Adult Prisons

Is sending kids to adult prisons and trying them as adults the best solution for our crime problem or would rehabilitating juveniles be a better option? Most people agree that kids who commit violent crimes need to be punished. However, do they really learn anything from being punished as an adult? In today’s society, punishment and rehabilitation has always been a big problem within our views in the Juvenile Justice System. Rehabilitation beats punishment! Adolescents who are tried and convicted of a crime should be placed in a rehabilitative system rather than a punitive system in order to shift behavior as rehabilitative systems lower recidivism rates.
Juveniles convicted of a felony are typically sent to the adult system. Juveniles that
go through the adult system struggle to reform themselves into a better citizen. According to the California Department of Justice, in 2014, the adult court dispositions states that on average 89.3% of juveniles between ages 14-17 were convicted as adults. 66.3% were sentenced to adult prisons, 2.3% received probation, 26.2% received probation with jail, 3.5% received jail, and 1.7% received another sentence. (52). This proves that majority of the juveniles are being tried as adults and are being sent mainly to state prisons. Obviously, there’s barely juveniles staying in the Juvenile Justice System. Imprisoning juveniles and adults together will make the youth subjected to more physical and sexual abuse, violence, a repeat offenders when return to society one day. It’s also very easy to get abused immediately within 48 hours in the adult facility. (Wood 2). Also, the environment is unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane which does not design the needs to serve their time properly. It’s far less equipped to meet better standards and it’s not willing to make a change of the juvenile’s development.
The adult system is punitive and lacks rehabilitation services. In adult prison, the youth are incarcerated into a facility based on what type of sentence. There are 3 types of sentencing: straight adult incarceration, graduated incarceration, and segregated incarceration in which all are so different. Each one has a purpose to meet their needs at a different level. The straight adult incarceration are juveniles under 18 who are put with adult inmates in adult facilities, with little housing and programming. Graduated incarceration are juveniles sentenced as adults but are incarcerated in juvenile or separated adult facilities until they reach 18, in which they can also be transferred. Segregated incarceration are both juveniles and adults assigned to a specific facility with specialized programming. (Johnson and Sturgeon 2). Many of the adult system lack of specific programs for juveniles because there is no special funding or training involved. So instead they do nothing but serve time. Moreover, some laws consider the children that are accused of specific crimes should be prosecuted in a general criminal court as adults, rather than in a juvenile court or get inflexible minimum sentences for their certain offences. For example, the criminal courts often sentence the violent young offenders to imprisonment, including “life without parole” or the death penalty. (Wilson 11). It depends on the circumstances of the offense, motive, characteristics of the defendant, and mentality. The way the punitive system works is useless and not helpful at all towards the kids, when they’re just being plain punished for their crime. Besides that, juveniles significantly face higher risks of committing suicide. A juveniles housed in an adult system is five times more likely to commit suicide than in a juvenile system. (Wood 2). Following this further, the criminal court wants punishment to be immediate and consistently applied at all times, in order to make the juveniles behave. Therefore, the adult system is no good for their needs because they’re not learning from their mistakes and juveniles are in need of specialized care, housing, and programming in order to change mentally and physically.
Adult prisons are unsuitable to meet the needs of the youth because at a young age they’re not mature enough to protect themselves.
For instance, prison behavior have a big effect of the development of the juveniles because it includes many misconducts such as threats, fights, or assaulting a prison official or other inmates. (Shook 3). This shows bad conditions of the environment that it is poorly equipped which will delay the development of the youth’s behavior. It also proves that the juveniles are always in danger and they wouldn't know what to do since they’re not experienced in this type of environment. Since the adults are way experienced, they have a big advantage to abuse the kids. Another example, the adolescents development of the prison environment confines levels of intimidation or abuse, stressful conditions, and problematic relationships with the prison staff which decreases the youth’s maturity level than adults. (Shook 6). For this reason, the juveniles are nowhere to be safe because it’s not a good way to change the kids due to the poor conditions. In which, this will reflect on the offender's actions to repeat bad behavior and actions again. At this point it starts to get intense because there’s a letter from a 15-year old boy, named Paul Jensen, imprisoned in South Dakota State Penitentiary to his sentencing judge. He said, “Judge Zinter, I have an important question to ask you! Would you please move me out of here? Please don’t leave me here with all
these adults. I can’t relate to any of them. They pick on me because I am just a kid. They tease me and taunt me...” (“Betraying The” 12). Obviously, what the kid just said explains a lot what prisons can damage you. As a result, the youth suffer their lives, captive in a punishable environment where no changes is being made. Juveniles sent to a rehabilitative system show a reduced tendency towards repeat behavior.
Treatment programs are beneficial for altering behavior. They receive special treatments/programs to strengthen their ability to become a better person such as Narrative Therapy, and Restorative Justice. Narrative therapy within the rehabilitative system is a way to identify patients problems, in order to reduce clinically relevant psychological symptoms among the youth. (Ikonomopoulos, Smith, and Schmidt 3). It’s design to help juveniles with their problems and to rewrite their experiences through guidance. A 17-year old Hispanic boy named Isaac is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, cannabis abuse, and inhalant abuse. In which, he received mental health services that include skills training, counseling services, and psychotropic medication management. (Ikonomopoulos, Smith, and Schmidt 3). As a result, testings show it was very effective on reducing his symptoms because the evaluation of the PEM statistic measure is 1.00, Isaac scored below the baseline of 31 which shows improvement. (Ikonomopoulos, Smith, and Schmidt 3). Another effective alternative program is called Restorative Justice. Restorative Justice is a broad program that consists of different models to rebuild a sense of justice. It’s focus is to build relationships with the affected offenders, victims, and communities and healing the wounds through the process. This includes: victim offender mediation,
family/community conferencing, and peacemaking/sentencing circles. (“Breaking free” 2). Victim offender mediation allows the victim to face the offender while in session with a mediator to understand the crime committed and to make amends. Family and community conferencing is also similar like victim offender mediation but they bring all together the victim, offender, family, friends, and community to sit in a group and discuss the crime’s impact to understand one another. Finally, the last method peacemaking/sentencing circles is to build community and resolve problems. (Tsui 2). With this in mind, these are all methods to empower the victims skin and surroundings to support the offenders so they can understand the effects of their actions. As a result, many participants involved within the restorative justice program has a good outcome. One victim said, “I was allowed to participate and I felt I was able to make decisions rather than the system making them for me.” (Tsui 4). Upon release from a rehabilitative system, juveniles are less likely to commit crimes. A model called Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) generalizes criminal behavior and offender subtypes. It is strongly associated with reduced recidivism by up to 35%. Also, the model targets criminogenic needs such as debilitating anxiety or mental disorders, build up self-esteem, and develop good study habits. (Bonta and Andrews, 2010; Bonta and Andrews, 2007-06). Based on the evidence provided, RNR clearly is highly effective towards the young offenders because it will reduce, prevent, and treat the delinquents. They need this to strengthen their mentality, to act more of an adult. Studies show, the following principles of the RNR had a direct relationship to decrease in repeat crimes. (Bonta and Andrews “Rehabilitating Criminal” 47). In other words, the treatment, risk, need, and responsivity are key importance to become an adequate, well-working rehabilitation. According to the effectiveness of the treatment, the offenders who didn’t take the treatment has a recidivism rate of 51%, those who took the treatment have a recidivism rate of 32%. (Bonta and Andrews “Risk-Need” 10). Moreover, the RNR is reliable and another way for many juveniles to rehabilitate themselves. Through this model, it’s most likely that offenders will not commit crimes since they will be well educated and be able to learn from their mistakes.
The teenage brain is not fully developed which means the grey matter of the brain is not developed till age 25. Among many teenagers, the development of behavior changes as you grow older. One of the last parts of the brain to be developed is the frontal lobe. It’s responsible for prohibiting inappropriate behavior, planning, organizing ideas oneself and one's environment. (“Juvies”.) This goes to show that the frontal lobe is not fully developed after adolescence, so of course it’s easy to make wrong decisions. Adolescents are always at high risks on decision making. Studies show that teenagers are subject to psychosocial and emotional influences that can affect their immaturity to make bad choices. (Scott and Steinberg 20). Consequently, the brain of teenagers still have a state of mind like a kid. It’s true that many kids lack the knowledge of thinking long-term consequences and so, their development is not mature like adults.
Juveniles that are put into a punitive system, recidivism rates go up. There is excessive use of incarceration in prison/jails that juveniles will recidivate the same crime again. According to the California Department of Corrections And Rehabilitation, the pie chart of three-year state-level incarceration recidivism rates in California, 56.5% returned and 43.5% was successful out. (3). As a result, the punitive system shows no change in behavior and it’s most likely they’d go back to prison.
The Juvenile Justice System is inconsistent. In the documentary Juvies, a young 14 year old girl named Anait was charged as an accessory to first degree murder and was originally faced 200 years. She dropped off 2 boys at a high school and the boys got into a fight with another boy. Then a third boy comes and try to break it up but it ends up getting shot. Anait was basically the getaway car. In the juvenile court, they were distinguishing whether to put her into prison facility or stay in juvenile justice system. She later was found guilty and fit to be tried as adult. Thing is, she is being put into adult prison when she didn’t kill anybody. Yeah, she was a part of that murder and the one who was driving the car but she’s so young and didn’t know any better. Mistakes on mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. She should be able to stay in the juvenile justice system to give herself a chance and reform herself to never do that again. There are those who think that the kids should be put into a punitive system and prevent these offenders off the streets. People think the criminals will do no good to society since they’re harmful to community. Although, most people want the juveniles to be full responsible for their crimes and receive punishment but what good factors come out of this? They really don’t learn from punishment. However, the juvenile's needs to be heard because some crimes they commit are not worth to be punished. Instead excuse their mistakes and give them a chance to fix it. It all depends on the seriousness and type of offense and everything needs to be carefully looked at.
All in all, the Juvenile Justice System needs to be revised in a rehabilitative component rather than a punitive component to reduce repeated crimes. This really can make a difference because juveniles should not put their lives at risk since adult systems are extremely dangerous and can probably lose lives. Also, it’s true that most of these kids who get in trouble come from abused and neglected backgrounds. To reduce the recidivism rate, put them through education. Let them learn and grow into a better person. Education is everything because many kids tend to lack simple knowledge and common sense.