In order to evaluate my position towards juvenile justice and administration, I must share my position to begin with. In high school there was a special room with a special educator that assisted troubled students. These kids were called the ED students or emotionally disturbed. This classroom would have 12 to 15 students at a time throughout the entire year. There is often screaming and loud noises coming from this room. These students were often labeled as delinquents or hard to handle children. Their workload was somewhat less than the normal children, in the educator that assisted the students was more than the teacher; he was a mentor.
I believe that we are all inclined to have some sort of prejudice due to the exposure we received
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as we grew up. Society pressured us into believing that hatred was the answer, which resulted in us avoiding these groups. That is what I did; I avoided being a part of a group of individuals where their main mission in life was to cause trouble. I really didn’t care if they needed help, or really didn’t care about the outcome in their life, just as long as I was not a part of it. I realized that juvenile justice and administration played a big part in protecting the community, but I did not know the particulars. I knew that there were specific programs put into place in schools like guidance counselors, police liaisons, and even special classrooms for emotionally disturbed students, to help mentor and guide young developing brains in the right direction. So what changed my decision on how I think about justice and administration of juveniles? As a society, we have declared that there is a problem regarding juvenile justice and administration.
In efforts to fix these problems, school districts create programs like these emotionally disturbed classrooms, to get a head start in correcting these students before they make it into society. School boards authorized a police liaison program to establish discipline and integrity. The role of the guidance counselor was not just to help you pick classes, but to be a different person to talk to when issues other than academics would arise. In high school it was hard to grasp why these children where they way they were. The research that was conducted on the development of teenage brains was fascinating to read. Now as an adult it makes perfect sense why children acting as they did growing up. My decision changed when I was informed of the reasons why this happens, instead of just visually seeing that it does happen like we are on the outside looking in. Becoming informed help me put everything …show more content…
together. I would definitely say that I am more open-minded to observing these individuals with value. Being open-minded means that my views can be wrong and that I am willing to listen and hear a different point of view. I’m a firm believer that everybody has their own unique skill and ability, but in order to unleash that skill and ability the person has to feel comfortable. I believe they will feel more comfortable if peers and adults stop labeling them and just give them a chance to express their values. Keeping an open mind encourages someone to be better today than they were yesterday and learn something from the program to teach siblings and peers. I believe a great way too observe individuals with value is when they are in a group seated around each other talking out a conflict. This is the time that the accused sets aside his or her pride and finds that integrity that is buried deep down inside them. The respect that they would gain from admitting fault and taking accountability of their actions helps restore some loyalty to their peers and community. Being more open-minded make yourself vulnerable because you’re admitting that you don’t know everything and that there are possibilities that could be discovered. When you are more open minded about these individuals, you gain confidence as you learn more and strengthen you’re believe in them. There are great benefits to viewing life with open mind and it’s not always an easy thing to do. I feel that the turning point in my evolution was putting everything together that we have learned in class.
I believe we all knew that there was juvenile justice being served, however how it affected everyone in the community was sort of unknown. As part of community I never felt affected by juveniles, partially because I don’t think I knew how I should be affected or how I should feel. There are always the affects economically, but morally and mentally I guess I never really thought about it. Another turning point I had was immediately watching Nadine Burke Harris: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. I guess I always thought to myself as normal and that there’re many other individuals that have gone through what I’ve been through. It wasn’t until I took the ACES questionnaire and looked at my score that I realize that I was not normal and that I needed
help. Taking the ACES questionnaire allowed me to measure and family member trauma that we learned about throughout the course. The simple questionnaire made clear eight weeks of discussion, quizzes, and lesson plans. There are underlying issues pertaining to the health and welfare of our youth. The easy way out would be to nurse our prejudice and not take the time and energy to learn about how our children personally and see them as individuals value. As I evolved with the class, I realize that I lived the material week-to-week; not just learned it. Every single week the discussions maybe think about how it affects or affected my life, and what I could have done do not be a statistic.
There are many examples throughout “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” that show that prejudice is a human flaw. According to Les Goodman, “You were so quick to kill, Charlie, and you were so quick to tell us who we had to be careful off. Well maybe you had to kill. Maybe Peter there was trying to tell us something. Maybe he’d found out something
Heinous crimes are considered brutal and common among adults who commit these crimes, but among children with a young age, it is something that is now being counted for an adult trial and punishable with life sentencing. Although some people agree with this decision being made by judges, It is my foremost belief that juveniles don’t deserve to be given life sentencing without being given a chance at rehabilitation. If this goes on there’s no point in even having a juvenile system if children are not being rehabilitated and just being sent off to prison for the rest of their lives and having no chance getting an education or future. Gail Garinger’s article “ juveniles Don’t deserve Life sentence”, written March 14, 2012 and published by New york Times, mentions that “ Nationwide, 79 adolescents have been sentenced to die in prison-a sentence not imposed on children anywhere else in the world. These children were told that they could never change and that no one cared what became of them. They were denied access to education and rehabilitation programs and left without help or hope”. I myself know what it’s like to be in a situation like that, and i also know that people are capable of changing even children when they are young and still growing.
Vito, Gennaro F., and Clifford E. Simonsen. Juvenile justice today. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004. Print.
The problem of dealing with juvenile justice has plagued are country for years, since the establishment of the first juvenile court in 1899. Prior to that development, delinquent juveniles had to be processed through the adult justic3e system which gave much harsher penalties. By 1945, separate juvenile courts existed in every single state. Similar to the adult system, all through most of the 20th century, the juvenile justice system was based upon a medical/rehabilitative representation. The new challenges of the juvenile court were to examine, analyze, and recommend treatment for offenders, not to deliver judgment fault or fix responsibility. The court ran under the policy of “parens patriae” that intended that the state would step in and act as a parent on behalf of a disobedient juvenile. Actions were informal and a juvenile court judge had a vast sum of discretion in the nature of juvenile cases, much like the discretion afforded judges in adult unlawful settings until the 1970s. In line with the early juvenile court’s attitude of shielding youth, juvenile offenders’ position was often in reformatories or instruction schools that were intended, in speculation, to keep them away from the terrible influences of society and to encourage self-control through accurate structure and very unsympathetic discipline. Opposing to the fundamental theory, all through the first part of the century, the places that housed juveniles were frequently unsafe and unhealthy places where the state warehoused delinquent, deserted, and deserted children for unclear periods. Ordinary tribulations included lack of medical care, therapy programs, and even sometimes food. Some very poor circumstances continue even today.
In today's society juveniles are being tried in adult courts, given the death penalty, and sent to prison. Should fourteen-year olds accused of murder or rape automatically be tried as adults? Should six-teen year olds and seven-teen year olds tried in adult courts be forced to serve time in adult prisons, where they are more likely to be sexually assaulted and to become repeat offenders. How much discretion should a judge have in deciding the fate of a juvenile accused of a crime - serious, violent, or otherwise? The juvenile crime rate that was so alarming a few years ago has begun to fall - juvenile felony arrest rates in California have declined by more than forty percent in the last twenty years. While California's juvenile population rose by a half a million since the middle and late 1970's, juveniles made up less than fifth-teen percent of California's felony arrests in 1998, compared to thirty percent in 1978; according to the Justice Policy Institute. The juvenile arrests have dropped back, even as the population of kids between ages of ten and eight-teen has continued to grow, and the number of kids confined in the California Youth Authority (CYA) has fallen. With all the progress our society has made in cutting back in juvenile crimes there is still a very serious problem. But if locking kids up is the best way to address it, how do we explain a drop in crime when there are more teens in California and fewer in custody? First we must look at the economy around us. With so many job opportunities available more and more teenagers find honest ways to keep busy and make money. Our generation has a brighter future than the generation a decade ago. Next we look at successful crime prevention efforts: after-school programs, mentoring, teen outreach programs, truancy abatement, anti-gang programs, family resource centers. There is evidence that these programs are beginning to pay off. Sending more, and younger teens through the adult court system has been a trend across the country in reaction to crimes, such as school shootings and violent rapes. Yet evidence shows that treating youth as adults does not reduce crime. In Florida, where probability wise more kids are tried as adults then in any other state, studies found that youth sent through the adult court system are twice as likely to commit more crimes when they're release...
The Juvenile Justice system, since its conception over a century ago, has been one at conflict with itself. Originally conceived as a fatherly entity intervening into the lives of the troubled urban youths, it has since been transformed into a rigid and adversarial arena restrained by the demands of personal liberty and due process. The nature of a juvenile's experience within the juvenile justice system has come almost full circle from being treated as an adult, then as an unaccountable child, now almost as an adult once more.
The historical development of the juvenile justice system in the United States is one that is focused on forming and separating trying juveniles from adult counterparts. One of the most important aspects is focusing on ensuring that there is a level of fairness and equality with respect to the cognitive abilities and processes of juvenile as it relates to committing crime. Some of the most important case legislation that would strengthen the argument in regard to the development of the juvenile justice system is related to the reform of the justice system during the turn of the 19th century. Many juveniles were unfortunately caught in the crosshairs of being tried as adults and ultimately receiving punishments not in line with their ability
Another positive thing about trying juveniles as adults is that those juveniles are taken from their neighborhood, and by doing this it opens the eyes of other teens who are around watching everything that happens. “We once arrested a teen right in the middle of his block. You should've seen everyone out of their houses watching the incident.” ( Chief Hernandez, 62) According to his words he seemed surprised on how of an impact it was to the rest of the community watching. Reports showed that gang violence decreased in that neighborhood that year. Teens look out of what i...
What makes an adult an adult? Is it based on their age? Does turning 18 automatically make you an adult? Should juvenile criminals convicted of a crime be tried and sentenced as adults? Why not? Juvenile criminals should be tried and sentenced as adults.
Justice has always been the goal of our court system, but it is not always served, especially in cases involving juveniles. The judiciary process has evolved from a system that did not initially consider juveniles, to one where juveniles have their own court proceedings, facilities, and even rules or laws. The juvenile justice system has come a long way, and people have worked very hard in its creation. A juvenile is considered to be an individual, under the age of 18, resembling an adult. However, resembling an adult does not always mean that juveniles will have an adult mindset. Thus, juveniles may need extra attention to help get their lives on track. This paper will analyze various ways involving juveniles and correction facilities and programs.
In 1899, the nation’s first juvenile court for youth under the age of 16 was established in Chicago to provide rehabilitation rather than punishment. By 1925, following the Chicago model, all but two states had juvenile courts whose goals were to turn youth into productive citizens utilizing treatment that included warnings, probation, and training school confinement(Cox et al. 2014, p.2). Treatment lasted until the child was “cured” or turned 21. Although judges spoke with the offending children and decided upon the punishment, the lack of established rules and poor rehabilitation led to unfair treatment. In 1967 “ U.S. Supreme Court case of In re Gault held that juveniles were entitled to the same constitutional due process rights as adults, beginning a national reform in juvenile justice and the system was repaired to afford children many of the same rights that adults have in court” (Cox et al. 2014, p.4). Also, state legislatures passed laws to crack down on juvenile crime, as recently, states have attempted strike a balance in their approach to juvenile justice systems as research suggests that locking youth away in large, secure juvenile facilities is ineffective treatment towards different genders in which it doesn’t provide appropriate rehabilitation.
Harassment, reckless endangerment, and burglary are all juvenile offenses. These juvenile offenses almost always stay on the juvenile’s criminal record, and the offenses displayed on a juvenile’s criminal record may cause employers, educators, and other authority figures to think less of the juvenile offender. As a viewer can see, this one mistake or lapse in judgment can ruin the juvenile offenders chance to further their success in life. For example, juvenile offenders may not obtain the dream job that they have always wanted, get into the college that they have always wanted to, or be eligible for a scholarship whether athletic or academic. However, there is a loophole in the juvenile justice system called teen courts. Teen courts give first-time offenders and some re-offenders a second chance because the offense (s) do not go on their criminal record, and their peers get to decide what sanctions the juvenile offender receives or performs. The big question that I am going to discuss throughout this essay is do juvenile offenders who appear before teen courts recidivate?
This paper describes the various legislations and movements that were established in 19th century to address the issue of juvenile justice system. It outlines the challenges faced by the legislation and movements and their implications in addressing the issues of the juvenile justice system.
Student’s lack of success can occur for many reasons but some believe that that it stems from poverty. Many families are forced to work more than one job in order to maintain the household and the children end up staying at home without adult supervision. Adult supervision is needed in order to provide structure, rules, and teach children basic social skills. Social skills are essential in our daily life as it is what we use to communicate with people to get what we want or need. In my experience, I have also noticed that the majority of at risk youth come from single mom or grandparent homes. I have experienced talking to single moms or guardians who do not implement discipline at home because they do not know how to discipline. Other times, they feel bad that the child’s other parent or parents are not in the picture so they try to composite by not enforcing consequences. The mental health of a child is another important concept that schools should consider when they are dealing with troubled youth. Many students have experienced trauma in their lives that has never healed. Teaching children to properly express their emotions is something that sometimes parents do not know how to teach. Having mental health services such as counseling is a great way to help the student heal from the trauma that has been keeping them from being successful. Schools should require all student to receive a mental health screening along with their physical in order to know the student’s history and to understand and help
Over the years many laws and policies have been created and altered. As a result many activities have become illegal. With so many laws in place now, juvenile crime is also on the rise. More and more juveniles are being sent to prison than ever before. The goal of the juvenile justice system was to rehabilitate but now it is more focused on punishment. However, many rehabilitation programs are still in place to help delinquent juveniles get back on the path to becoming successful productive members of society. One program that comes to mind is the restorative justice program.