Is Life Without Parole a Fair Sentence for all Juveniles? I believe this would be a good research question. There are many factors that would lead into a juvenile having such a harsh punishment. The research may show reasons for both sides and questions that come to my mind are what types of crimes are they committing to receive this sentencing? Do the courts take into effect the juvenile’s history and home life?
Less than 25 percent of the average daily population of sentenced offenders is incarcerated; the majority are supervised in the community. For the past 20 years, Connecticut's prisons have operated at or over capacity despite the addition of thousands of new beds since 1990 and a steady 10-year decrease in crime and arrest rates. Department of Correction lacks both a sufficient number of beds to house total inmate population and an adequate system of high security beds to manage high-risk population. Correctional system is hampered by inaccurate population projections and lack of a needs analysis of total offender population, but in particular of the inmate population. The number of inmates released early from prison to community supervision or parole has dramatically decreased.
She then brings up a statistic that 25 percent of the children under 15 represent total court cases. With this statistic we begin to ask ourselves as the audience what percent actually accounts for tweens alone. To go along behavioral changes she brings up topics of suicide, sex, eating disorders, drugs, and alcohol. Sex among tweens is increasing and Hymowitz again brings up before the age of 15. Hymowitz explains that even though numbers of suicide remain small, it has more than doubled in the last thirty years.
REHABILITATION VERSES INCARCERATION Rehabilitation should be viewed as more key than incarceration itself. People who are convicted of crimes should be allowed to heal and better themselves. Many of those people have serious addictions and issues that need to be addressed. In jail however, those issues will only worsen or fester. When the prisoner is released, they may be very angry about the lack of attention they recieved, and become a repeat offender.
At one time juveniles were sentenced to a juvenile facility until they were twenty one no matter how severe the crime was. Think about this if you had a seventeen year old who committed a vicious crime the maximum they could serve would be until twenty one, this in its self is an injustice to society. The implementation of a policy which allowed states to charge juveniles as adults may have been the best change for our society. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 44 states and Washington, D.C., passed laws between 1992 and 1997 enabling the judiciary to transfer juveniles to the adult court system. Since this policy has been implemented, juvenile arrest rates for violent crimes have decreased: In 1999, the percentage of all juveniles arrested for violent crimes fell to an 11-year low.
The number of juveniles in the court system is growing all of the time. In 2008, there were almost one hundred thousand children under the age of twelve arrested by the police. This number represents only about ten percent of all of the juveniles up to the age of 18 in the court system. With this in mind, there has been increased focus on how to handle these juveniles in the court system. In the early phases of the criminal justice system both children and adults were treated and housed the same.
Decrease in Juvenile Crime In 2001, according to the FBI, juveniles accounted for 17% of all arrests and 15% of all violent crime arrests (Snyder, 2003). In the late 1980s, juvenile violent crime arrest had a substantial growth then peaked in 1994. However, between 1994 and 2001, the juvenile arrest rate for Violent Crime Index fell 44% and as a result, the juvenile Violent Crime Index arrest rate was the lowest since 1983 (Snyder, 2003). Furthermore, in 2001, the rate of juvenile arrests for Violent Crime Index offenses that included forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault and murder declined for the seventh consecutive year. The juvenile arrest rate for each of these offenses has been declining steadily since the mid-1990s; for murder, the rate fell 70% and manslaughter arrest rate fell 40% from its 1993 peak through 2001.
More juveniles are executed in the U.S. than any other country (Hoge 60). Seventeen states have set the minimum age for execution ranging from twelve to seventeen years at the time of crime, while seven others have no minimum age limit (Hoge 60). According to Robert Hoge, author of Assessing the Youthful Offender, only fourteen of the thirty-eight U.S. states which permit execution, prohibit imposition of the death penalty on juvenile offenders (Hoge 60). The United States continues to execute juveniles to this day. The most recent was that of Gerald Mitchell on October 22, 2001 in Texas for murder.
With a future study of African Americans or Hispanics offenders have dealt with twenty-five year sentences to only 2.4 times the harshness of a ten-year sentence. The second part is the increasing throughout the 90's and beginning of 2000, with the possession charges against felons being prosecuted by the state and local courts. Later on revealed many reasons that gun related cases will continue to increase because sentencing could contribute to lowering crimes that are violent. Also to add with part II there were results that led to hard federal sentencing within violent crimes. Goals were too hash to complete throughout the federal government to provide such programming that would be missing, so in most districts harsh sentencing could be the result of controlling crime (Karl C. McDonald & George K. Alpine,
Crimes happen daily, and thousands of criminals are sent to court to defend themselves. Prosecutors often feel the need to bring in an expert witness to testify in cases where they feel an expert would better describe the situation. A mental health expert can be there to provide an objective analysis of the victim or even to describe the mental state of the suspect. These experts have to have certain criteria to be recognized as liable. Mental Health experts have contributed and are sometimes needed, and at times there are problems related with them.