Why Children Should Not Go to Prison

Why Children should not go to prison When an adult leaves prison, they take baggage home with them, one can imagine what an adult who grew-up in prison brings home? A young man celebrated his 18th birthday in a juvenile detention center; his gift from the state was a transfer into an adult prison. The crime had been committed eight years earlier and by-law this inmate is now an adult. After hearing some of the risqué’ comments from the other inmates, the youth blushes. At 10, he pointed a gun and shot a family member. Afterwards he was sorry, but before he pulled the trigger, the anger conquered his immature mind. Social interaction programs should be in place when a child begins school, and continue until the child becomes a grandparent. The United States has seen an increase in crime amongst its young, with Congress resorting to studying the problem; parents are wondering where to turn for help as they watch their child travel into a system they do not understand and cannot find help in changing the child’s path to prison. While the public believes that prison punishes and rehabilitates, our national focus should be on prevention programs because children do not belong in prison. Until our country begins to change the juvenile prison system, the incarceration of our young is perpetuating the problem and enhancing criminology for low-risk offenders (Gendreau, Goggin, and Cullen, 1999). Advocates of let the punishment fit the crime and those that believe the prisons have been cleaned-up (Blackstrom, 2006) should review our prison system in the entire country and its detrimental impact on the children who grow-up within that system (Sandberg, 2009). The juveniles that receive a life sentence do not fully understand what that entails until they are 18 years old or older, in which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain research has proven. This research directly affected the outcome in the Supreme Court case in Roper