Juvenile Delinquency In Adult Prisons

Mahatma Gandhi once said that, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” This notion of freedom serving as a channel for making mistakes or getting second chances in life is a very conflicting topic, especially when it comes to the issue of juvenile delinquency and how to handle it. In the American criminal justice system, there is no uniformity in properly defining who constitutes as a juvenile and many jurisdictions are struggling to draw the fine line between who should be tried as an adult and who should be tried as a juvenile. In most states, 16 is the maximum age to be tried as a juvenile. However, new laws are making age distinctions insignificant as “kids as young as 10 have been charged as adults

Many juveniles in adult prisons are completely surrounded by vile men/women who will do anything for what they want. This puts juvenile prisoners in a very helpless position, where they can’t speak up for themselves, or defend themselves from the other prisoners and the dreadful scenes taking place in American prisons. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, juvenile prisoners locked up in adult prisons “witness brutal inmate-on-inmate violence. And they are… victimized sexually”(Southern Poverty Law Center). Juvenile inmates also have no choice, but to “submit to older inmates because they know the guards probably won’t help them”(Southern Poverty Law Center). Locking juveniles up in adult prisons makes them more submissive because they fear their older inmates and always live with a sense of insecurity about their life. Also, in an effort to fit in with other older inmates, juveniles might start to “adopt negative behaviors that are the norm in a hostile prison environment”( New York Times). This causes juveniles to end up acting and behaving like adult criminals and eventually continues the vicious cycle of juvenile criminals facing difficulties and being ill-treated in adult prisons. However, some people still believe that the difficulties juveniles face in adult prisons are beneficial to the society as a

The point of the juvenile justice system is to help juvenile criminals to choose the right path in life, but when juveniles are treated by the adult justice system, which tries to lock up adult criminals without giving them a chance to change, juveniles lose that chance to become productive citizens of the country. The belief that a harsher system of justice will serve as a model for other juveniles to not commit crimes is making the effects of juvenile crime even worse. For instance, research suggests that juveniles “in the adult criminal system are 34 percent more likely to be arrested again than those convicted of similar offenses in juvenile court”(Southern Poverty Law Center). This evidence proves that trying juveniles as adults prevents juveniles from becoming better people and changing their ways because of the lack of proper education and guidance and proper positive influences in adult prisons. Juveniles in adult prisons are prone to committing more suicides and lack incentives. “Their educational and employment prospects are markedly worse”(Terry), so even when they are released from prison they are not able to find well-paying jobs due to their criminal background. The lack of employment