Juvenile Injustice and Incarceration
RESEARCH
Youth incarceration and youth delinquency in general, are issues
people do not often think about unless they are a criminal justice major, like
myself, or are in other related majors. Essentially, when a child is charged
with a crime, they can either be kept in the juvenile system or sent to the
adult system. However, the US imprisons more young adolescents at a higher rate
than any other nation (Aizer & Doyle, 2013). Yet, it has been continuously
proven that the detention of youth has a great impact on communities. Many
people have this perception that if we send a juvenile to adult prison, they
will come out as reformed individuals. However, the reality is that they come
out in worse conditions. Adult facilities are often filled with much older,
violent, and dangerous individuals who engage in violence in and out of prison.
Once that child is released from prison, they will have trouble reintegrating
back into society and abiding by the laws because of everything they
experienced in prison. This only increases recidivism rates and allows more crime
into the community. A lot of the research shows that adolescents who are
kept in the juvenile justice system are less likely to engage in crime again
when compared to those who are transferred into the adult system (Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, 2007). It is clear that in the juvenile system,
kids are in better equipped facilities that provide resources to help with
their rehabilitation process.
Another way incarcerating youth impacts our society is economically.
In the U.S., on any given day, about 70,000 juveniles are in custody with an
average cost of $88,000 per juvenile annually (Aizer & Doyle, 2013).
Evidently, thousands of dollars are being spent on locking up our youth, but
these same thousands of dollars can be spent towards diverting our youth. In
addition, it has been proven that early interventions that aim to prevent youth
from engaging in repeat offenses save the public almost $5.7 million in costs
over a lifetime when compared to incarceration (Cohen & Piquero, 2007).
Youth incarceration not only is very costly to our society as a
whole but it also has many negative impacts in the lives of our youth. The
prison environment is a harsh environment where individuals develop emotional,
physical, and psychological problems. It is bad enough that we are still
sending youth into the juvenile system rather than diverting them away from it,
but to place them in an adult prison is even worse.
References
Aizer, A. & Doyle, J. (2013). Juvenile incarceration, human capital and future crime: Evidence
from randomly-assigned judges. NBER Working
Paper. 19102.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2007) Effects on
violence of laws and policies facilitating the transfer of youth from the
juvenile to the adult justice system: A
report on recommendations of the task force on community preventive services.
MMWR 2007; 56 (No. RR-9). Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr5609.pdf
Cohen, M. A. & Piquero, A. R.
(2007). New evidence on
the monetary value of saving a high risk youth. Vanderbilt law and economics research paper. No. 08-07. Retrieved
from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1077214.
PERSONAL
This social issue is relevant
to me because I, myself, could have at some point ended up a youth delinquent
as an adolescent but I managed to switch life paths at the right time.
Additionally, it directly affected because I lost a lot of my friends to the
delinquent lifestyle. I was the only one to leave that lifestyle to pursue a
higher education but it was not easy at all. It is very unfortunate that my
friends did not have the support, resources, and strong will to make the change
but I understand them. After all, they were just kids and I suppose I just got lucky.
Personally, I think kids never intend to fall into the delinquent lifestyle. Instead, they are pushed, and sometimes forced, into it by external forces. What I mean
by external forces are communities, schools, and families. Though I do recognize that adolescents are a difficult population to deal with, I still feel that is the responsibility of communities, families, and schools to occupy youth in a productive manner so they are forced to spend their time wisely. We cannot blame youth nor give them punitive punishments without targeting the root of the problem first.
My action is to give a give a voice to the many
youths who are thrown into the system without being given a second chance.
MEMBERS IN MY COMMUNITY ALSO AFFECTED BY THIS ISSUE
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