Rehabilitation Vs Inarceration Essay

Since 1899, when the first juvenile court was created in Cook County, Illinois there has

been a debate on whether or not the juvenile court system is effective and a useful tool in dealing

with juvenile delinquents. After the first juvenile court was established, there was a rapid

accepting across the United States which eventually led to the juvenile justice system. Since

then, every state has accepted the idea and now has a juvenile court system. While every state

has a juvenile court system, many states are now looking at the alternative of rehabilitation for

juveniles rather than incarceration. Rehabilitation is shown to be more effective as a policy

towards juveniles than incarceration, and because of that, the United States should focus their

attention on rehabilitation over incarceration (ABA Division).

During the late 1700s and early 1800s, the way of punishing juveniles was to confine

them in prison because there were really no other options. During this time, adult criminals were

housed with juveniles as well as the mentally ill inside overcrowded facilities. In response to this

problem, Thomas Eddy and John Griscom led the way for the creation for the first Houses of

Refuge in 1825 in New York. This facility house vagrant and poor children who were on the path

to becoming delinquents. By 1840, there were approximately twenty five similar facilities in

states all across the United States. While these facilities became popular, the same issues began

to happen that were happening with the prison system. Overcrowding and horrible conditions

within the facilities began to get worse. Reformers called for new facilities to put more of an

emphasis on education. This shift led to the use if r...

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... juveniles. From this, states began to pass law for

stricter conditions, including mandatory sentences as well as adult court transfers for certain

crimes that were committed by juveniles. Because of these new laws, more juveniles were being

sentenced to jail time and were being tried within the adult criminal justice system and being

incarcerated in juvenile corrections facilities. By the mid to late 1990s, more and more juveniles

were being incarcerated and overcrowding became to occur. With this, conditions within these

facilities began to worsen. Since then, states have begun to reduce to number of juveniles that are

being sent to correctional facilities. States are now looking to the idea of the training and reform

schools that were originally used and looking to move back to a system of rehabilitation rather

than incarceration (ABA Division).