Cultural Diversity Paper Essay

Cultural Diversity Paper
Juvenile crime in the United States is a serious matter.   With the number of juvenile cases that are being prosecuted in the courts, it is no wonder that the number of inmates is increasing.   A juvenile offender is an individual that is too young to be tried by a court of law as an adult.   The age that an offender can be prosecuted as an adult varies from state to state.   Normally the adult prosecution age is seventeen or eighteen.   Due to certain crimes such as sexual assault or homicides, the age can drop for a juvenile offender to be prosecuted. Many times   juvenile offenders have either behavioral issues or associated mental disorders such as bipolar disorder or   post traumatic stress disorder, and sometimes they are diagnosed with conduct disorder partially as the cause of their behaviors.
Race and Ethnicity is Most Affected
Within the Juvenile Justice System there seems to be prejudicial treatment, however, they may simply be disparities. No one can deny that racism has existed and still does in isolated instances however, it is not institutionalized. The criminal justice system is set up to judge all equally, there are some arguments that state a law that requires a large fine is unfair for some urban black youth as their families make less money than a suburban white youth families.
For the year of 2007 in the United States, all of the law enforcement agencies approximately made 2.18 million arrests of persons under the age 18 (Puzzanchera, 2009).   Of the approximately fourteen (14) million arrests that happen for all crimes and ages in 2007 the statistics show that juveniles that were arrested equaled to almost 15% of all arrests that was made. In contrast, juveniles that were arrested equaled to over 18% of all of the adult arrests which means for every eighteen adults arrested there were one juvenile that was arrested as well.   In contrast, these are the arrest statistics and they do not properly show the incarcerations...