The Impact Of Juvenile Recidivism Rates On Youth

Recidivism can be defined as the "reoccurrence of criminal behavior. Indicators of criminal behavior are re-arrests, re-convictions, and reincarcerations" (Maxfield & Babbie, 2006).

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.

Should juveniles have the opportunity to redeem themselves after they have committed a crime or should they suffer the consequence in a correctional facility? According to the CDC and the Prevention Task Force on Community Preventive services, the current criminal system is causing counterproductivity in solving the issues that surround this percentage of society. Juvenile Prisons do not aid in ending recidivism, but instead stall any real progress in eliminating such behavior (Mayeux). This procedure should not be the first punishment implemented on juveniles. Instead the U.S. government should execute alternate choices of punishment for juvenile offenders in order to help them learn from their mistakes; not only will this help create a change

Juvenile justice laws have changed with conservative motions and with the general ongoing swinging pendulum between rehabilitation and incarceration. During the 1990’s the pendulum swung to the right towards tough-on-crime initiatives due to an increase of violent crimes by juveniles and seemingly failed rehabilitative efforts due to high rates of recidivism. State legislatures across the country enacted statutes under which growing numbers of youths can be prosecuted in criminal courts and sentenced to prison (Piquero & Steinberg, 2007). As of 1992, “the number of youth under 18 confined in adult prisons ha[d] more than doubled during the decade prior” (USDOJ, 2000, p.4). At the time of their 2007 publication, Piquero and Steinberg reported

“Palm Beach County, Fla. -- On May 26, 2000, 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill shot his teacher, Barry Grunow, with a .25 caliber handgun in school. Palm Beach County prosecutors tried Brazill as an adult for first degree murder. The jury found Brazill guilty of second-degree murder and the judge sentenced him to 28 years in an adult facility. After his release, Brazill will face two years of house arrest and five years of probation.” (Klug)

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.

To discuss the findings on juvenile and adult recidivism, 20-literature review articles were used. Out of the 20 articles found, many did not report findings on implementation and impact of reentry programs on reducing juvenile recidivism. In 2004-2011 data obtained from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) was used in this study. These programs were comprised of 16 out of 89 programs located in Colorado, Maryland, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Maine, Missouri, Indiana, `Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Washington and South Carolina. Arrest data acquired from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) were used to conduct a treatment outcome evaluation for both SVORI and non-SVORI respondents consisting of in person,

The juvenile justice system acts as a rehabilitation, treatment, and educational facility for delinquent minors. The intention of forming the juvenile court was to keep minors out of adult prisons and thus mitigate their exposure to poor role models and adult criminal activity. Further, the system aims at divert them from increased antisocial behavior thus achieving positive outcomes. However, due to the outcomes in most juvenile cases, such as failure to lower juvenile crime or reduce recidivism, one would argue that the juvenile court has outlived its usefulness.

The national trend towards getting tough on juvenile crime by altering the juvenile justice system to more closely mirror the adult system was examined in order to determine whether secure confinement of juvenile offenders is as effective as community-based rehabilitative and treatment programs for these youth. Politicians and public perceptions have allowed the juvenile justice system to evolve from one of reform based thinking to one of punishment based thinking, placing more young offenders in secure facilities than ever before. The social repercussions of

The issue of whether juveniles should be prosecuted like adults is a controversial one. Today, a high percent of juvenile offenders have a past criminal history or have been arrested for violent crimes such as rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and homicide. These offenses are serious and should be dealt with seriously. If a juvenile choses to act in violence and currently been on probation for such acts, then perhaps, they should be treated in the adult court. If the juvenile is, a repeat offender and they did not learn anything from the rehabilitation facilities provided by the state, harsh consequences should follow. It is estimated that seventy-five percent of adolescents who spent time in juvenile detention centers are incarcerated

Those who make and influence policy are eager to know “more about what happens to youth after they have been in contact with the juvenile justice system. What are their rearrest and reincarceration rates? How do they fare in terms of education, employment, and other important outcome measures while they are under juvenile justice supervision and afterward?”(p.1). Sullivan points out that society’s “tough on crime mentality” is the precursor to trying youth as adults. Incarcerating them in adult prisons only increases their chances to offend and become repeat offenders. (p.9) “Being in adult facilities alone does not just increase the chance for being a recidivist. Simply the act of criminal court processing, even without a criminal sentencing,

A juvenile may be considered as a person who is not old enough to be judged as an adult, falling into the age group of 16 to 18 years. They are generally perceived to be immature and unable to make critical and rational decisions as compared to the adults. Hence, at often instances, these individuals end up committing an activity that is not permissible as per the persisting law. This makes the criminal law to take charge on them in either the form of arrests or in some other kind of interventions. There are several instances when these offences are committed by the same juvenile after experiencing the consequences of the previous crime. This repetition of crime is referred as Recidivism (National Institute of Justice, 2014). The discussion henceforth thus intends to gather facts related to juvenile recidivism, besides analyzing the possibilities of juveniles to repeat crimes once they are released from the correctional system within the mainstream society.

This paper explores the factors that contribute to the recidivism rate of juvenile offenders. Recidivism refers to a person 's relapse into criminal behavior, often after the person receives sanctions or undergoes intervention for a previous crime. It explains the advantages and disadvantages that intervention programs, extracurricular activities, education and home and family life have on juvenile offenders. A juvenile offender is defined as a child or young person who has been found guilty of some offence, act of vandalism, or antisocial behavior before a juvenile court (Gelber, 1979). The articles used in this paper are used to inform the reader of various ways to help reduce the recidivism rate of juvenile offenders. Some of the articles explain the advantages and others explain the disadvantages of the various programs.

In Society, many are concerned about the high percentage of crimes that are committed, we tend to turn immediately to our youth thinking that if we somehow manage to keep youth under control we will deter crimes. As discuss in chapter 9 and the OJJPD reports, the juvenile justice system had determined that by waiving and transferring minors who commit crimes to criminal courts to be tried and punished like an adult, there would be a decrease on violent crimes. On the other hand, there are many intake alternatives and diversion programs that can be considered instead of crowding up the criminal courts with juveniles delinquents.

An alternative to channeling youth into a lifetime of criminal behavior by taking into account the different developmental needs of youth and the interests of society should remain the priority. Retaining youth in prisons will actually harm the public as opposed to if youth were placed in more community-based programs or smaller facilities near the youth’s community. When adolescence are placed in prison, their chances of avoiding the system later in life decrease drastically. Youth become subject to becoming repeat offenders. In a study conducted by Anna Aizer of Brown University and Joseph Doyle, Jr. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they were able to pinpoint the effects of adolescents who found themselves in youth prisons. Youth who were incarcerated were less likely to finish their education and more likely to become repeat offenders committing homicide, violent crime, property crime and drug crimes. Adolescence will find themselves stuck in this ‘revolving door’ in the justice system, which may be exceptionally challenging to get out