What Is The Right Treatment or Punishment? CRJ301: Juvenile Justice Ashley Cusson Professor: Kathleen Minella June 9, 2014 Juvenile delinquency is an ongoing problem in this world and the biggest problem is how we should deal with it. I personally believe that juvenile offenders should be given the option of rehabilitation or treatment for crimes they may commit depending on the crime but other people or even the law in certain states says that punishment is the only way to successfully treat a juvenile offender. Treatment and punishment both have its pros and cons but in the area I live in I believe that treatment would be the best action to take towards juvenile delinquency and throughout this paper I will be able to show why treatment is the most effective way to go. Treatment can not only help a juvenile offender get past the actions that caused him/her to be an offender in the first place but also can help the juvenile from repeating the same mistake again.
The first thing could be getting tickets which would hurt me in the pocket book which I couldn’t afford and second result could be jail/prison. I go there to see my husband because he has not obey the law before and I don’t want to live the way he has to so I obey the laws. We also obey laws because we all benefit from them. Protection of life and property, security of peace, welfare, etc. I don’t steal because I don’t want to be stolen.
Their key arguments are: when a youth does something, he doesn’t think twice. This is because their brains are still developing. The youths who commit crimes should be sent rehabilitation, so they do not commit crimes again. Many researchers have come to a conclusion that putting youths in prison with other criminals can effected the mentally, some of those effects turns them into criminals. Now I am going to talk about my point of view.
They will withhold critical evidence from the defense team and will resort to immoral if not illegal tactics in their investigation of the offense. Their personal opinion is that they actually do not care if the defendant is guilty or innocent, they just want a conviction. They want to extract their pound of flesh. Also researchers have determined that some of the causes of prison overcrowding are harsher penalties for criminal activities, changes to laws that make new actions illegal, high recidivism rates and needed improvements to the penal system. Once the causes of crowding have been fixed researchers can begin to address the problems it causes and deal with them.
In this paper I will tell you what justice means to me in general as well as what it means to me as a future juvenile probation officer. In general, justice to me means that a criminal must be punished for the crime that he/she has committed. To be just and fair, the punishment must fit the crime. For instance, you would not want to seek the death penalty for someone who only committed burglary and you would not want to give someone only one to two years in prison for murder. The punishment should also increase for repeat offenders.
An adults sentence is to punish the offender for the crime he or committed. Once a juvenile enters the correctional system he or she could serve time in juvenile hall or boot camps. The juvenile system believes that with the right kind of help and guidance the juvenile can be rehabilitated, this why the juvenile system focuses on rehabilitation. The adults that are put into confinement are not often rehabilitated, because that is not what the adult system is about, it is about punishment for the crime that he or she has made on society. The juvenile system is more lenient than the adult system also.
It is believed that certain traumas and different environments have a great effect on how ones mind develops. If these environments are not emotionally stable, many things could go wrong psychologically. Also it is said less traumatic things, such as smoking while pregnant and substance abuse can cause psychological problems, later on causing criminal behaviors into adult-hood. Anyone being raised around a dysfunctional surrounding is bound to end up with some sort of emotional detachment, could’ve caused them to veer onto the path of committing crimes. Firstly, there are many factors that can exacerbate childhood trauma that will later on cause a person to engage in criminal activity.
The criminal justice system has a need for alternative to incarceration programs in order to help with the overcrowding and the task of reforming offenders at any level. Alternatives to Incarceration The criminal justice system has become an area of concern in many states. Because of the jail overcrowding and costs to the people, alternative programs are being used for offenders. Alternative to incarceration programs (ATI’s), are “designed to reduce reliance on pretrial detention and/or incarceration and operate in a manner consistent with public safety” (New York State, n.d., para. 2).
Criminals are constantly shown living in fear of other inmates or working tirelessly on roads or laundry mats. These representations more often than not, disregard the rehabilitation process which is a key factor in proving a prison to be effective in its goal. The main goal of a prison is to not only segregate offenders from society but, to rehabilitate them back into the public. The effectiveness of a prison is measured by the extent of the prisoner’s rehabilitation. If the offender has been properly and fully rehabilitated then the prison is proven effective but, does the effectiveness of the prison solely rely on the extent of rehabilitation or are there other factors that contribute to the effectiveness?
There has to be a consequence for breaking laws and committing crimes for anyone. However, there is also a big difference between a non-violent crime and a violent crime. Someone who is arrested for drug possession verses someone arrested for murder is like night and day so should they be punished alike for such different crimes? I think the whole drug epidemic needs to be overhauled and corrected. Rather than put these people in jail where they just sit till they get out why not have a different type of jail where they are housed and rehabilitated with appropriate treatment and awareness?