Essay On Ethical Issues In Juvenile Justice

Justice for Juveniles The American juvenile justice system was designed over a hundred years ago to reform kids who were found guilty of minor crimes such as petty theft and truancy. Today, the system is becoming overwhelmed by crimes of violence. Stealing and skipping school have been replaced by violent crimes, such as rape and murder.

Crossroads Juvenile Center Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Crossroads Juvenile Center In contemporary times, there is an increasing tendency for juvenile involvement in crime. The frequency and the severity of the crimes has increased so much that there are call for trial of delinquents as adults in extreme cases. The juvenile justice system however has a stronger emphasis on correctional activities and giving the under-age offenders a chance to change and make something useful of their lives. The Crossroads Juvenile Center is a detention facility in New York, it development and operations demonstrate the desire of the juvenile justice system to effects changes in the children admitted to these systems.

Can you imagine waking up behind closed walls and bars? Waking up to see your inmate who is a 45-year-old bank robber and you are a 14-year-old minor who made a big mistake. This is why minors who have committed crimes should not be treated the same as adults. Some reasons are because the consequences given to minors in adult court would impact a minor’s life in a negative way. If a minor is tried through a juvenile court, they have a greater chance of rehabilitation.

In today’s world there are countless crimes committed every single day. “In 2015, there were 1.42 million total arrests, at a rate of 3,641 arrests per 100,000 residents” (State of California, Department of Justice). Grown adults are not the only people being arrested every year, there are also juveniles, children, being arrested every day. One topic of controversy today is whether or not juveniles who commit these crimes should be tried as adults in criminal court. There are many differences between the justice system for adults and the justice system for juveniles.

Within the urban communities, negative perceptions are magnified. Adolescents are more prone to be a product of their environment, especially those whose parents are incarcerated. Because of this trend adolescents are being incarcerated at an alarming rate and sentenced to adult facilities. Lambie & Randall (2013) states, the United States have imposed harsher penalties on serious young offenders, and have consequently increased rates of incarcerated youth and made it easier for youth to be treated and incarcerated as adults within the justice

“He found that youths were likely to spend considerably more time in adult correctional facilities than juveniles that were sent to state juvenile facilities,” (Krisberg 176). Juvenile offenders has become an excelling issue since the beginning of the first juvenile institutions in the 19th century (Shoemaker 5). The issue then arises, should juvenile offenders be tried as children or adults. This is an important issue that can impact many children and society as a whole, therefore this issue should be taken wisely. Karen Romanoff- Miner, sides with the idea that juvenile offenders in adult courts and prisons are not doing the effects that they are meant to.

There are many children in the world who are being put behind bars and detained for alleged wrongdoing without protections they are entitled to. Throughout the world, children are charged and sentenced for actions that should not be considered as adult crimes. Here in the United States, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is age 12. Law enforcement officials and those in the juvenile justice system nationwide tend to mistreat underage individuals by trying cases while working through the lens of an adult. Unfair punishments are still handed down domestically, which is in violation of Supreme Court law. The following articles specifically address the idea that juvenile justice is unethical. In the article, “Juvenile Justice & Adolescent

Prior to 1899 in the United States, children who committed a criminal offense were tried and punished as adults. Children were being institutionalized with adult criminals where they were picking up negative influences preparing them for a life of crime. Progressive and social change demanded that children be protected and educated instead and therefore a separate court system for juveniles was subsequently established to address this problem. It has since being argued that juvenile courts have abandoned their role to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents and should be abolished.

When teen felons choose to act without thinking, they are putting other people’s lives at risk. They need to be charged as adults because the victims of the crimes will not be given the justice they deserve when they have to worry about that criminal harming them again. Although some people think that sending a juvenile through adult court gives them no hope, they should have given this a little thought before committing the crime. Teens need to think about the consequences and how their actions affect others before they act. When choosing between putting a violent adolescent in prison and taking the chance of letting them commit that crime again, it is most suitable to let the teen be tried as an adult and to place them in prison.

Not only does Berstein call for an overall reform of this nation’s juvenile prisons, she goes as far as saying the practice of locking up youth is in need of a “more profound than incremental and partial reform” (13). The fact that Bernstein outlines the numerous failed strategies and goals of this practice with her compelling use of studies and statistics is enough to promote an audience to reject the practice of locking up youth. The statistic she shares that “four out of five juvenile parolees [will be] back behind bars within three years of release” as well as the studies she conducted on numerous instances when a guards abuse of power lead to the death of a child work to further prove her point: being that “institution[s] as intrinsically destructive as the juvenile prison” have no place in a modern society (13, 83). Bernstein refutes this false sense effectiveness further by sharing her own ideas on what she believes works as a much more humane solution to rehabilitating

Annotated bibliography Childress, S. (2016, June 2). More States Consider Raising the Age for Juvenile Crime. Retrieved from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/more-states-consider-raising-the-age-for-juvenile-crime/ More states are considering to raising the age for juvenile crimes before being tried as adult because young offender's mental capacity. The idea is to cut the cost of incarcerate young offender in adult prison and ensure offenders to receive proper education and specialized care to change their behavior. Putting children in adult prison does not deter crime.

The Juvenile Justice System was a system created over a century ago to prevent young juveniles under the age of 17 to be process and tried as an adult. The Juvenile system was created to let juveniles have an easier sentencing with fair treatments and rehabilitation, but lately the system has been racially biased towards colored juveniles because of their skin color which results the system being unfair towards colored juveniles in the system. The Juvenile Justice System is racially bias towards colored juveniles, because colored juveniles are more likely to receive harsher treatments than their white counterparts, won’t receive enough resources for rehab, and receiving lack of legal representation for trials.

In class we have learned how juveniles are not treated right in the justice system and how the juvenile justice system has failed to protect the rights of juveniles. We also learned how common it is for a juvenile to falsely confess to something they didn’t do.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics conducted a study in 40 of the nation’s largest urban communities. “It was found that an estimated 7,100 juvenile defendants were charged with felonies in adult criminal court in 1998. Of these 40 county criminal courts, juveniles were 64% more likely than adults to be charged with a violent felony. These juvenile defendants were generally treated as serious offenders, as 52% did not receive pretrial release, 63% were convicted of a felony, and 43% of those convicted received a prison sentence. States have expanded the mechanisms by which juveniles can be charged in criminal courts.

The Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention and Protection Act (JJDPA) was established in 1974 and was the first federal law that dealt comprehensively with juvenile delinquency to improve the juvenile justice system and support state and local efforts at delinquency prevention. This paper will assess the JJDPA and summarize its purpose and implementation and enforcement. Next, there will be a discussion of the historical context of the policy; followed by a focus of the latent consequences. Finally there will be a vignette as to how this Act has affected a person or family as well as personal reflection toward the policy.