Essay about Juvenile Offenders with Mental Health Issues

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

The correlation of mental health and substance use in adolescence is very problematic. Many believe that the relationship between the two are so strong that it plays a causative role in the development of adolescents. It places adolescents at risk for problems within their families, communities, and as an individual. This disease can be severe enough that it impairs the adolescent 's ability to function as a person. Both mental health and substance abuse are entangled within one another, that it makes it difficult to decipher which condition is causing each symptom. However, several research studies concluded that adolescents who suffer from mental illness may self-medicate their symptoms by using drugs. The juvenile justice systems suffer from adolescents with mental health disorders, substance abuse or even both.

Unfortunately, juvenile delinquency continued to increase, spiking in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While news headlines touted the juvenile delinquency epidemic, the public became fascinated with the rise of the “juvenile super-predator.” In 1992, frustrated lawmakers, who were determined to end the rise in juvenile delinquency, amended the JJDPA to include USC §5667f. This subsection provided funding for state-operated

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) is the principal federal program through which the federal government sets standards for juvenile justice systems at the state and local levels. It provides direct funding for states, research, training, and technical assistance, and evaluation. The JJDPA was originally enacted in 1974 and even though the JJDPA has been revised several times over the past 30 years, its basic composition has remained the same. Since the act was passed in 1974, the JJDPA focused solitary on preventing juvenile delinquency and on rehabilitating juvenile offenders.

The juvenile justice system faces a significant challenge in identifying and responding to the psychiatric disorders of detained youth because research has shown that it is difficult to define the best means to use and enhance the scarce mental health resources (Kessler & Kraus, 2007). According to Cocozza and Skowyra (2000) “Children’s and adolescents’ mental health needs have historically been addressed inadequately in policy, practice, and research and have only the number of youth with mental illness and their level of unmet needs recognized” (p 4). Furthermore, that the juvenile justice system has gone from treatment and rehabilitation to retribution and punishment, that the prevalence is

The data for this project was collected by administering an anonymous survey to incarcerated juveniles at (name of facility), the (name) receiving center and at the NAACP office in Sacramento, California. The survey asked for gender and parental status (incarcerated versus not incarcerated). Participants were given a paper survey and a pencil to complete the survey. See Appendix for a copy of the survey.

“There is a dearth of data on rape, suicide and assault rates among the 4,000 juveniles that are sentenced to adult prisons, or the 65,000 children who pass through the jail system

The United States has the highest rate of adult incarceration among the developed countries, with 2.2 million in jails and prisons. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Justice found that more than half of all prisons and jail inmates have a mental health problem compared to 11 percent of the general population, yet only one of three prison inmates and one in six jail inmates receive any form of mental health treatment. Those with mental disorders have been increasingly incarcerated during the past three decades. The treatment of severally mentally ill offenders has become an increasingly important and urgent issue because

The Juvenile Justice System Improvement Project (JJSIP) is designed to help states improve outcomes for juvenile offenders by better translating knowledge on “what works” into everyday practice and policy. Ultimately, the goal of the JJSIP is to reduce crime and delinquency and improve outcomes for youth in the juvenile

As mentioned within the paper, there are benefits to having services provided by both public and private entities; however, there are also concerns. The public sector, which was portrayed by services offered by TJJD, are required to provide yearly reports. In many ways these reports keep the system accountable for the money they are spending and the services they provide or require for juvenile offenders. The reports are open to the public and are easily accessible. As it relates to research, these reports allow people to critically assess juvenile programs, while challenging the government to refine or create programs superior to the ones offered in the past. Reports like these are harder to find regarding services offered by private entities and is a concern. Programs in which juvenile offenders are required to successfully complete, should never be determined by trial and error; however, this is often the case. On a positive note, private entities and community resources typically target the specific needs of a juvenile and include mental health components. Programs which do not offer mental health services should be critically assessed, as they are less likely to succeed. It is important that continued research is applied to the programs offered by both the public and private sectors. As it stands today, treatment services offered

The research study conducted by Anna Harrison focuses on the psychotic disorders that exist in incarcerated juveniles. The study examines the patterns of incarceration among the youth and how it exasperates development or continuance of mental disorders. Harrison emphasizes on the importance of studying factors that contribute to mental illnesses within juveniles. For the purpose of this study, Harrison collected a random sample of 1,829 juveniles entered into the Juvenile Treatment Detention Center (JTDC) in Chicago, Illinois. The sample selected was stratified by race/ethnicity, gender, age and legal status, which defined whether the individual was in the Juvenile Court or Adult Court at the time of the study. Baseline interviews were conducted while the juveniles were detained and continued over the next fourteen years for a follow

Should Juveniles be waived to adult court Philosophy 14 Nov 98 Should juveniles be waived to adult court. There has been tension between teens (pre-teens) and adults for thousands of years, and the question how to deal with the youth of a culture, in a punishment sense, has been with us for just as long. Socrates, for example, stated that "children show little respect for there elders." Since Socrates time largely due to the spread of guns and drugs, younger and younger children are committing violent crimes. Children that have special needs or have committed a criminal act have been subject to state protection since, 1838. The first juvenile court was established in Chicago in 1890. The assumption, that was made

A deep look into juveniles in adult prisons. Touch bases on several smaller issues that contribute to juveniles being in and effects of adult prisons. The United States Bureau of Prisons handles two hundred and thirty-nine juveniles and their average age is seventeen. Execution of juveniles, The United States is one of only six countries to execute juveniles. There are sixty-eight juveniles sitting on death row for crimes committed as juveniles. Forty-three of those inmates are minorities. People, who are too young to vote, drink alcohol, or drive are held to the same standard of responsibility as adults. In prisons, they argue that the juveniles become targets of older, more hardened criminals. Brian

In addition, chronic drug abuse by teenagers during a time of development it is a particular concern because, it can interfere with normal socialization and cognitive development and thus frequently contributes to the development of mental disorders. Violence has become more prevalent among the diagnosed population of drugs and mental disorders. Domestic violence and suicide attempts are more common of the mentally ill who end up incarcerated; there is

Adolescence is the distinct transitional stage between childhood and adulthood in human development, extending primarily over the teenage years and terminating legally when the age of majority is reached (Rathus, 2014). However in some instances, this biological, cognitive, social and emotional maturity may not be reached until a later stage and may be dictated by gender. Adolescence is characterised by rapidly changing and unpredictable behaviour (Freud, as cited in Rathus 2014), heightened and unstable emotions (Hall, as cited in Rathus 2014), disturbances in identity, the gradual development of one’s moral reasoning (Kohlberg, as cited in Rathus, 2014) and the gradual establishment of one’s independence. Several of these changes may occur at differing phases in adolescent growth. This development is categorized into three separate stages; early adolescence, middle adolescence, and late adolescence. Early Adolescence, commencing from the ages of eleven or twelve until the age of fourteen, comprises of several features such as rapid biological development and maturity, heightened stress levels and limited coping capabilities. On the other hand, middle adolescence, from the approximate age of fourteen to sixteen, involves the gradual cease of biological change, an increase in coping strategies and declined stress levels. Furthermore, late adolescence, commencing from the age of sixteen until the age of eighteen or nineteen, encompasses physical maturity, whereby the