The state recognizes offenders under the age of eighteen or in some cases under twenty-one as juvenile crime offenders under the jurisdictions of the juvenile justice system. The main purpose of the juvenile justice system is “to provide individualized assessments to rehabilitate and prevent further delinquent behavior through the development of educational, vocational, social, emotional and basic life skills which enable youth to grow and mature” Many troubled kids under this age group struggle with many aspect of life, especially the ones that don’t have proper parental guidance. The emphasis on the reltabilitation for minor as their correctional sentence is very important because during this time children are still maturing, With the right programs put in place the system aspire to prevent them from getting into future offenses but instead have all the tools to be a part of the growing community.
In this paper, I will talk about the need for reform in the juvenile justice system regarding the overpopulation of children in juvenile detention facilities. The juvenile justice system is suppose to be supportive and in the best interest of the children, For minors secure detention is not the answer to they‘re problems that is why the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) is “developing alternatives to detention and appropriate programs for those children for whom there is no alternative to detention”(Ramirez, 2008), A child that committed a few misdemeanors should not be subjected to be in a secure detention facility, what that child needs is guidance and the support of the community to actually get to the underlining problem that caused the child to execute those offenses. It wasn‘t till the recent century that juveniles and adults were treated differently before that juveniles were qualified to the same correctional sentencing as adults even the death penalty.
It wasn’t till the 2005 Roper vs. Simmons case that the Supreme Court ruled, “that the death penalty forjuveniles was unconstitutionalw laid out the neurological argument for treating teenagers as less culpable than adults—their brains are still developing”. This ruling was very important in the sense that children are still in the process of brain development and that they don’t have the composure to control their impulses According to Florencio Ramirez anicle on juvenile delinquency a few of the elements of delinquency are drugs, truancy, poverty, abuse, gangs, neglect and more With these elements in place the juvenile code should reestablish their mandatory requirements and ask the question “How do we address these issues in attempting to prevent delinquency?“
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The answer to this question is first, to dispose of inappropriate and irrelevant use of secure detention. Second, minimize re-arrest and failure-to-appear rate pending adjudication, Third, ensure appropriate conditions of confinement in secure facilities. The fourth and final, is to red irect public finances to sustain successful reforms. All of these dispositional all major key components of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) which was founded by the Annie E, Casey Foundation (AECF), founder of United Parcel Service. As I stated before the Juvenile JusLice system main priorities are to teachjuventile offenders the values, skills, and policies to better their lives and connect back with the community, Communities like “Bernalillo County (Albuquerque), New Mexico; Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon; Cook County, Illinois; and Santa Cruz, California”(Ramirez, 2008), have all used the AECF model and all seen major results, Such as, a huge population decrease in detention, felony and misdemeanor arrests, and targeLing their focus on shelter care, home detention, and a day reporting centeri
The over crowding of detentions is not doing anyone good, neither the offender nor the system To accomplish the true purpose of the juvenile justice system their needs to be a huge reduction especially in frivolous offenses being locked up in secure detentions, In 2002 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States reported that about “1.5 million youths under age 18 are arrested each year for crimes ranging from loitering to murder” and of the crimes approximately “600,000 minor boys and girls cycle through juvenile detention facilities after being arrested and while awaiting further legal action”(Ramirez, 2008). This is not helping the youth at all, most of the kids are under the age of fifteen and a high percentage of them are being held for non-violent crimes. There is no true solution to the problem but the government can focus their spending and their resources on program models like JDAl so the whole nation can observe the same results as New Mexico, Santa Cruz, and Cook County.
