Essay on Juvenile Offenders with Mental Illness

75% of youth in correctional facilities for delinquency are not in for a serious violent felony crime (Ross). Many minors in such facilities are held because their families cannot take care of them. Drug use, often stemming from the parents, is prevalent in teens detained in juvenile detention. Additionally, teen pregnancy and sexual abuse are common among the incarcerated young adults. Most of them have some level of a psychiatric disorder, however, a small percentage of them actually receive treatment. An unhealthy home environment, drug addiction, and mental trauma all contribute to the cycle of juvenile detention. In fact, 66% of youth who have been arrested will become repeat offenders within 24 months (“21 Juvenile Repeat Offenders

At national, state, and local levels, there is increasing recognition of the importance of identifying and responding to the mental health needs of youths in the juvenile justice system, as policymakers and practitioners struggle to find ways to address causes and correlates of juvenile crime and delinquency. The proposed guidelines for mental health assessment provide explicit information about how, why, and when to obtain mental health information on justice youths at each important juncture in processing.

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

The United States has the highest prison population in the world, with over two million incarcerated (World Prison Brief, 2016), of whom many are juveniles. It is well documented that youths who enter this system are more likely to suffer a host of negative health and lifestyle outcomes, such as alcohol/drug abuse, high school dropout, and mental health problems. Such phenomena occur in stark contrast with the aims of the US juvenile justice system, which supposedly intends to help offending youths re-assimilate back into society as productive citizens. As previously mentioned, incarceration often leads to poor mental health, which when combined with the conditions of confinement significantly raises the rates of suicide and

Youth incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates facilities as well as ruins lives at an alarming rate. As a society we cannot expect our kids to be the future of this nation when we are placing them in facilities where they become victims of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that is far worse for them than adults. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Standford Law school. She states in her award-winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness "Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted once being placed into a facility" (Alexander,123).  Adolescents being detained causes many problems that are much more detrimental to them than adults. Some of them will now have exposure to drugs and gangs. Others will become victims of sexual abuse from other older inmates or staff members and risk transmitting sexual diseases. Most young juveniles have a mental illness that has not been treated or they become suicidal when staying in a facility.  These young people are still adapting to their environment and should not be treated as adults.  They are unable to grow and develop when we are punishing them like adults and trapping them in the US justice system.  The families of these children will now suffer knowing what their child faces in these facilities. As a nation we cannot consider ourselves civilized when we are placing these young people in facilities that punish them like adults.

Most of us grow up being taught to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Social workers, especially, are exhorted by their code of ethics to challenge injustice “particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people” (National Association of Social Workers, 2008). So why are as many of 70% of those in local and state juvenile justice systems dealing with their illness in correctional facilities (National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 2016; Shufelt & Cocozza, 2006)? These are the national numbers. So what about in our own state of Virginia? The Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) conducted a study of juveniles in detention homes in 2002 and that found that more than 40% of males and almost 60% of females needed mental health services. As many as 7% of the males and 15% of the females needed this assistance urgently (Juvenile Offending, n.d.). Even more disturbing is the fact that nationally up to two out of three of that 70% was actually a dual diagnosis of more than one mental illness, often including a substance abuse disorder. One in five of those same juveniles were so severely disabled by their illness that they were unable to function as a young person and were seriously in danger of not developing into a functional adult (Hammond, 2007). Juveniles are considered more difficult to treat for mental illness due to developmental issues (Hammond, 2007) and rapidly changing biological and mental makeup.

The articles inform that more mentally ill people are in jail than in hospitals. According to statistics 159,000 of mentally ill are presently incarcerated in jails and prisons, mostly of crimes committed because they were not being treated. Some of them become violent and may terrorize their families and neighborhoods. Tragically, most of those instances of incarceration are unnecessary. We know what to do, but for economic, legal and ideological reasons, we fail to do it.

It has been almost 171 years since the establishment of America’s first juvenile detention center. Despite the change in culture, developments in psychology, and many years of application, the countries approach to reconciling criminal activity among youth has changed very little. A marginally refitted form of the model of adult incarceration, with a small amount of programming added in, has been the standard for rehabilitating delinquents set forth. It is absurd and ancient standard that has only produced failure at a high cost. The American Juvenile Justice System and its laws are in need of a overhaul to a system

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is one of a group of behavioral disorders in the disruptive behavior disorders category. Children who have these disorders tend to be disruptive with a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures. These children often rebel, are stubborn, argue with adults, and refuse to obey. They have angry outbursts, have a hard time controlling their temper, and display a constant pattern of aggressive behaviors. ODD is one of the more common mental health disorders found in children and adolescents (AACAP, 2009). It is also associated with an increased risk for other forms of psychopathology, including other disruptive behavior disorders as well as mood or anxiety problems (Martel,

The high incarceration rate of juveniles is a significant social problem that affects society as a whole as well as the youth’s individual welfare and developmental trajectory. Adolescents who are incarcerated in the juvenile justice system face a multitude of negative lifelong implications. The history of incarcerating youth in residential facilities such as juvenile halls, camps, ranches or group homes as a consequence for committing crimes has a deep-rooted history in the United States. “For more than a century, the predominant strategy for treatment and punishments of serious and sometimes not-so-serious juveniles offenders in the US has been placement into large juvenile corrections institutions” (Mendel, 2013, p.4). During the 18th and early 19th century, the judicial system harshly reprimanded youth and confined them in overcrowded penitentiary institutions with populations of adult offenders and the severely mentally ill (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2014).

Based on the assessment of MacPhail and Verdun-Jones (2013), people with different forms of mental conditions are highly over represented in the criminal justice system. The extent of over representation in the justice system is uncertain. However, its presence cannot be denied. The term mental illness or condition is used to refer to exclusively the serious psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia while at selected times it is used to refer to conditions listed on in the DSM-IV, which is the manual of mental disorders. Some of the more common conditions listed in the DSM include anti-social personality disorder as well as drug and substance abuse. Depending on the situation, the definition of mental illness applied will vary. Eighty percent to Ninety percent of criminal offenders have a diagnosis of mental disorder. To this end, it comes as no surprise that there is a high population of inmates with antisocial personality disorder in correctional facilities.

According to some estimates, as much as 50% of the U.S. prison population suffers from some sort of form of a mental illness. As a result, each year, thousands of prisoners that are mentally ill are sent to prisons, because of overcrowding and limited resources, are poorly equipped to treat them. So that being said, they are placed in solitary confinement. It’s harsh for them to get mistreated that way just because they are mentally ill. These inmates usually end up serving longer life sentences than the general inmate population.

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), opposition defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD) are three distinct disorders based upon their respective diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5. If ODD and CD were mild forms of ASPD, then there would need to be causal relationship between the childhood manifestations of ODD and CD and the adult manifestation of ASPD. There is evidence of comorbidity between ODD and CD, and also evidence to suggest that children diagnosed with these disorders may go on to develop ASPD later in life; however, correlation does not equal causation. The three disorders have subtle but important differences in their associated behaviors, underlying causes, treatment outcomes, and neurological signs.

There are many things that contribute to youth being in conflict with the law such as mental health, there has been much reliance on the juvenile justice system to meet the needs of juvenile offenders with mental health concerns. It is really concerning that the number of youth with significant mental health needs involved with the juvenile justice system. The presence of these youth in the juvenile justice system poses significant challenges to the juvenile justice and mental health systems this is presenting a major crisis for the juvenile justice

According to the literature review, clinical consensus suggests that pharmacological treatment is important for depression and a recent study found that 'medication' was the most commonly recommended intervention for depression in young offenders in custody (Chitsabesan et al., 2006), especially severe depression. However, all types of antidepressants showed limitation for use with juvenile offenders with depression because of side effects and monitoring cannot be provided in a detention facility. For psychotherapeutic interventions, there are particularly useful for the juvenile offender during stable periods, but not in crisis. Psychotherapeutic interventions can mobilize emotional, intellectual, and social and familial resources more