The reality that children grow into men and women is no shock to any adult. But for teenagers, heightened self-awareness often triggers surprise or even horror, joy or despair. The age that I have chosen to study for this essay is a 17 year old teenage boy. The reason for this is because so many remarkable things happen during the teenage years and these things vary from culture to culture. To be a teenager is to be in a time of fluctuation and more often than not in western society, a time of rebellion.
The demographic group most affected by the war on drugs and the incarceration boom are the juveniles. Youth who turn to drugs and alcohol abuse are faced with harsh reality at YSI Facilities, another branch of the private prison industry. Rather than being charged with fines appropriate to their offenses and being sent to rehabilitation or other forms of drug treatment, non-violent offenders are locked away with long, harsh sentences. This profit-driven war on drugs and other substance abuse ruins the lives of the inmates, turning them into harder criminals by exposing them to such environments. According to a project run by The Huffington Post, 40% of juvenile offenders sent to private prisons on account of drug related crimes are arrested and convicted of harsher crimes in less than a year from their release (Kirkham).
Teens also account for 14% of all driving fatalities that occur. (Teen Driving). As a teenager I don’t even feel responsible enough to be behind a wheel of a car unsupervised. Teens are taking a lot of chances with having this large responsibility. I believe having cars in high school is very pointless.
Food, shelter, and money causes juveniles to turn to gangs. Areas with high gang activity forces/intimidates, (peer pressure), children to join gangs. Less popular juveniles join gangs to become cool or to claim the social letter. Gangs may present themselves as a means of survival to youth who lack basic essentials such as food, clothing and shelter (http://www.gangfree.org/gangs_why.html). Juveniles who live in low-income neighborhoods or poor neighbors join gangs for food, shelter, and money.
Juvenile crimes are one of the most common problems that have negative consequences on any community. Juvenile crimes refer to the crimes that are perpetrated by individuals who are under the adult age. Statistical analysis indicated that this number grows daily. This has triggered the government to seek intervention measures to help reduce the increasing trend and hence safeguard the society against future offending. This because such children who have records of crime develop to become uncontrollable gangs in the society.
More and more young minority men and women are being ushered into the criminal justice system under the guise of fighting drugs. Therefore, the resources for educating them are diminishing and barriers to education restrict students with drug convictions from receiving higher education. Our youth of color bear the brunt of harmful drug policies from arrest to prosecution to detention in correctional facilities. In some states in the U.S. they now have the distinction of sending more Black and Latino young people to prison every year than graduate from state university programs. This legacy of discrimination in U.S. drug policy amplifies the burgeoning gap in opportunities available to White youth and youth of color.
Situations such as this are what affects the teenage perspective of the police force. Teenagers and young adults are becoming more and more frequently involved in encounters with the police. The incident in London, Ontario is what causes many young individuals to fear law enforcement, yet police insist that they need to monitor teenagers more closely due to the brutal nature of some crimes committed by teens. In most cases, teenagers and young adults are more likely to conduct a crime then seniors or kids. Most of these crimes consist of robbery or even homicide, and are conducted mostly by a male.
Taylor Nordmeyer Prof. L Gertsma ENGL 1101 27 November 2012 Gang Control It’s no question that we have a major gang problem in the United States. More needs to be done to eliminate gangs, because they increase the drug flow, the crime rate, and intimidate citizens of their communities. Not all gangs are dangerous, but the ones that are, need to be contained because of their cruel behavior and their harsh crimes. Gangs become more powerful through these factors. Eliminating or controlling the drugs being distributed by gangs then their power will diminish.
He also states that police officers are more likely to arrest suspects in racially mixed or minority neighborhoods” (Crutchfield and Martinez, 2010 p913). These neighborhoods have groups that make these juveniles believe that being in a gang is ok or causing harm to another individual make them fit in to a certain group. Police officers have to constantly patrol these deviant activities that these juveniles participate in. These neighborhoods in return think that the
Kids still need to be limited on how often they are using the technology. Exposure to technology isn’t all bad, yet there are numerous negative effects of technology on children. Many parents face the complex decision of the right age of having a cellphone. With advertisements of cellphones showing their main characters as teenagers and preteens, the peer pressure on our kids today is overwhelming. Most teens have their first cellphone by freshmen year of high school, which seems acceptable.