Pros And Cons Of Juvenile Detention Centers

Angela Davis demonstrates the ongoing violent abuse as she quotes a report on sexual maltreatment in women’s prisons, “We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them” (Davis 78). However disturbing this blunt sexual contact that male officers take with the vulnerable prisoners may be, the officers adopt even more severe tactics to harass and abuse the women as they often utilize “mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women 's breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas...” (Davis 79). To add insult to injury, women are virtually incapable of escaping from their abuser(s). Prison employees upkeep their inappropriate behavior as it is believed they will “rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally” (Davis 78). Davis specifies that the lack of accountability for inappropriate behavior is caused by faulty administrative action as she explains, “Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual...” (78). Since women’s prisons were established, sexual abuse has been used as a form of punishment, although this is not formally acknowledged by prison officials, it is undeniable that women’s prison staff more than oftentimes engage in sexual

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

Many, many years ago the goal for the United States was to divide youth offenders from the adult offenders, calling the youth offenders juveniles. A Juvenile Detention Center or a Juvenile Hall, otherwise known as Juvy is a prison for people particularly under the age of eighteen depending in which state, who had committed a serious crime. Jail, on the other hand, is a place for the confinement of people who had been accused or convicted of a crime ages eighteen and older, depending on the state. There are over 5,000 jails and prisons located in the United States, over 2.2 million people are currently in U.S jails or prison, and over 2.7 million children have parents who are in prison. The average annual cost to incarcerate

There are differences between a juvenile court and criminal court in the United States. The focus of the juvenile justice system is on rehabilitation, in hope of deterring the minor away from a life of crime so they will not commit a crime again as an adult. In contrast, the criminal justice system focuses on the punishment and often bases the sentencing outcome on the criminal history of the youth. In a study conducted, Butler (2011) showed that the participants’ experience with adult jails and prisons show that those facilities may instill fear but are otherwise emotionally—and often physically—dangerous for youth. Many of the adult prisoners, who were minors when they enter the adult institution, felt they were forced to “grow

The article, The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons by Jessica Lahey states that “due to the imbalance of power between children and adults, not to mention between children and prison staff, sexual abuse of juveniles in adult prison is underreported; fewer than one in 10 of the juveniles surveyed reported their abuse.” ( ). The adult prison is not safe because of the abuses between the staff and juvenile, they need to be aware of what happens in the adult system. Lahey wants to show how dangerous the adult system is by stating what actually happens in prison to the juveniles because of the adult prisoners and the staff. Lahey also explains about how the lack of services and safety, “juveniles housed in adult prisons are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than juveniles housed apart from adult offenders.” (The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons). The adult system is not safe, it doesn 't help the juveniles get better. In fact, it only makes the juveniles become afraid and will have difficulty trusting the

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 order to do this they need to make new centers to help prisoners inside better themselves. In Alabama prisons may soon shut down 14 of its prisons for overcrowding, neglect, and violence in the state’s correction systems. In the prison St. Clair Holman in Alabama the prison system makes prisoners act different. There is no safety, security or supervision. “We have people being killed, sexually assaulted, raped, stabbed on daily basis at St. Clair, Holman, and multiple facilities; it’s a systemwide problem,” said Charlotte Morrison, a senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which represents Alabama prisoner.” Within this quote we see that in St. Clair prison, inmates get raped and stabbed. These are reasons why prisons should be reformed. Prisoners shouldn’t be hurt for whatsoever problems. Conversely, Penal Reform International article suggested different reasons to reform prisons one that stood out to reform the particular prison in Alabama was this, Provide a healthy, safe environment. “Spaces that are filled with sunlight, outside views, therapeutic color schemes and normalized materials, encourage inmates’ participation, reduce stress, incidents and assaults and decrease staff absenteeism.” Considering the fact that prisoners in Alabama are brutally hurting each other in their cells, we can conclude that if prisons provided a safe environment bad

When children and teens commit a violent crime such as murder, courts convict them as adults. This means that children as young as eight have been tried as adults in court. Eventually, these convicts will be housed in jails with adults. Despite the federal law stating that juvenile and adult inmates must be separated, most states do not comply with these rules. Furthermore, a law that varies throughout the states is the age in which courts send the children to adult or juvenile prisons. These cutoffs range from 7 to 14 years old. At any rate, the current situation is one that has sparked many moral and ethical beliefs to surface, resulting in debates that have yet to be resolved. Children who commit violent crimes should not be tried as adults, because proper educational services are typically not affordable, children are more susceptible to harming themselves

Do you think that Juvenile Justice Centers are beneficial for troubled teens? Well, they actually aren’t beneficial at all. I don’t think that they are beneficial because, some centers don’t help the troubled teens get on track, the center doesn’t have the same educational standards as regular schooling, and most of the kids that get out are still troubled. Let me explain why.

Programs for juveniles are supposed to prevent children from entering or reentering the Juvenile System. Current programs that are being used today for prevention can be altered to fit the needs of more juveniles in different situations. One of the extension of these programs needs to be for those juveniles in foster care. A great percent of children in foster care gets involved in criminal activity than the children who stay with their parents (Doyle Jr., 2008). If this does not get resolved, the juveniles in foster may start off with simple crimes but, without help, will evolve to harder criminal activity. One program that would be a positive influence for foster care juveniles is the School Transitional Environmental Program. It is a program

According to Dowden & Andrews (1999), since 2010, there has been a growing concern over the increasing rate of incarceration for women: an alarming rate of 3.4 percent annually. Some experts like Kruttschnitt (2010) explain that the growth of incarcerated women population is due mainly to two major factors; one contributor to this phenomenon is the war on drugs. As politicians are passing more aggressive anti-drug policies and as police are cracking down on drug offenders, increasing amounts of women are being caught with illegal substances. The second reason is the the switch from indeterminate sentencing to determinate sentencing which is forcing women to stay in prison for longer than is necessary. This is more apparent because

The documentary, “Kids Locked in Solitary Confinement” depicts the toll that solitary confinement can have on the juvenile population. Approximately, 27% of adolescents in Riskers Island are in solitary confinement. The majority of which have not yet been convicted of a crime. However, these juveniles are in jail because they cannot afford to post bail. Supporters of solitary confinement believe that the segregation juveniles experience is not equivalent to the segregation in the federal system. Essentially, they believe that juveniles experience a lesser form of true segregation. Nevertheless, Psychiatrists expressed that juveniles should not be in solitary confinement. Teens are forced to live in an 8ft.by 6ft. cell, those cells are even

For my Diverse Field Experience this semester, I spent fifteen hours at the Mclean County Juvenile Detention Center. This particular center was occupied by about 8-14 juveniles at a time, all depending on court dates and occupancy of other nearby detention centers. This center usually had 3 staff members working the shift every time I went, which was seven to nine on weekday afternoons. I was intrigued to go to at this time because I thought it would be the time of the day were the juveniles had no school work or other obligations to do while I was there. I wanted to see what they liked to do in the free time before bed, the only stipulation being mandatory snack time at eight pm. I have seen plenty of students in a classroom environment during my clinicals here at

I think that decreasing sexual violence in prisons relies upon the corporation of the facility and staff. One way to decrease the sexual violence is the screen the staff better. This is due to the fact that, among state and federal prison inmates 2.4% (34,100) reported an incident involving facility staff. While the percentages seem low they vary from place to place and every little decrease could help. The main thing, that I think that facility and staff could do in order to help is to pay special attention to certain inmates. The inmate that they should keep an eye out for are all those that would be easy to victimize. These inmates include naïve of young inmates as well as newly arrived inmates. And especially those inmate who fit the description

These women eventually adapt to the environment of the prison and cope with the situation they are facing. The programs women have access to are male orientated and even use male pronouns that are less successful. Even though women have smaller numbers in prisons, are there recidivism rates higher than male recidivism rates because of the programs? Males and females have different hormones and their brains are different and respond to different things better than one another, so obviously the programs and treatment has to be different. The approach for women has to be different and prisons need to be gender orientated. “Furthermore, the policies and procedures and the specific ways in which women are treated in the prison would need to be reexamined and