Juvenile Justice Center Argumentative Essay

Essentially, it is obvious St. Louis City juvenile justice has taken great strides in ensuring their clients partake in juvenile justice reform. Certainly, over the years this has been the center piece of the institution in providing a plethora of services, which compassionately meets many of the needs of its youth. However, despite the history and longevity associated with the St. Louis City’s juvenile system, including the uniqueness of the services they provide within the institution today. The need to further develop facility resources, which provides adequate programming and additional tools for its detainees and staff is continual. Clearly, the institution has undoubtedly exceeded many of its own expectations over the years, impressively

Many teens get into some kind of trouble in their life whether it is at home or at school. Teens use drugs to “fix” these problems or committing suicide or crimes. These teens go to a juvenile justice center to fix their problems with help from the workers which sometimes doesn’t work and they come out as even worse than they had come to the center in the first place.

In today’s society the youth generation seems to be facing some problems that there is no solution for. Juveniles are participating in many wrongdoing activities that they are not being held accountable for. I see many gray areas when it comes to the juveniles justice system and I strongly believe there should be changes made in order to help these juveniles be deterred from such behavior so they do not continue down a path that can affect the rest of their lives.

Mark, age 17, is serving 13 years in the L.A. County Men’s Jail and when asked about how he felt about the situation he said, “little kid, he should be put in a program. When you send them to the pen all you making is a better criminal.” What Mark said is right criminal youth would be better off being placed in programs that help them get their life back on track, not placed into prison with a bunch of adults who have been criminals for years. A teen placed in a prison rather that a juvenile facility faces much more risk of repeating their criminal behavior and continuing down a dangerous path.

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.

Have you ever thought a about what actually goes on in Juvenile Detention Centers? How the young teens are treated by the guards and other cell mates? If you really think about it, most people in this generation don’t understand how bad it is getting. Being a teen doesn’t mean you are an adult and every teen makes mistakes. From the point of view of the young prisoners in those detention centers, when you get in trouble or you make a mistake in the “outside world” people get over it. At the age they are at, it is just like getting grounded for a week and that’s it. However, in the world of the Juvenile Detention Centers, if you make a mistake, you will may get beaten up by other cell mates.

Why should teen felons get to spend their jail time in juvenile detention centers for committing the same crimes as adults? In today’s world, teens are increasingly committing violent crimes and being put in juvenile detention centers. Teens need to be tried as adults because it helps to bring justice to families of victims, and it also teaches the teens accountability. Charging teens as adults will also help reduce crime in the United States. Although many people feel that teens should not be given severe punishments because they are immature and innocent, they have not considered the problem teens are creating by committing these crimes.. In reality, if teens are old enough and mature enough to commit violent and vicious crimes, they should

The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

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.

If community oriented programs are not becoming more of a priority for the at-risk children in the community, those children have a greater chance of entering the system and not leaving it. An example of this type of program is the Project Positive Action through Holistic Education. The program helps the students grow a link to schools. Project Positive Action through Holistic Education includes “peer teaching, school-pride campaigns, peer counseling services, job fairs, and career planning (Araki, 2003)” to help students prepare for the future and keep them out of trouble in the present. Juveniles should be able to leave the detention centers when finished with their sentences and join the real world without being pulled back into the Criminal Justice System. Many juveniles leave detention centers just to be put in the Criminal Justice System as adult. There is a 42 to 60 percent of juveniles in detention centers with disabilities. These juveniles have low academic skills, low behavioral skills, and limited support from others (Guerin & Denti,

Although juveniles should not be in jail they should be put into an academy. Jail cells can be a bit solitary and confined, and are intended to be a punishment for adults not teenagers. Creating academies or institutions would be to all of our benefit because recreational instructors, counselors and psychologists would be at their disposal to help them engage into becoming better citizens. The interaction with other juveniles with the same background and experiences will help them mend their problems and become more open to voicing their problems.

Using juvenile drug court as an alternative to incarceration to decrease the rapidly increasing number of young offenders is a policy that includes various key concepts that one must understand. To start, juvenile drug courts are mostly voluntary. While some juvenile drug courts are mandated, this aspect has not motivated a vast majority of these courts to follow suit. Therefore, these programs are designed to keep youth from using any type of substance. These juveniles are obviously involved in this type of program due to their substance use/abuse issues. The juveniles that are involved in this type of alternate program are comprised of both males and females. It has been shown that female juveniles have improved success at this type of program,

Most of the juveniles have lack of education, the increased use and the availability of guns and drugs. There are many solutions that will help young minorities not commit crimes, building the economy again, changing the community so there would be no access to drugs. Regardless of the sides, it is clear that previous increases as well as recent decreases in violent crime committed are unreasonably generated by the nation’s youth. All minority groups are classified differently and treated differently in the system. The justice system seems to treat African American and Hispanic people differently from other minorities groups. The author explains “A number of recent surveys have shown that there are profound racial disparities in the juvenile

As members of a society we need to distinguish the differences between adolescent and adult behavior and keep those differences in mind when thinking about the implications of abolishing juvenile court has on society. Questions need to be answered such as are all adolescent considered to be as responsible and independent as adults are to be treated the same in a court system? As a society, are we ready to return to a court system similar to that of

Roxanne, L. (1994). JUVENILE OFFENDERS: WHAT WORKS? A Summary of Research Findings. The Evergreen State College.