Parent Incarceration Essay

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.

Children are forced to forfeit their homes, their safety, their public and self-image, and their primary source of comfort and affection (Bernstein 2005). A national survey found that almost 70% of children when present when their parent was arrested (Bernstein 2005). Researcher Christina Jose Kamfner interviewed children who had witnessed their mother’s arrest and found that many suffered from post-traumatic stress symptoms; they could not concentrate or sleep and had flashbacks of the arrest (Bernstein 2005). The majority of the children at the scene of an arrest are taken away in a police car which is more intimidating than to say if they were taken away in a child welfare worker’s car (Bernstein 2005). Many of these children (is no other family is available) are shuffled around in the course of an arrest; the hospital for physical examinations first, then the police station for appropriate , “paperwork,” then to a juvenile detention center and lastly, they are deposited at a foster home (Bernstein 2005). Anyone can vouch that the process of what to do after the arrest is clearly a traumatizing one at that. After the arrest, children wait anxiously for the level of the sentence that their parent has to face. In most cases, children are unaware of why their parent is being sentenced because they were unaware that their parent was involved in the crime. Carl, for example, only remembered

Provision [SCRGSP], 2005; Jeffries and Bond, 2012). It is also widely discussed that there is an overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system itself (Jeffries and Bond, 2009), representing up to one quarter of prisoners in Australia (Makkai and Payne, 2003; Payne, 2005). This essay will address the current issues that Indigenous Australians face within the criminal justice system, particularly, with courts. The aim of this essay besides addressing these issues will also be to provide suggestions or alternatives that may help resolve the presented issues and improve the experience for Indigenous Australians in court.

In today's society juveniles are being tried in adult courts, given the death penalty, and sent to prison. Should fourteen-year olds accused of murder or rape automatically be tried as adults? Should six-teen year olds and seven-teen year olds tried in adult courts be forced to serve time in adult prisons, where they are more likely to be sexually assaulted and to become repeat offenders. How much discretion should a judge have in deciding the fate of a juvenile accused of a crime - serious, violent, or otherwise? The juvenile crime rate that was so alarming a few years ago has begun to fall - juvenile felony arrest rates in California have declined by more than forty percent in the last twenty years. While

The juvenile justice system is a foundation in society that is granted certain powers and responsibilities. It faces several different tasks, among the most important is maintaining order and preserving constitutional rights. When a juvenile is arrested and charged with committing a crime there are many different factors that will come in to play during the course of his arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing, and rehabilitation process. This paper examines the Juvenile Justice System’s court process in the State of New Jersey and the State of California.

There is alarming number of Indigenous Australia’s currently serving time in prisons and from 2001 the numbers has been increasing. According to Krieg (2006) Indigenous incarceration may be the direct consequences of inadequate housing, mental health, substance use, family violence and disability.

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.

When it comes to kids, we tend to baby them. We organize their lives and set limits on everything. If they want to do something outside those limits we tell them they are not old enough or they have not experienced enough of the world yet. After all, what can they possibly know about love, major decisions, and what is best for them? Yet somehow, despite all this, when they commit a crime we turn into hypocrites. Magically, they are geniuses who know everything about the world. In society’s eyes, they are no longer a child, but a monster.

In the NT, 97% of youth in the juvenile detention are IY (Vita 2015, p8). According to Vita (2015, p11), youth in the YJS come from backgrounds of poverty, alcohol abuse, violence and dysfunctional relations; hence higher level of intervention is required for these young people. This report agrees that alcohol abuse and weak family ties contribute to IY’s representation within the YJS, but it argues that forms of interventions should be limited. As mentioned in previous works, early interventions may lead to youth labelled as criminals (McAra & McVie 2010, p189; Paternoster and Iovanni 1989, p375). Additionally, previous interventions consisted of the removal of Aboriginal children from their natural families may affect the cultural identity of these youth (ATSIC 2000, p163; Graham 1999, p7 & 9). This has implications for the policies that seek to involve Aboriginal Elders in their response.

The over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system is a large problem in society and reasons as to why this may be occurring need to be examined (Walker & McDonald, 1995; AIC, 2013). Indigenous Australians make up less than three per cent of the overall Australian population, however Indigenous people are over-represented in Australian prison populations, with imprisonment rates that are around 12 times those of the rest of the Australian population (AIC, 2013). Rates of over-representation are even higher in juvenile detention, with a 10-17 year old Indigenous person being around 24 times more likely to be in detention than a non-Indigenous person of the same age (AIC, 2013; Cunneen & White, 2011). Indigenous Australians overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is usually due to offences pertaining to violence and public disorder (ABS, 2010; Hogg & Carrignton, 2006). This is endorsed by the fact that Indigenous Australians currently make up 40 per cent of those imprisoned for assault offences (AIC, 2013). The over representation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system may be attributed to a variety of reasons, known as risk factors (AIC, 2013).

The minimum security is federal prison camps adjacent to other federal prisons near military bases. Male prisoners who need only minimum security are set up in camps and those who will be transitioned [Passive voice] back into society and served their sentence will be set-up in a halfway house.

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

Shock probation is an intermediate probation where the offenders are initially assigned to secure confinement, but are later removed from detention and sentenced to serve the remainder of

Juvenile corrections encompasses the portions of the criminal justice system that deal with juvenile offenders. Many of these facilities and programs seem to mirror jails and prisons, but juvenile corrections are not meant for long term sentences. Sometimes sentences for juveniles are only several weeks long. Juvenile corrections also have a strong focus on rehabilitation because studies have shown that juvenile offenders are more prone to rehabilitation than adult offenders. These programs and services were aimed to help to teach

Introduction According to Bowen’s (2013) family systems theory, individuals in a family unit are all interconnected and the system is comprised of interlocking connections (Bowen, 2013). Consequently, whenever an individual in a family system is experiencing a stressor or problem the other individuals in the system will be affected by the stressor and will experience a change in the family system (Bowen, 2013). Bowen (2013) suggests that this family system can be used to understand the dynamics of the family unit and explains that an individual’s behavior has a specific function in his or her own family system (Bowen, 2013). By taking into consideration this theory when looking at a family struggling with an incarcerated parent, it is