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Mental health issues in juvenile offenders
Essay on juvenile justice system and mental health
Essay on juvenile justice system and mental health
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For most people, education is the key to success later in life. It can be used for many things such as to learn more knowledge, find a better job, and used to contribute to the world. However, if someone struggles and is unsuccessful in their education, they would most likely turn to crime and then be incarcerated. The cycle of education and incarceration generally begins with low income school districts where they do not have the money to invest in good education. Then the students, who are struggling, drop out of school and are more likely to be imprisoned. The incarcerated are then further limited in their education and will have a harder time to find a job when they are released. Therefore, the cycle of education and incarceration continues as the convicted results back on their return to prison. Thus, with more educational services, it would lead to less incarceration because with more support, the general population of prisons will be able to give back to society instead of being behind bars. …show more content…
One reason is that the inmates become less employable with their criminal convictions. An experimental research by Devah Pager has concluded that an applicant with “a criminal record was found to reduce callbacks from prospective employers by around 50 percent” [1] due to the employer’s fear of legal liability or the worker’s untrustworthiness. The prisoner also has a lower work experience compared to people with clean records because they could not gain any experience due to their time spent in jail. As a result, the prisoner’s return back to society is unwelcoming where they would feel detached. Their habits and behaviors from the poor correctional facility environment have not been facilitated and thus pushes their status further down. The justice system had penalized the convicts with years of service and did not prepare them for the outside
The school-to-prison pipeline is the idea that schools funnel students into the prison system. This theory is narrow-minded and ignores how the government benefits from the surveillance of African Americans. With the imagery of a pipe, this complex issue is reduced to the single-minded idea that schools force people of color, most notably African Americans, and does not discuss the evolution of the larger society. The way society has evolved to discriminate against African Americans at the institutional level is a key factor in the increased incarceration rates. The school-to-prison pipeline is an outdated and prejudiced model that does not fully explain the situation many African Americans face.
When trying to find themselves in society, jobs may be hard to come by. When prisoners find a jobs, they are usually work in jobs that one doesn’t not have to have a high-skill set, such as food service, wholesale, and maintenance and repair. The number one reason why prisoners end up back in jail is not the lack of job opportunities but perceiving that job when returning home. “Service providers and community leaders consider employment to be the primary factor in a successful reentry” (Casey 2). When the lack of job opportunities come prisoners may feel the need to break the law and return to life of crime because they cannot support themselves, so they may turn to selling drugs to make a quick buck. Selling drugs is not an alternative for not being able to find a job, especially when one has just got out of prison because if they get caught they will find themselves back in jail. Recidivism is a topic that I do not believe anyone could solve, it is hard to comprehend why people look back to crime again and again after they get caught the first time. In the article Parole and Prison Reentry in the United States author talks about how when prisoners or released they usually end up failing to finish their release sentence and out of the parolees how many return back to prison when she states, “About half of parolees fail to complete parole successfully and their returns to prison represent about a third of
Most black Americans are under the control of the criminal justice today whether in parole or probation or whether in jail or prison. Accomplishments of the civil rights association have been challenged by mass incarceration of the African Americans in fighting drugs in the country. Although the Jim Crow laws are not so common, many African Americans are still arrested for very minor crimes. They remain disfranchised and marginalized and trapped by criminal justice that has named them felons and refuted them their rights to be free of lawful employment and discrimination and also education and other public benefits that other citizens enjoy. There is exists discernment in voting rights, employment, education and housing when it comes to privileges. In the, ‘the new Jim crow’ mass incarceration has been described to serve the same function as the post civil war Jim crow laws and pre civil war slavery. (Michelle 16) This essay would defend Michelle Alexander’s argument that mass incarcerations represent the ‘new Jim crow.’
The United States of America has the world’s highest incarceration rates, for several reasons. The United States of America doesn’t necessarily possess any unique strict laws in comparison to other countries of the world, yet we still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. More federal level and state level prisons are built in order to control and hold more prisoners because most are reaching its full capacity. The United States of America’s “crime rates” increased about 40 years ago when there became a new focus in the areas of crime. The President of the United States of America at the time Richard Nixon used the term “a war on drugs” in order to shed light on public health due to substance abuse. Initially, these policies created
As these men re-enter the workforce they now likely have less skills than when they first entered prison. There are few, if any, programs, which train these men to effectively re-enter society. As jobs continue to move out further and further into the suburbs, these males, who are from the inner city, are left with few living wage employment options. The rates that convicts go back to jail are so high not because these men want to return to a life of crime but since few employment options are available, they tend to utilize their limited skills to get the money they need to survive. If more efforts do not make additional training available to these males that are realistically designed to help them obtain a living wage job, the rates that convicts go back to jail and black male unemployment will continue to increase.
The correctional system is based on helping offenders become part of society and not commit any crimes. Many prisons begin the correcting criminals since they are inside the jails, but many prisons do not. Prisons provide prisoners with jobs inside the prison where they get very little pay close to nothing and many have programs that will help them advance their education or get their high school diploma. There are various programs prisons provide to prisoners to help them get a job or have a skill when they are released from prison. In contrast, prisons that do not provide programs or help to prisoners rehabilitate and enter society again will be more likely to commit another crime and go back to jail. The Shawshank Redemption prison did not
A significant number of ex-inmates are unemployed because they do not have adequate education and professional skills in order to find a job. More than two thirds of all inmates have not completed high school. Both unemployment and low education level attainment are inversely correlated to recidivism. The lower an offender’s educational level attained, the more likely he/she is to be unable to find employment that will provide for his/her financial needs. Most of the employment available for ex-inmates is in low wage sectors. Those who are unable to provide for themselves are more likely to reoffend. Academic and vocational training provide offenders with the skills to attain better paying employment. By providing academic and vocational training during incarceration, the likelihood of recidivism drops 3.7x compared to ex-inmates who did not participate in rehabilitation programs.
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.
Overcrowding of prisons due to mass incarceration is among one of the biggest problems in America, mass incarceration has ruined many families and lives over the years.America has the highest prison population rate , over the past forty years from 1984 until 2014 that number has grown by four hundred percent .America has four percent of the world population ,but twenty-five percent of the world population of incarcerated people Forty one percent of American juveniles have been or going to be arrested before the age of 23. America has been experimenting with incarceration as a way of showing that they are tough on crime but it actually it just show that they are tough on criminals. imprisonment was put in place to punish, criminals, protect society and rehabilitate criminals for their return into the society .
The United States has been known world-wide for entertainment surrounding the police, judiciary, and incarceration systems. These shows and movies are filled with violence - and at the end, the “bad guys” (criminals) always lose to the “good guys” (law enforcement). But this poses the question: should criminals be treated badly due to their offenses? It is common sense that when one breaks the law, they should be punished for it. However, do the crimes committed take away the humanity of the convict? Prisoners are still citizens of the United States and therefore have rights. America’s Incarceration System continues to fail to meet the needs and rights of prisoners due to issues such as overcrowding, lack of health care, discrimination, and sexual assault.
With the prison system structured as it currently is, incarceration fails to rehabilitate prisoners, effectively forcing those impacted to re-offend. This failure allows for negative impacts within society. While is does also provide some with a positive outcome, the larger scale society suffers while this social issue goes without a
The amount th of money that has been spend on prisons is about 49 billion dollars the reason for this is because people are being sent to prison and some re offend and come back. The main purpose of going to jail is to never come back , but in some cases others don 't seem to learn from their mistakes. This is the reason why prison education would come in handy. In the article “Education and Vocational Training in Prisons Reduces Recidivism, Improves Job Outlook” its states that “Researchers found that inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not”This quote is pretty much saying that the percentage of inmates that has education is less likely to come back. This is good because the amount of money that we would be saving would probably help us with debt that we face a lot in american. Education is the most important form of rehabilitation for
A controversial issue in the criminal justice field is whether or not educational programs should be offered to inmates in jail while they are incarcerated. While some might argue that taxpayers should not be forced to fund these types of programs, others agree that it is extremely beneficial to not only the inmates but also the taxpayers. Not only are the inmates the people in society who need education the most, but studies have shown a significant decrease in the recidivism rate of inmates who participated in educational programs while incarcerated. Jails and prisons should increase educational programs to inmates because inmates need education more than ever, it is more financially efficient to provide educational programs and it significantly reduces the recidivism rate.
The data gathered in the Teplin, Abram & McClelland (1994) research was conducted in the Cook county jail in Chicago during a six year period, using interview techniques during the intake process of 728 inmates. They then tracked the participants over the six years by monitoring their rap sheets. What sets this research apart from the others is that they utilized the population of a jail versus a prison. Typically, once in prison, the time spent there is long whereas in jail, the incarceration time is usually much shorter as the inmates are in jail for lesser crimes or are awaiting trial. In any case, there is a larger turnaround and more opportunity to obtain diverse long term data.
This is used to point out the argument that educating prisoners makes them smarter criminals. As they learn new ideas, concepts and theories, and how to apply their learning, educated prisoners can become intelligent criminals. Many victim rights groups view educating criminals as ignoring the victims. Security should be the top priority in correctional institutions. Education is a key to productivity, a key to a more prosperous life. Applying education in crime results in the disruption of the society. And educating prisoners does not mean productivity and a more prosperous life for them because they remain behind bars.