Juvenile Punishments For Juveniles

Hundreds of youth under the age of 16 are incarcerated at the Department of Juvenile Justice in New York City. The majority of these young people locked up do not pose a threat to society because they are convicted of non-violent, low-level offenses. If these are low-level offenses, why are these young individuals being sent to juvenile centers? Well, rather than employing traditional disciplinary measures for minor discretions such as detention or counseling, faculty members are instead using drastic methods such as suspension, expulsion and law enforcement to punish the youth. This funneling of students out of school and into the streets and the juvenile correction system is known as the “School-to-Prison-Pipeline.” This cycle deprives the youth who are in poverty, of meaningful opportunities such as an education and a future.
There are inequalities in the education system, poverty and stereotypes, which play a major role in who gets incarcerated; and studies show that students of color receive harsher punishments than white students who engage in the same conduct. New York City has initiated steps to reduce detention by implementing alternative. These alternatives will ensure that youth receive the “proper level of supervision, reduce detention populations, save money because it costs millions of dollars to run a detention facility, and cut youth crime and recidivism rates. “ To touch base on recidivism rates, the system is wasteful and racially biased because detention center don’t produce a so-called “corrected individual.” It alternatively produce delinquents by “imposing violent constraints on its inmates…” and therefore, does not help stop recidivism. Recidivism can be defined as “a tendency to relapse into a previous co...

... middle of paper ...

...r responsibility for routine discipline of students not police officers. They need to improve faculty training to resolve conflicts instead of calling the cops who inevitably has to take action once called. Unfortunately the young men I visited every Sunday were already targeted by the “School-to-Prison-Pipeline initiative. And when they leave the prison, they will be faced with many hardships because of the stigma surrounded by incarceration struggling to find work and successfully live on their own. People don’t want to hire ex-cons, and by not giving them the opportunity to work in a particular area that they may have learned about in prison, they are forced back into old habits. Since old habits most likely include illegal activities, an incarcerated individual may be incarcerated again, and thus return to the Juvenile center or even worse an actual prison.