. As people are disenfranchised from society, they are pushed to the margins of

Child molestation and sexual assault is an ever growing problem in the United States today, but an even bigger problem is that these pedophiles are being released after only serving as little as one quarter of their sentence. In California alone (at the time the bill was first passed), there was an estimated 680 individuals on parole for molestation and other sexual assaults including sodomy by force with a victim under the age of thirteen as well as child molestation with foreign objects.

Roughly 79.4% of adolescent sex offenders experienced sexual abuse while only 46.7% of nonsexual offenders reported abuse (Burton, Miller, & Shills, 2002).

The issue of sexual assault in correctional facilities is very complex and the implications reach far beyond the walls of the institution. Congress found that “prison rape endangers the public’s safety by making brutalized inmates more likely to commit crimes when they are released.”

The number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system is one of the most pressing problems facing law enforcement and corrections today (Cuellar, McReynolds, & Wasserman, 2006). The Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health estimated that about 20% of children and adolescents in the general population have mental disorders with some degree of at least mild functional impairment (USPH, 1999). Subsequent research has found much higher rates of serious mental health problems among youth in the juvenile justice system. Among youth who have been arrested, one study found that 31% of youth had received services from the mental health system (Rosenblatt, Rosenblatt, & Biggs, 2000). Two studies of youth in juvenile detention found that between 60% and 68% met the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder (Teplin, Abram, McClelland, Dulcan, & Mericle, 2002; Wasserman, Ko, & McReynolds, 2004). Once youth with emotional disturbances enter the justice system, repeated arrests are common through the remainder of childhood and into adulthood. Recidivism rates for individuals with a serious mental illness are nearly double those in the general population (Baillargeon, Binswanger, Penn, Williams, & Murray, 2009; Constantine, Petrila, Andel, Givens, Becker et al., 2010). In an analysis of juvenile trajectories, youth with emotional disturbances in their late adolescent years were more likely to fall into the high arrest trajectory class and much

Terry, VanderWaal, McBride, and Holly, discussed the impact of substance abuse within the juvenile justice system. They discussed treatment programs and services that are currently available. Improved substance abuse interventions have the potential to reduce recidivism amongst juveniles. Funding is needed to improve substance abuse treatment centers. Funding for program development requiring collaborative applications may provide valuable incentives for the development of successful juvenile justice collaborations. (Terry, VanderWaal, McBride, & Holly, 2000). Tsui discusses the shortcomings of utilizing detention as the primary method of dealing with the juvenile justice system. Tsui focused on the city of Chicago, and examined the present state of the juvenile justice system by identifying possible barriers and solutions to integrating restorative justice practices in a system primarily focused on detention. (Tsui, 2014).

I advocate for a revision of the juvenile justice system that truly promotes social justice. The ideal detention facility I propose for delinquent juveniles more so resembles the practices and concepts the Missouri Division of Youth Services provides. This system does not bar children in cells. It does not force them to wear dehumanizing uniforms, they are provided with sufficient and well-trained mental health professionals. They are provided with anger management programs. It is devoted to “offer a demanding, carefully crafted, multilayered treatment experience, designed to challenge troubled teens and to help them

Whenever an inmate gets incarcerated or is found guilty for a conviction, many of their rights go away except for a select few. The few rights that prisoners get to keep are, but are not limited to, visitation rights, mail services, religious gatherings and studies, medical treatment and care, and access to courts and legal assistance. These services help inmates stay in touch with society and help inmates get treated fairly throughout the facility (Santillan, 2010). In 1969, there were approximately 300,000 people incarcerated in federal, state, and county jails or prisons. Today that number surpasses 2.4 million and to add to it, there are approximately 4 million under parole or probation (People’s Law Office).

However the way juvenile our house and treated while in the care of state corrections officer is more detrimental mental and physical health of juvenile offenders as explained in Neil Bernstein (2014) Burning down the House. Neil Bernstein (2014) takes an in-depth look into juvenile prisons facilities practices and procedures that has a life altering effect on juveniles entering correctional facilities.

A common assumption amongst those in the field of criminal justice is that most adult criminals were victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and/or neglect in their childhood. A study by Steele in 1975 found that, of 200 detained juvenile offenders, between 72% and 84% had backgrounds of child abuse (Weeks & Widom, 1998). A 1979 study by Lewis, Schanok, Pincus, and Glaser found that of a sample of male juvenile offenders, 75% had experienced childhood physical abuse. In follow-up interviews with the same subjects previously surveyed, 80% reported childhood physical abuse (Weeks & Widom, 1998). A study done by the Department of Correctional Services Research and Reporting Unit in 1983 had inmates answer a questionnaire; 25.2% of the inmates who answered the questionnaire reported childhood victimization (1998).

…the BJS found that 4.5 percent of the nation’s prisoners, i.e., inmates who have been convicted of felonies and sentenced to more than a year, had been sexually abused in the facilities at which they answered the questionnaire during the preceding year: approximately 60,500 people. Moreover, 3.2 percent of jail inmates—i.e., people who were awaiting trial or serving short sentences—had been sexually abused in their facilities over the preceding six months, meaning an estimated total, out of those jailed on the day of the survey, of 24,700

Modernizing Mental Healthcare in The Juvenile Justice System Rhoshunda Ellis Walden University Modernizing Mental Healthcare in The Juvenile Justice System Introduction As a Human Services Professional with a background in criminal justice, this article will focus on accessing and helping juvenile offenders in the United States struggling with mental health disorders. For sentenced juveniles with behavioral problems and concerns of mental health, being included in a juvenile mental health court can provide psychological, behavioral, educational, social, and familial clinical assessments for use in determining best approaches to treating the underlying causes of many delinquent behaviors. Throughout the 1930s, the Chicago School of Psychology recognized treatment for juvenile offenders that focused on the economic and social aspect of the criminal activities of juveniles, (Granello & Hanna, 2003). During this time, juvenile courts were established and designed to yield an alternative form punishment of juvenile offenders in an adult criminal system. Emphasis was being placed on rehabilitation instead of punishment; however, in the mid-1980s punishment of juvenile offenders become the top priority. Because of the severe wave of juvenile during the late 1980s, States used the beginning of the 1990s to revise their juvenile statues that they relied so heavily upon. "Under new laws, certain charges or offenses required legal responses based on the nature of the offense"

The United States leads the world in the incarceration of young people, there are over 100,000 youth placed in jail each year. Locking up youth has shown very little positive impact on reducing crime. Incarcerating youth have posed greater problems such as expenses, limited education, lack of employment, and effect on juveniles’ mental and physical well-being.

I choose this topic because sexual assault is one of the most offensive crimes committed in our society. Not only is it a threat to the community, but it has a physically and psychologically effect on the victim in many ways. For the last couple of decades, sexual assault, rape, and child molestation has become the focal point of public concerns today. According to a 1993 National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, about 500,000 rapes or sexual assaults occur each year (Statistics, March 2010). The Department of Justice states that, “rape crimes have risen nearly three times as fast as the total crime rate”, although other studies have shown statistics that are in

This literature review provides a brief overview of six scholarly articles and other facts about sexual assault .This review will first define sexual assault as it is defined in these articles. It will analyze the strengths and limitations of the definition used and will discuss the occurrence of sexual assault in the general population.This review will also illustrate the protective factors, barriers to recovery , impact of development and the specific sexual assault population that are absent in these articles. Sexual assault is a societal issue that impacts men and women at every age in their life, it’s much more highly reported among college aged women. The majority of women who are victims of rape are