Youthful offenders have a reason for the crimes they have committed. Past life trauma is one of the most common causes for youthful offenders to stand in a criminal court. But the big guys seem to not understand the development of children/teenagers are going through. No matter how critical the crime has appeared, everyone should stop for one second and stand in their shoes. Up until today, youthful offenders, no matter how young they are, they are being treated as adults. Youthful offenders being tried in criminal courts as adults, criminal courts are putting them at risk from the dangers in adult prison facilities. As a result, the past trauma that youthful offenders experienced and were the factors that caused them to commit their crimes; …show more content…
Some of the challenges offenders may face is drugs, any type of physical force, abuse, etc. The most important challenge any offender faces in a prison facility are working with their own mental emotion, in other words trying to control themselves from good and right. The second important challenge a youthful offender must go through is prevention and treatment. Inside the Juvenile Department and Prison Facilities, there will always be some kind of help to help the offenders in any possible way they can. However, for some prison treatment programs it may be hard to change or help if the juvenile offenders become a repeated offender. The young offenders usually do not know the options of what to be other than a criminal. This is why the programs come in handy to show them the skills, education, and job training to help them meet those options. In some cases, if the offender was incarcerated for a minor crime, chances are that the offender will receive probation, community work, rehabilitation, but still be under the supervision of the any police authority. Youthful offenders have it pretty easy sometimes since they have a more possibility to get out early than an adult. But not all states have the same freedoms/rules, beliefs, or system in the procedure of a juvenile. In other states, youthful offenders remain as a delinquent rather than guilty, and in some states they do …show more content…
Up until today, there has been an increment of youthful offenders being cased in criminal courts for usage of weapons. The physical and mental suffrage a youthful offender has gone through in the past, are leading factors that cause them to commit crimes. But when they are taken to be cased at a criminal court, their lives are put in danger to all dangerous risk factors. Youthful offenders get treated as adults when they have committed a crime and are sentenced for years depending on their case. Therefore, the criminal courts will not see the consequences when they put youthful offenders in adult prisons. The safety of the youthful offenders is at risk of being physically or mentally abused. Some do understand why youthful offenders are put in adult prisons, for the reason for them to wake up and realize their mistakes. But, it does not help if the youthful offenders are having a negative traumatizing impact on their health, by the environment they were put
Within the last five years, violent offenses by children have increased 68 percent, crimes such as: murder, rape, assault, and robbery. Honestly, with these figures, it is not surprising at all that the Juveniles Courts focus less on the children in danger, and focus more on dangerous children. This in fact is most likely the underlying reasoning behind juveniles being tried as adults by imposing harsher and stiffer sentences. However, these policies fail to recognize the developmental differences between young people and
In the last 42 years little to no changes have been made to correct the standards that govern punitive measures towards juvenile delinquency. Today juvenile law is governed by state and many states have enacted a juvenile code. However, in numerous cases, juveniles are transferred to adult court when juvenile courts waive or relinquish jurisdiction. Adolescents should not be tried in the adult court system or sentenced to adult penitentiary's on account of: teen brains are not mature which causes a lack of understanding towards the system, incarceration in an adult facility increases juvenile crime, and children that are sentenced to adult prison are vulnerable to abuse and rape.
Vandergoot determines that the reasoning capacity of an adolescent, the ability to make legal decisions, and filter unnecessary information is unclear to a juvenile in the justice system; the vagueness of youth stepping into the courts prevents them from fully participating in the justice system. ( Vandergoot, 2006). As a result of this impreciseness youth encounter Vandergoot concludes a separate justice system allocated for youth to adhere to adolescent needs. Vandergoot discusses the Youth Criminal Justice Act a justice system devised to adhere to youth needs. She summarizes the system that benefits young offenders in contrast to adult offenders.
...ing with young minds and punishing them in juvenile courts may be of advantage to the young people and at the same time reduce propagating them into developing a violent future in criminal activities. Correctional facilities that address and cater for the juveniles are the way forward to streamlining the youths (Kristin, page4).
Many people say that the systems first priority should be to protect the public from the juvenile criminals that are a danger to others. Once the juveniles enter the system there is however, arguments on what should be done with them. Especially for those deemed too dangerous to be released back to their parents. Some want them locked away for as long as possible without rehabilitation, thinking that it will halt their criminal actions. One way to do this they argue would be to send them into an adult court. This has been a large way to reform the juvenile system, by lowering the age limits. I believe in certain cases this is the best method for unforgiving juveniles convicted of murder, as in the case of Ronald Duncan, who got away with a much lesser sentence due to his age. However another juvenile, Geri Vance, was old enough to be sent into the adult court, which caused him t...
Harassment, reckless endangerment, and burglary are all juvenile offenses. These juvenile offenses almost always stay on the juvenile’s criminal record, and the offenses displayed on a juvenile’s criminal record may cause employers, educators, and other authority figures to think less of the juvenile offender. As a viewer can see, this one mistake or lapse in judgment can ruin the juvenile offenders chance to further their success in life. For example, juvenile offenders may not obtain the dream job that they have always wanted, get into the college that they have always wanted to, or be eligible for a scholarship whether athletic or academic. However, there is a loophole in the juvenile justice system called teen courts. Teen courts give first-time offenders and some re-offenders a second chance because the offense (s) do not go on their criminal record, and their peers get to decide what sanctions the juvenile offender receives or performs. The big question that I am going to discuss throughout this essay is do juvenile offenders who appear before teen courts recidivate?
The quagmire of placing juveniles in adult facilities is the risk factors juveniles may experience while incarcerated. Being that juveniles are young and smaller to the adult offenders, they may be seen as a prey or easy target for rape, assault, mental issues which eventually leads to suicide. We must keep in mind that juveniles are youth meaning they are still a child, not an adult and should not be exposed to adult incarceration environment. Although it is cost saving to place juveniles and adults under one facility, it is unethical because they are not built and yet mentally ready and prepared to experience adult facilities. Alternative strategies are available to assist juvenile detainees such as healthcare, education, recreation, and work experience. The Juvenile Court Act of 1899 gave leniency to youth under the age of 16. Placing youth detainees with adult offenders will result in the reduction of rehabilitation services for youth, while increasing the rate of being a victim as a potential prey o...
...sier to flip the switch, pull the lever, or inject the needle. Putting young offenders in adult prisons leads to more crime, higher prison costs, and increased violence, not to mention placing them in danger from the adult prison population.
As minors commit violent crimes without being held accountable, they can grow up to be real criminals and they can be very dangerous. Without a solid foundation of what is right and wrong, these minors will grow up believing that their actions are the norm. For this reason, minors need to be held accountable. They need to be taught that they cannot get away with their crimes. In 2007, courts with juvenile jurisdiction handled an estimated 1.7 million delinquency cases. Delinquency cases include vandalism, shoplifting, robbery, and murder. These are just some of the crimes minors can commit. This was up by forty-four percent from 1985. If a minor grows up believing that crime is acceptable, they will repeat the pattern. Without interrupting the pattern and making them accountable, these minors will always have a twisted sense of right and wrong. A sense of what is right and wrong is important and can be learned at any age. Minors learn very young, what...
This isn’t always true, there some horrible consequences because of it like suicide. “Juvenile jails are a less punishable place than adult prisons and are more forgiving” (Bechtold). When you start to treat a kid like how you treat an adult, when they come out they 're not normal because how people have treated them throughout most of their lives. research has shown that “kids develop better criminal skills when they 're incarcerated in adult facilities”(Bechtold). This is a big negative effect because this is why the US department of corrections say “in prison the reconviction of kids is from 14-17 years is 82.1 percent”(Bechtold). This shocked me because this age group is the highest reconviction rate among all age groups. They think they’re not going to get caught
...n conclusion, like most things in the law there is no clear answer. There is no one-size-fits all solution for how to treat juvenile offenders. Even that term, “juvenile offender” contains a spectrum that includes the most minor misdemeanor and the most egregious sexual crimes. The Supreme Court has participated in this debate and voiced its approval of treatment and rehabilitation over punishment in the interest of public safety. The court, however, has also left the possibility of the states to hold juveniles to a higher (adult) standard on a case-by-case basis. This seems to me to be the best way to balance the obvious benefits of rehabilitative efforts and the interest of public safety. The best example I could find of a state who balances these two interests well is Oklahoma. The primary statutory goal of the Oklahoma Juvenile Code is to promote public safety.
It is expected that at a young age, children are taught the difference between what is right and what is wrong in all types of situations. The majority of Supreme Court Justices abolished mandatory life in prison for juveniles that commit heinous crimes, argued this with the consideration of age immaturity, impetuosity, and also negative family and home environments. These violent crimes can be defined as murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and the like depending on state law. With these monstrous acts in mind the supreme court justices argument could be proven otherwise through capability and accountability, the underdevelopment of the teenage brain and the severity of the crime. Juveniles commit heinous crimes just like adults
The United States has been affected by a number of crimes committed by juveniles. The juvenile crime rate has been increasing in recent years. Everyday more juveniles commit crimes for various reasons. They act as adults when they are not officially adults. There is a discussion about how juveniles should be punished if they commit heinous crimes. While many argue that juveniles who commit serious crimes, such as murder, should be treated as adults, the fact is, juveniles under the age of eighteen, are not adults, and should not be treated as such.
Today?s court system is left with many difficult decisions. One of the most controversial being whether to try juveniles as adults or not. With the number of children in adult prisons and jails rising rapidly, questions are being asked as to why children have been committing such heinous crimes and how will they be stopped. The fact of the matter is that it is not always the children's fault for their poor choices and actions; they are merely a victim of their environment or their parents. Another question asked is how young is too young. Children who are too young to see an R rated film unaccompanied are being sent to adult prisons. The only boundaries that seem to matter when it comes to being an adult are laws that restrain kids from things such as alcohol, pornography, and other materials seen as unethical. Children that are sent to adult prison are going to be subjected to even more unprincipled ideas and scenes. When children can be sent to jail for something as minor as a smash and grab burglary, the judicial system has errors. The laws that send juveniles to adult prisons are inhumane, immoral, and unjust. Kids are often incompetent, which leads to unfair trials. Adult prisons are also very dangerous for minors, and in many cases this leads to more juvenile crimes.
In today’s generation there are many children and teens that commit crimes to satisfy their self being. Every day we see in the news about the reasons why children or teens commit crimes like murder or homicide. Sentencing juveniles to life in prison is not a right response to prevent homicide and serious murder, because their brains are not fully develop and the bad environment they live in. Teenagers or children need to be remain unformed of preventing crimes in today’s society. With this said, juvenile’s mental brains, backgrounds and growth are the reasons why they are not proficient to maintain themselves in a prison cell.