Should Juveniles Be Rehabilitated Essay

Juvenile Incarceration: Should Juvenile Offenders be Rehabilitated or Incarcerated?
Working Thesis: While many believe juvenile offenders should be incarcerated for their crimes since regardless of their age, they are still committing a crime and deserve to be punished, however, juveniles should in fact be rehabilitated rather than incarcerated due to the negative effects prison has on young offenders’ physical and mental wellbeing, the prison system’s failure to deter juveniles from reoffending, and because juveniles are less likely to make rational decisions about things that affect them long term due to their brains not being completely developed.
According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in 2014, over one

In addition, many of the leading youth justice researchers have found that “the current youth prison model, which emphasizes confinement and control, often exacerbated youth trauma and inhibits positive growth while failing to address public safety” (Shaffer). In addition to juveniles being affected by incarceration, society and communities are affected as well. Since there is little regard for juvenile inmates safety and incarceration is not deterring juveniles from offending, communities are affected as well as the juvenile once the juvenile is released. In many cases, the crimes juveniles commit are generally theft, robbery, vandalism, and other crimes that affect people directly. These acts create fear in communities and causes the people residing in these communities to feel a lack of safety in their homes. Not only does juvenile incarceration affect communities, but incarceration also affects society, specifically minority groups. In 2011, “African American youth were 269 percent more likely to be arrested for violating curfew laws than white juveniles were” (Rovner). In recent years, there has been racial profiling, and minorities being targeted. This racial profiling when it comes to be arrested has