War On Juveniles Research Paper

Juveniles are the future of this country and we must treat them as such. The United States began its war on drugs in the 1970s in order to combat the increasing use of illegal drugs coming in from Latin American countries. The war on drugs resulted in the formation of the Drug enforcement agency (DEA), mandatory minimums for drug charges just to name a few. The war on drugs created a system where the United States has the highest prisoner population per capita in the world with fifty percent of those being incarcerated for drug offenses. This has not only had an impact on adults but also juveniles. Juveniles have suffered from the war on drugs whether it was intentional or not.

The war on drugs has had a detrimental effect on juveniles for a number of reasons. The number of incarcerated juvenile from 1986-1996 increased by 291% from 31 out of 100,000 juveniles

The cost of creating and maintain juvenile detention centers is insane. During the 1990s “the juvenile justice system saw a 43% increase in spending, mainly as a response to the expenditures that accompanied the increased confinement of juvenile offenders” (Gaudio, 2010). It has been proven that juvenile’s brains are not as developed as adults and the threat of detention does not affect them as much as it would in an adult so it would not be as affective at deterring crime. Being incarcerated also may make a juvenile more likely to reoffend once they are released. They pick up skills from other juveniles while detained and once they are released, they come out, knowing how to commit crime more than when they went in. With all the time and money being spent on housing juveniles and training those in charge of them, we do not see a decrease in its ability to prevent or reduce drug use among juveniles. Incarceration while it is also very expensive, it also has other negative effects on juveniles that other method of rehabilitation would work better