The most disturbing was not the fact that percentages of juvenile offenders are being sent to supermax and are locked up 23 hours a day. Nor those legislators that give life do not care about rehabilitation for these damaged children. What was is that politics truly do over rule justice. Crime is a political issue. The District Attorney’s Office charging these juveniles and taken the rights away from Judges.
Neither can you make someone repair relationships with the victim. If a youth who committed a first degree murder received a sentence of 100 hours of community service, the youth will think that the crime is not serious so it will not be a problem if he/she does it again. Light sentences do not discourage crime; they encourage. The YCJA does not consistently convey meaningful judgement decisions for the punishment of an
Simply placing juveniles in a prison-like setting and putting the facts of a substance dependence problem on the back burner is obviously not working. With a recidivism rate as high as 35%, jail time alone does not seem to be helping the juvenile drug offender. The program that I am proposing would give the individuals that were incarcerated a place to go after their school day, where constructive activities and counseling will take place, thus removing them from the violence and negativity of the streets, and replacing them with a healthy environment centered around keeping juveniles out of trouble and subsequently, jail. Substance use inevitably leads to reoffending (Chassin 3), and allowing drug offenders who have already been through the system to receive treatment and counseling for their possible drug addiction may decrease the number of individuals who will be brought back into the justice
As this has occurred, non-legal responses such as rehabilitation and advocacy services have attempted to achieve justice while legal responses lag behind. Overall there is a lack of justice, with high incarceration and recidivism, leaving young people stuck in the system, and the accumulative responses ineffective. Protecting young offenders is essential in achieving justice, and this is reached through doli incapax and the prohibition of releasing children’s names when involved in criminal proceedings. Doli incapax is the presumption that children under 14 are incapable of forming criminal intent (mens rea) under the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 (NSW). This legislation coincides with international law obligations from the United Nations’ Convention of the Rights of a Child.
It is defiantly a fact that juvenile justice system has changed dramatically over the last one hundred plus years. The change has affected juveniles over the course of the years in a positive way which is fair compared to some of the cruel punishments that juvenile’s years back received when they were trialed as adults. One hundred years ago there was no such thing as the Juvenile Justice Court where juveniles of all ages nowadays would be hoped to correct their wrongs to right. Laws back then against young criminals were so intense that a 8 year old who might of played a part of stealing at a local deli would be thrown in jail with adult prisoners, would have been beaten for his actions, and would have been embarrassed for his actions as well. Laws and punishments have indeed done a 180 degree spin on what the federal government original message towards juvenile delinquency was.
Minors should not be tried as adults because they have not experienced the world like adults have, and they are not competent enough to go through or understand a trial. Many argue that minors should be tried as adults because they know what they are doing, and since society is changing and it’s not how it used to be 10 years ago, minors should be tried as adults for the reason that they need to learn their lesson and realize the crime they did was wrong. But in a recent study examining the mental health of minors after being tried as adults says, “66% of youth processed in adult criminal court had at least one psychiatric disorder and 43% had two or more types of disorders”. Another study was done for adults and it said, “less than 35% of adult males have a psychiatric disorder compared to 64% of transferred Youth”. I compared the two studies, and you can see that minors being tried as an adult have more of a chance to at least one psychiatric disorder.
While others argue that it’s all that person may know. But does incarceration rehabilitate offenders and if so what is the likelihood that they return to prison. There are those that argue that going to prison doesn’t decrease recidivism. Cullen, Jonson, and Nagin (2011) explain how incarceration will lead to recidivism and not a safer community. These authors found a study by Langan and Levin (2002) that concluded within 3 years of release, 67.5% of the prisoners were rearrested for a new offense, 46.9% were reconvicted for a new crime, and 25.4% were resentenced to prison.
The laboratory of federalism and states' rights had little room to experiment in the face of the all-powerful federal government. While addressing the death penalty, victims' rights and new crimes, abolishing parole in the federal system, and adding years to sentences, crime rates started to decline... but there was no let-up in the pressure to incarcerate for 20 years. Some wrongly calculated the benefit of incapacitation, though I have to admit my own uncertainty as to that calculation. It is very likely that much less than half the crime rate decrease is due to additional
Minors should not be tried as adults in court because they lose the chance at receiving rehabilitation services, the recidivism rate is higher, and the stigma of a criminal past on an adults’ life. The adult criminal system has no special programming and treatment needed for the rehabilitation of convicted youths. The American Government spends money for the prevention of juvenile crime, the rehabilitation, and transitional services for young offenders convicted in the juvenile judicial system. Young adults should have an opportunity to take advantage of these programs too, not shoved into an overburdened, underfunded, and inefficient system. Resulting in perhaps additional or false convictions from the lack of positive reform needed to rehabilitate young minds.
I have attended both dependency and delinquency courts and feel they are relevant to the reintegration of juveniles into out system. The theory and concept of “lock them up and through the keys away” cannot and should not apply to minors. They always deserve a second chance to fix their mistakes. Even though I think we should keep the juvenile justice system, I am not in favor of the way the “NO” argument on the Florida experiment is presented. I do not feel confident in its findings as the most valid or concrete reason for keeping the juvenile court system around.