Juvenile Justice System

In this paper, an assessment will be done on the juvenile justice system. In addition, an explanation will be provided on why the juvenile justice system should focus its efforts on rehabilitation as opposed to punishment. There will also be detailed explanations on how law enforcement, court processes, probation, corrections, community programs and intervention services will be effected. The paper will analyze some of the arguments that will oppose the views of this paper. An explanation will be provided as to why these arguments are not as valid as the arguments that will be made for rehabilitation in the juvenile justice system. Finally, an analysis will be done on how the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages of rehabilitation over
The hope was that once they became 18 years of age, the adolescent would be able to have their records expunged and they could move on as adults and live productive lives. However, this line of thought has not worked out as legislation has been adopted within the past 20 years giving the juveniles greater punishments with the severity of their crime. James (2010) makes it clear whether the punishments that the adolescents have been receiving have been successful saying, “In a study focusing on 15- and 16-year-olds, Columbia University compared juvenile offenders charged with similar crimes but tried as juveniles in one state and as adults in another. In the case of burglary, there were "no significant differences" between the two versions of prosecution. However, in the case of robbery, a higher percentage of recidivism occurred in the group prosecuted as adults”. This is an indication that harder punishments for adolescents do not work as the thought process went with the
When the adolescent offender goes through rehabilitation, whether it is mental or therapy that looks good for them that they are trying to make them self better. Traditional probation is the main community based treatment effort that the prison system tries to accomplish. The term probation is a contract between the offender and the court with certain rules and regulation that must be followed by the offender. The consequences for disobeying the court’s order is that the offender can be reprimanded back to prison. House arrest is another community based treatment effort, where the offender can be fitted with an ankle monitored so that the court can keep the offender at their homes to keep them out of trouble. The importance of these community based corrections is that they can save the state money and release prisoners back to the community to serve their sentences. According to Juvenile Delinquency: The Core (2005) preparing the youth to deal with increasing responsibility when they are released from prison is part of the aftercare program. In addition, monitoring and testing the youth and the community’s ability to deal with each other is part of the aftercare program. The importance of the aftercare program is that the youths have resources to help them move forward in making them productive in society in the task. Intervention services can be a good way as