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Juvenile Justice System In America

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Childhood is generally associated with an age of innocence and a time without serious problems or worries. However, for thousands of children in America, this innocence has been taken away from them. Instead of having time to learn from their mistakes and develop naturally, they are placed in an environment that is harmful to their growth. Currently, in the United States around 60,000 children and teenagers under 18 are incarcerated and around 10,000 are in adult jails (“America’s Addiction to Juvenile Incarceration: State by State”)(Lahey). These children go through very different experiences than their peers outside jail walls, face many challenges during their time in jail, and have difficulty adapting upon release. Placing children and teenagers in jail results in negative effects rather than rehabilitation. The juvenile justice system in America is complex and varies from state to state, but the overarching purpose is to rehabilitate youth offenders. It processes nearly 1.7 million cases a year and overall handles most of them the same way (“Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System”). When those under age go to trial, their sentence often is decided by how likely they are to be rehabilitated and learn from their mistakes (“Juvenile justice”). Their cases …show more content…

This would include assault, homicide, or rape. These juveniles should be treated differently, as they still may pose a threat to others. In most cases, they will be tried as adults and would face the appropriate consequences. While it should still be taken into account that they are young adults who have a chance for reform, in cases like these the safety of others should be the most important concern. For the most part, juveniles should be given second chances and time to learn from their mistake; however, in some cases, no reform is

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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

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According to statistics, approximately two million juveniles under the age of 18 in the United States are arrested each year. Over 600,000 of them are placed in detention centers annually and approximately 95,000 reside in secure juvenile correctional settings on any given day. Further numbers suggest that the United States leads all industrialized nations worldwide in juvenile incarcerations. With criminal records also come detrimental consequences including: difficulty of finding employment, loss of public housing, immigration concerns, increased drop-out rates and the potential of recidivism. Research on the development of the juvenile brain and the negative consequences that come with focusing solely on commitment into a facility make

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