The Juvenile System

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Making mistakes as a child and even as an adult is one of the biggest ways we as individuals grow and learn. As children many times we do not know the difference between right or wrong until we are rewarded or punished for our actions. Also, children do not know the full consequences or their actions all the time. Children and teens do not always think about the possible repercussion of their actions and just live for the moment or for immediate gratification and pleasure. Children and teens also can be put in a difficult situation when it comes to their background, community, and household. They might act out for attention or commit crimes because they feel like they need to do so to survive. The juvenile system should take into account everything …show more content…

Juvenile’s brains are still not fully developed giving them a much higher chance of being able to change. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls reasoning and decision making, does not fully mature until adulthood. Since these juveniles’ brains are not fully developed it causes them to act more on impulse and immediate gain and they do not stop to thing about the consequences of their actions. Their underdeveloped brain also means that there is still a great deal of potential to change the way they think and to help teach them reasoning and good decision making (Teen, 2011). Juveniles can be thought reasoning and also as they get older their frontal cortexes will develop and make it easier for them to make rational decisions. Since juvenile’s brains are not fully developed, psychotherapy is a very effective way to treat them and has been proven in many studies to work on adolescences. Mark Lipsey of Vanderbilt University concluded, after studying 548 different studies of youth offenders from 1958 to 2002, that cognitive behavioral therapy based on skill building and counseling is the most effective way in reducing recidivism in juveniles, while interventions “based on punishment and deterrence appeared to increase criminal recidivism” (Naughton, 154). This is a reason why so many convicts end …show more content…

Studies done by Albert Roberts, Ph.D at Rutgers University, “indicate that between 40 percent and 70 percent of youth in the justice system are experiencing mental health problems that are considerably more acute than short-term symptomatic behavior. Substance abuse, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial behavior were among the most frequently reported diagnoses” (Springer, 2006, p. 136). This statistic is very alarming and there needs to be a change or addition in the rehabilitation process for juveniles. For juveniles with mental disorders there is no real help. Drug addicts, antisocial juveniles, and depressed juveniles do not need anger management, they need specialized help from an expert in that specific field of study. When a correctional institution does not offer the adequate tools to rehabilitate all of the convicts it is no surprise that many of them end up recommitting a crime and returning to juvenile hall or in the future prison. If the juveniles with mental health problems are not diagnosed then the treatments they receive in their correctional facilities are a waste of time, money, and energy. There needs to be proper tools set in place to diagnose juveniles with mental disorders and send them off to a facility which can actually help them. Expanding programs for juveniles to address a wider variety of

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