The Importance Of Failure Of Youth Prison

You would think that we would want to help protect and serve the youth of our country, but that is not always the case. We are trying more and more youth as adults each day for non-violent crimes when we should be trying to help them rehabilitate. Florida has to be the worst when it comes to youth offenders being tried in adult court and sentenced to prison. “Today approximately 7,000 youth under the age of 18 are held in adult jails on any given day, and one in 10 youth incarcerated in the United States are admitted to an adult prison or jail (Schubert et al. 2010). The social problem is not just the fact that youth are tried as an adult, it also has to do with the overrepresentation of black male youth in adult prisons.

Rehabilitation for at risk teens has been an ongoing issue that runs deep in certain communities. When kids at young ages are exposed to stress and have to cope early on with dysfunction they are denied the opportunity to mature and conditioned to commit thinking errors that perpetuate a young offender into an adult offender. To find ways to break this cycle John Hubner accounts his time on the Giddings State School Capital Offenders Program and how a group of counselors are able to combine many strategies in rehabilitating young offenders who have committed serious crimes. Young people convicted of serious crimes are often transferred to adult prisons that institutionalize young people to prison life only increasing the likely hood of

Juvenile delinquency has been a problem in the United States ever since it has been able to be documented. From 100 years ago to now, the process of juvenile delinquency has changed dramatically; from the way juveniles are tried, to the way that they are released back into society, so that they do not return back to the justice system (Scott and Steinberg, 2008). Saying this, juveniles tend to

However if we take a step back and look at how incarcerating youth is hurting them. According to the risks juveniles face when they are incarcerated with adults written by Jason Zeidenberg "juveniles are more likely to be targeted for rape five times more than the adult prisoner and suicide rates among juveniles are 7.7 times higher than those that are in juvenile detention centers." Those two statistics alone explains the reason juveniles should not be placed in prison with adults. Another reason juveniles should not be locked up with adults is because "juveniles are twice as likely to be beaten up by staff." This statistic is very sickening because in the prison the people the juveniles should trust are also bringing them

Since the 1970s, America’s prison population rate has risen 700%. Despite the U.S. comprising only 5% of the world’s population, it is the largest jailer with 25% of the world’s prison population with one in 99 adults in prison and one in 31 under some type of correctional control (Mass Incarceration Problems, 2014, p. 1). According to 2013 data, 2.2 million are currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons or jails (Incarceration, 2013, para. 1), a figure that indicates a rising problem with prison overcrowding. While prison overcrowding increases the economic burdens on local and state governments, common factors leading to the high prison population is linked to the need for improved juvenile programs that deter criminal behavior and fund for rehabilitation for reentry into mainstream society. With effective programs to deter juvenile crime and to aid in offender reentry coupled with sentencing reforms, overcrowding in the nation’s prisons would decline.

“But beginning in the 1970s, a number of political and economic factors gave rise to the prison boom, which was to bring the nation to the age of mass incarceration, which in turn would have far reaching and sometimes devastating impacts on those affected… According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, the number of adult federal and state prison inmates increased from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 502 per 100,000 in 2009 — an increase of 261 percent.” (The Growing Problems).

If offenders are incarcerated they cannot commit offenses in the community but incarceration does not guarantee the stop of delinquent behavior. The vast majority of youngsters incarcerated in juvenile and correctional facilities have been convicted of nonviolent offenses. Therefore, if policies mandated longer periods of incarceration then most likely minor offenders would have extended incarceration. And even if we focus on high risk juvenile offenders, they do not remain high risk forever, according to the text the peak of serious violent crime age is between 16 and 17. The likelihood that individuals will commit violent crimes during ages of 21-27 is approximately the same as for a child the age of 12 or 13. Studies of youths released by the CYA show that longer sentences for youthful offenders would have little to no impact on overall societal rates of violent

The state juvenile corrections systems in the U.S. detain youth in several different types of facilities such as, group homes, residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, boot camps, country-run youth facilities, and some of these are locked or secured through staff. Richard Mendel stated (2012), “The latest official national count of youth in correctional custody, conducted in 2010, found that roughly 48,000 U.S. youth were confined in correctional facilities or other residential programs each night on the order of a juvenile delinquency court (p 1).” This amount of juveniles in these facilities is roughly the same amount of adolescents that live in cities like Louisville, Kentucky or Portland Oregon. America relies heavily on

Studies suggest that there is a divide between the government and public response to juvenile incarceration. Bullis & Yovas (2005) state that support is given to correctional facilities to house juvenile offenders as a form of punishment (as cited in Shannon, 2013, p. 17). Individuals who support this perspective are often more likely to support the construction of more prisons and stern penalties on crime based upon the presumptions that youthful offenders are aware of the consequences of their actions (Drakeford, 2002 as cited in Shannon, 2013, p. 17). On the other hand, opponents of this perspective believe that incarceration creates an opportunity to rehabilitate the offenders (Huffine, 2006 as cited in Shannon, 2013, p. 18). This perspective supports the purpose of juvenile detention centers as “preparatory in nature – that is, offering services focused on the development of skills needed to return successfully to mainstream

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.

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

Juvenile justice has proved to be as imprudent as it is practical. Snyder and Sickmund (1999) found that as early as 1825, there was a significant push to establish a separate juvenile justice system focused on rehabilitation and treatment. The procedure continued to stay focused on the rehabilitation of a person, even though financial support and assets sustained to hold back its achievement. In reaction to rising juvenile crime rates in the 1980s’, more corrective laws were approved (Snyder and Sickmund 1999). In the 1990s, the United States legal system took further steps regarding transfer provisions that lowered the threshold at which juveniles could be tried in criminal court and sentenced to adult prison (Snyder and Sickmund 1999). Furthermore, laws were enacted that allowed prosecutors and judges more discretion in their sentencing options; and confidentiality standards, which made juvenile court proceedings and records more available to the public (Snyder and Sickmund 1999), were reduced.

It is a common believe that adolescents require a special system thru which be processed because they are “youth who are in a transitional stage of development…young offenders that are neither innocent children nor mature adults…” (Nelson, 2012). Because juveniles are in a process of constant development sociologically, psychologically and physiologically, the juvenile court system focuses on alternative sentences and the creation of programs that will offer them rehabilitation instead of incarceration. However, in cases of extraordinary circumstances, the juvenile system shifts from looking at rehabilitation as a first choice to accountability and punishment (Read, n.d). All levels of society are collectively involved in delinquency

A common assumption about young people who commit violent crimes is that they are simply born evil and that nothing good can come of their lives. From this perspective, the only solution is to punish these young offenders by locking them up, either in prison or in a place for teenagers designed to make their lives as miserable as possible. Such an approach suggests that young people who hurt or kill others are untreatable. It also suggests that more prisons must be built to make our communities safe. This assumption, however, is a false one. Research shows that violent young offenders can be treated and reformed. In addition, it shows that when young people fail to receive treatment,it does

In the world of youth and delinquent, criminals advancing their activity into adulthood, social psychological theories help to develop the criminal justice field to better cope with what is faced by youths. “Social psychological theories of criminal behavior emphasize subjective life experiences, such as the development of one’s identity, cognitive and emotional processes, and the capacity to make choices.” (Listenbee, 2014 p.1.) Utilizing social aspects of the past and present criminal justice agencies can predict the type of life that may be lived by the young adult, whether it is a criminally active life-style or more conformed to the civilities of society. With knowledge of what may yet come in the life of a juvenile, it is possible to curve the criminal activity of the youth by placing them into detention centers or counseling programs to steer them into a positive direction. This would take the full complement of energy from all those that participate in the life of the youth to include parents, teachers, counselors and any other adults in the youths life.