Death is a constant of all living organisms. An individual could attempt to avoid it; however, death will catch up to him. The youth will inherit the world from the adults. It is necessary for society to nurture these juveniles; however, the former Princeton Professor John Dilulio’s super predator theory triggered moral panic of public fear of juveniles. School officials started to target schools with large minority populations, transforming them into a prison environment. Schools started to punish students outside of the norm set by school officials. The current policy criminalizes youths, prevent them from succeeding, and have initiated the rise of juvenile violence.
The juvenile violence prevention policies mirror the key points of Broken-Windows Theory. The Theory claimed when authorities do not catch hooligan behaviors early, then the behavior would continue and gradually evolve to heinous acts (Lorenz, 2010). The broken windows theory perceived juveniles as no self-restraint animals, only punishment could end their criminal rampage. This theory led to the Dilulio’s super predator theory, he claimed delinquent juveniles would transform into mastermind criminals when they grow up (Dilulio, 1995). This initiated the movement of curbing juvenile crimes and punishing kids at an earlier age. Although he retracted his belief of the theory in 2001 (Becker, 2001), the moral panic of juvenile violence has begun. The parents widely supported implantation of Zero Tolerance Policy in schools at the beginning. The core of the policy started as a way to punish student for bringing weapons to school harshly (Skiba, 2013). However, the policy shifted to force schools to punish a wide range of student behaviors with no room for leniency.
School officials and resource officers continue to criminalize juveniles in school. Schools in poor and minority neighborhoods have installed security cameras and metal detectors. Resource officers at entrances are searching student backpacks for contrabands. The effects of implementing these changes have negatively affected the students. Theriot’s research shown schools in economic disadvantaged areas have a higher percentage of minority students. They also are more likely to have resource officers on campus compared to school with low percentage of minority students. Schools with resources officers have up to 25% higher arrest rate than school without (Theriot, 2009). Resource officers on campus target minority students. Schools started to discipline students through the justice system by criminalizing them. In Victor Rios’s study, he witnessed the constant harassment by police and teachers of minority boys in Oakland.
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 intent of this argumentative research paper, is to take a close look at school systems disciplinary policies and the effect they have on students. While most school systems in the nation have adopted the zero tolerance policies, there are major concerns that specific students could be targeted, and introduced into the criminal justice system based on these disciplinary policies. This research paper is intended to focus on the reform of zero tolerance policies, and minimizing the school to prison pipeline.
In today's society juveniles are being tried in adult courts, given the death penalty, and sent to prison. Should fourteen-year olds accused of murder or rape automatically be tried as adults? Should six-teen year olds and seven-teen year olds tried in adult courts be forced to serve time in adult prisons, where they are more likely to be sexually assaulted and to become repeat offenders. How much discretion should a judge have in deciding the fate of a juvenile accused of a crime - serious, violent, or otherwise? The juvenile crime rate that was so alarming a few years ago has begun to fall - juvenile felony arrest rates in California have declined by more than forty percent in the last twenty years. While California's juvenile population rose by a half a million since the middle and late 1970's, juveniles made up less than fifth-teen percent of California's felony arrests in 1998, compared to thirty percent in 1978; according to the Justice Policy Institute. The juvenile arrests have dropped back, even as the population of kids between ages of ten and eight-teen has continued to grow, and the number of kids confined in the California Youth Authority (CYA) has fallen. With all the progress our society has made in cutting back in juvenile crimes there is still a very serious problem. But if locking kids up is the best way to address it, how do we explain a drop in crime when there are more teens in California and fewer in custody? First we must look at the economy around us. With so many job opportunities available more and more teenagers find honest ways to keep busy and make money. Our generation has a brighter future than the generation a decade ago. Next we look at successful crime prevention efforts: after-school programs, mentoring, teen outreach programs, truancy abatement, anti-gang programs, family resource centers. There is evidence that these programs are beginning to pay off. Sending more, and younger teens through the adult court system has been a trend across the country in reaction to crimes, such as school shootings and violent rapes. Yet evidence shows that treating youth as adults does not reduce crime. In Florida, where probability wise more kids are tried as adults then in any other state, studies found that youth sent through the adult court system are twice as likely to commit more crimes when they're release...
Today, we live in a society faced with many problems, including crime and the fear that it creates. In the modern era, juveniles have become a part of society to be feared, not rehabilitated. The basis of the early juvenile justice system was to rehabilitate and create safe havens for wayward youth. This is not the current philosophy, although the U.S. is one of the few remaining countries to execute juveniles. Presently, our nation is under a presidential administration that strongly advocates the death penalty, including the execution of juveniles. The media and supporters of capital punishment warn of the "superpredator," the juvenile with no fear, remorse, or conscience. Opponents of this view encourage the idea that another death is only revenge, not deterrence. We will examine the rights allotted to juvenile offenders, and the punishments inflicted upon them for violations of the law.
Violence is defined as the intentional use of force to harm a human being. Its outcome is injury (whether physical or psychological, fatal or nonfatal). Violence among teenagers is on the rise, and has been since the early 1980's. In my opinion this is due to the increase of violence in the media, the astounding availability of firearms and the lack of proper guidance in the home. Northeastern University's College of Criminal Justice reports that from 1985 to 1993 murders committed by people over the age of 25 dropped an impressive 20%; meanwhile they increased 65% for people between the ages of 18-24 and an astounding 165% growth for teenagers 14 to 17. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, in 1996, 6548 young people 15-24 years old were victims of homicides. This amounts to an average of 18 youth homicides per day in the US. It also states that homicide is the second leading cause of death for persons 15-24 and is the leading cause of death for African-American and Hispanic youths in this age group. There are a few things that we as Americans can do to stunt this problem, and it starts with the home. By focusing on the home first, we as Americans can drastically reduce the amount of violent crime committed in the US.
Juveniles resort to violence, usually involving guns, instead of communicating with each other. "Although guns are more available today, youth also now show an increasing tendency to use them to settle disputes. When youth who are already predisposed to violence have easy access to guns, they may be more likely to beco...
Another major reason why juveniles are ending up in the juvenile justice system is because many schools have incorporate the zero tolerance policy and other extreme school disciplinary rules. In response to violent incidents in schools, such as the Columbine High School massacre, school disciplinary policies have become increasingly grave. These policies have been enacted at the school, district and state levels with the hopes of ensuring the safety of students and educators. These policies all rely on the zero tolerance policy. While it is understandable that protecting children and teachers is a priority, it is not clear that these strict policies are succeeding in improving the safety in schools.
Fear of youth violence is a constant concern by millions of people all over the world. Kids seem to take up more and more space of crimes that are usually committed by adults over the age of 18. "Statistics confirm that more horrendous crimes are being committed by increasingly younger children" (Levine 27). These crimes committed by youth's are caused by many different reasons: Poverty, neighborhoods, schools, parents, and TV, are the main concerns. But what is in most people's minds is what we can do to help prevent this violence. Although there are many different methods for reducing youth violence such as administering harsher punishments and steering kids away from gang influences, the most effective is training in conflict resolution because it gives kids another alternative to fighting. There are many different reasons as to why kids administer violence. Families, neighborhoods, peer groups, television, schools, and your personal factors are the main reasons. According to Joy G. Dryfoos, "Children who demonstrate antisocial behavior come from very non-supportive families at two extremes: either the family is repressive and abusive, or it seriously neglects the child from the early years on" (71). Parental neglect is a strong predictor of violence in a child, and parental rejection is the most powerful predictor. "The closer the child's relationship with his parents, the more he is attached to and identified with them, the lower his chances of delinquency" (Hirschi 71). Neighborhoods and peer groups are also a great influence on kids and their crimes. Growing in an underclass neighborhood is closely related with the risk of delinquency. Not all poor people are criminals, but drugs, guns and poverty are identified as causes o...
Given a scenario of John Black, a sixteen years old boy that was raised by a single mom. John has successfully completed his four years of five years disposition for his offense of firearm possession while on school property. He is now ready to go back to his family and be part of the community. In this paper, I will discuss about how our juvenile justice system can use John as a success case with first time offenders, I will also discuss about the future of the juvenile justice system and the international efforts being made. I will be using my own ideas along with the researches from credible sources to support my ideas.
Thereby, institutions that were intended to nurture youth (schools) have been collapsed into the practice of surveillance and criminalization, often acting as the behest of police and probation officers. In the case of Spider, he was isolated from “regular” school and sent to EOCS, which was a school for students who had already been officially labeled as deviants and delinquents by the school district. There, many of the teachers had a common practice that whenever any student misbehaved, the teachers would threaten either to call the police, to send them to jail, or call their P.O. (sometimes, even for students that weren’t on probation). In the schools attempt to main social order, it used the full force of criminal justice institutions to regulate students’ behaviors with constant threats. Also, Rios accounts that Slick’s beating, a student at an EOC, was the result of the schools impeccable communication between a security officer, the administrators, and police officer Miles. At these types of teaching facilities, stigma, labeling, detention, harassment, and humiliation are just about the only consistent experience that adolescents could count on as they entered the school. If students attempted to resist criminalization by acting up, a police officer lurked nearby ready to pounce. In essence, school was simply an extension where young people were criminalized for their style and culture. As a matter of fact, many of the boys Rios describes, saw no distinction between the school and police officers who constantly lurked around them, like a “zookeeper watching over animals at all times.” Police officers played a crafty “cat and mouse game” in which adolescent boys remained in steady trepidation of being humiliated, brutalized, or detained. Hence, this sort of control is created by a
Across the nation, social scientists and criminologists have researched and hypothesized the main contributing factors that promote juvenile delinquency. The Strain/ Anomie theory introduced by Robert Merton and later revised by several other theorists, attempts to explain why juvenile subculture tend to behave certain ways when confronted with pressures from everyday life. Revised by other theorists, the Strain theory attempts to provide the framework of juvenile delinquency and its sources in order to analyze the effectiveness of this assumption, as well as to implement certain crime prevention policies and programs to curb this problem. This paper is going to analyze how the Strain theory contributes it’s principles of delinquency factors in order to explain and understand juvenile delinquency.
Very few youth of today have respect for teachers, elders, or each other. Everyday more and more instances of violent crime are committed by our nation’s youth and children. Shocking accounts of children bringing guns to school as a means of solving problems with a teacher or a fellow student are becoming increasingly frequent. Children are committing crime, which were one thought only committed by adults such as rape, robbery, and murder.
It is estimated that 3.3 million children annually are expelled or suspended for violent or nonviolent offenses while attending school. The majority of the offenses are nonviolent offenses that are handled just as harshly as violent school infractions due to zero tolerance laws. This essay will show how zero tolerance laws, bad schools and policing in schools is failing millions of minority students and fueling the school to prison pipeline.
In particular, inner-city(e.g., low-income urban) African-American male adolescents have been identified as a high-risk segment of youth due to their disproportionately high rates of exposure to (and often participation in) violent situations (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,2001; Hammond and Yung, 1993; Rich, 2001)" (Abdul-Ali). Elijah Anderson states, that "the 'code of the street' in poor, inner-city African-American communities places all young African-American men under much pressure to respond to certain situations-show of disrepect-with violence" (Anderson. 1994). The Young Warriors Violence Prevention program is consistent with Anderson's research because the program targets those that Anderson identified that were the most at risk: African-American Males from poor inner-city enviroments. Anderson, states that it is not only African-Americans that have a 'code on the street", but other races (white and Latino) who come from disadvantaged environment have a 'code of the street'. Economic and social disadvantage in these communities create "a threat of violence that is high in many disadvantaged communiites" (Cullen & Agnew, 2011, 143). The Young Warriors Violence Prevention for Inner-City African American Male Adolescents program uses rap music to challenge 'the code of the street' and they use this as a mechanism to unify the youth and prevent violence. For instance, Jaleel Adul-Ali who reviewed the program found that "critical consciousness may be a particularly important sociopolitical resource for enhancing violence prevention efforts with inner-city African-American male adolescents(Watts & Abdul-Adil, 1998; Watts, Abdul-Adil & Pratt, 2002; Watts, Griffith & Abdul-Adil, 1999). Kerns and Prinz (2002) arg...
Crime is a plague that has haunted American citizens for centuries. The severity of crime has ranged from running a red light to cold blooded murder. Statistics indicate that crime rates have been on the rise in the previous decades, especially juvenile crime. Statistics show that, ‘the number of youths aged 14 and younger who have been charged with homicide has jumped by 43 percent in the past twenty years’ (Kids With No Hope, No Fear, No Rules, And No Life, 2). This increase in juvenile crime has struck a chord of fear in many people . Motivated by this fear our society has to come up with a solution to this impending problem. While several suggestions have been offered, crime prevention is the most logical, effective and beneficial solution.