Juvenile Delinquents: To Confine or Not? Essay Example

Introduction

Juvenile Justice is an area in Criminal Law which exists to handle offenses by individuals who are below eighteen years as stipulated in Title 42, Chapter 72 of the U.S. Constitution and Federal Statutes. Juvenile delinquency is a society problem, from parents and siblings to the delinquents, victims of their crime, the justice system as well as taxpayer money. Proponents of incarceration argue that the recent spates of vicious crimes committed by children below twelve years are indicative of potential by juveniles to not only inflict harm but also grow into chronic offenders (Flores).

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That said, there exists a controversy surrounding the balance between protecting society and rehabilitation vis a vis punishment and social incapacitation of young offenders. Amidst the debate, juvenile courts continue to receive and convict children accused of both minor offenses and capital crime. Against the backdrop of offense patterns, growing concerns, punitive legislation and staggering statistics of youth crime, this paper's school of thought is that juvenile offenders should be rehabilitated within society rather than confined by the justice system.

Facts, Statistics, and Opinions

Before 1899, juvenile delinquents faced justice and incarceration like adults. However, reformers like Miriam Van Waters opined that child offenders needed rehabilitation as opposed to punishment since they cannot comprehend the damage occasioned by their acts of crime (McGarvey). Juvenile confinement was therefore only to detain youth accused of capital crimes like murder or rape while awaiting legal action. Over time, there have been legislative changes aimed at offering more punitive corrections among them allowing juveniles to be tried and convicted in the adult justice system (Finley, and Schindler). Currently, over 5,000 youths are in detention for what would-be low-level offenses, and a further 4,656 held in facilities similar to, or actual adult prisons (Sawyer). These statistics are testament to non-violent youth who should be rectified at home being criminalized for non-criminal violations.

Furthermore, that facilities designed for violent offenders are holding even those outside the criminal bracket brings about the issue of overcrowding. According to Sawyer, the justice system currently contains about 53,000 juveniles on any given day. In 2016 for instance, the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center had to supplement the workforce due to the growing number of detainees (Flynn). The center, which has a holding capacity of two hundred and fifty had a population of three hundred and eleven. The result was an outbreak of fights among the detainees, creating an unsafe environment for the children as well as the suspension of various rehabilitation programs. Such occurrences point to the fact that incarcerated youth not only face safety risks but also miss out on the rehabilitative aspect of juvenile justice.

Data by the Department of Justice indicates that in 1991, youth crime accounted for seven percent of all crime in the country. While those figures represent a worrying trend and tend to justify the need for confinement, studies have shown a correlation between social upbringing and delinquency (Bridges). These findings are characteristic of a failure on family and societal values, whose outcome is morally decadent children. In essence, correcting this loophole through confining the offenders is an attempt to treat the symptoms instead of dealing with the root cause.

Further afield, it is important to note that incarceration is expensive. Holodny alludes to a report by the Council of Economic Advisers which puts the annual cost for incarcerating a single convict at $112,555. That is a sharp contrast to the amount spent on education, as the average yearly tuition fees at a private university for one student is $32,405. A comparison of the two figures suggests that investing in early childhood education is not only cheaper but also beneficial as it significantly reduces the chances of youth involvement in criminal activities. There should, therefore, be more emphasis on programs like Head Start which serve children who are at risk of being drawn into the criminal world (Miller et al.). Holodny's report reveals that it costs $9,770 annually to maintain one child in the Head Start program.

Additionally, the adage goes that the youth is the pipeline from which every country's future lies. Confining children is akin to spelling doom on their future as studies have shown that conviction lowers an individual's ability to secure employment, regardless of whether or not they are genuinely reformed (Prison Legal News). That society labels such children as one-time-inmates is a tag that is not only difficult to break away from but also comes in the way of their integration back into the community. The struggle to find footing upon release is reason enough to push the same children back into crime as a means of survival.

Solutions

According to Youth.gov, the confinement-heavy system deprives juveniles of essential conditions necessary for their development, like the absence of a parent figure, socialization with peers as well as academic environments that can aid critical thinking and decision making. Instead of incarceration, the federal government should fund community-based alternatives-to-detention programs to reduce the need for confinement. For supervision of offenders, the system should tap into programs like the Intensive Protective Supervision instead of having them supervised in confinement facilities (Land, and McCall).

Juvenile delinquency would also be ameliorated if the system concentrated on the root causes, by performing behavior therapy on children as well as training for parents and members of the society. The success rate of crime prevention and treatment programs like the Parent-Child Interaction Training is representative of a better approach to handling child upbringing compared to confinement (Chaffin et al.). The Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT) is another program which has proved itself as a practical option for promoting cognitive discipline among youth (McGarvey). There should be monitoring and evaluation to ensure effective delivery and benefit for both the child and community at large.

Pro-confinement champions pose, and rightfully so that juvenile delinquents are a disaster in waiting whose mitigation is incarceration as it takes them away from the environments where they are likely to re-offend. While it is true that there are young offenders who are too vicious to be allowed within the community, the noble idea of detention hinged on the need to protect society from crime by only the notorious offenders. There is, therefore, need to relook at the legislation so that juveniles accused of minor offenses are not pooled together with capital offenders as it changes the end goal from rehabilitative to punitive.

Conclusion

With the benefit of hindsight, detention and incarceration should be a last resort as it does more harm than good to young offenders. The most workable solution to juvenile delinquency is working around the early years before children join crime. That places the burden of discipline on family and community while freeing the juvenile justice system of the responsibility to correct delinquency. In instances where family structures fail and youth end up on the wrong side of the law, the juvenile justice system should consider options to incarceration given that confinement has been unable to achieve the target of rehabilitation as was the initial idea. By so doing, the rates of recidivism will reduce, and more youth will get better opportunities to rebuild their lives.

Works Cited

Bridges, Banham. "Factors Contributing to Juvenile Delinquency." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol 14, no. 4, 1927, pp. 531-532., Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Chaffin, M et al. "Parent-Child Interaction Therapy with Physically Abusive Parents: Efficacy for Reducing Future Abuse Reports. - Pubmed - NCBI". Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov, 2004, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15279533. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Department of Justice. "102. Juvenile Crime Facts". Justice.Gov, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-102-juvenile-crime-facts. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Finley, Michael, and Marc Schindler. "Punitive Juvenile Justice Policies and The Impact On Minority Youth". Vol 63, no. 2, 1999, p. 11., http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/63_2_3_0.pdf. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Flores, Robert. "Child Delinquency: Early Intervention and Prevention." Child Delinquency Bulletin Series, 2003, pp. 1-2., Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Flynn, Meagan. "Fights Abound at the Overpopulated Harris County Juvenile Detention Center". Houston Press, 2016, https://www.houstonpress.com/news/fights-abound-at-the-overpopulated-harris-county-juvenile-detention-center-8836790. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Holodny, Elena. "Juvenile Incarceration is Way More Expensive than Tuition at a Private University". Business Insider, 2016, https://www.businessinsider.com/annual-cost-of-juvenile-incarceration-versus-other-expenditures-2016-2. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Land, Kenneth, and Patricia McCall. "The North Carolina Court Counselor's Intensive Supervision Experiment, Phase III: Final Evaluation Report.". Files.Eric.Ed.Gov, 1991, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED346367.pdf. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

McGarvey, Sean C. "Juvenile Justice and Mental Health: Innovation in the Laboratory of Human Behaviour". 2012, p. 97., Accessed 3 Nov 2018.

Miller, Elizabeth B., et al. "Does Head Start Differentially Benefit Children with Risks Targeted by The Program'S Service Model?". US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4563874/. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Office of Child Development. "Juvenile Justice: Rethinking Punitive Approaches to Addressing Juvenile Crime - Office of Child Development. The University of Pittsburgh". Ocd. Pitt. Edu, 2018, http://ocd.pitt.edu/Default.aspx?webPageID=248. Accessed 3 Nov 2018.

Prison Legal News. "Study Shows Ex-Offenders Have Greatly Reduced Employment Rates". Prisonlegalnews.Org, 2011, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2011/dec/15/study-shows-ex-offenders-have-greatly-reduced-employment-rates/. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

Sawyer, Wendy. "Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie." Prisonpolicy.Org, 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2018.html. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.

U.S. Constitution and Federal Statutes. Title 42, Chapter 72. "Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention". Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/chapter-72. Accessed 3 Nov 2018.

Youth.gov. "Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach." Youth.Gov, https://youth.gov/feature-article/reforming-juvenile-justice-developmental-approach. Accessed 4 Nov 2018.