For many years’ researchers have studied the impacts that prisons have on the human brain. Whether its adult males or females, studies have shown that facilities do indeed cause people to have psychological problems. In more recent years, studies have been done to focus on juveniles as well. Since the early 2000s literature has shown how incarceration on juveniles fails to provide the rehabilitation that an offender needs. Although there are plenty of juvenile offenders who do need to receive punishment and counseling in order to protect the community, incarceration has shown that it doesn’t benefit in outcome or cost. So, what other penalties can a juvenile receive?
The article focused on testing how incarcerating juveniles doesn’t rehabilitate them and the different methods we can use instead. Community-based practices are said to be the best alternate to incarceration. The community programs are good because they use cognitive behavioral and social learning approaches to rehabilitate the individual. Intervention programs such as the TV series “Beyond Scared Straight” and boot camps don’t deter youths from committing crimes and allow them to go back to their old ways. While the focus of incarcerating juvenile offenders is to rehabilitate, there are clear numbers showing that it’s not working. Recent studies have shown that between 70% and 80% of juveniles who have been placed in local correction programs are later rearrested within a three-year period.
There are also 3 different treatment programs called Multisystemic Therapy (MST), Functional Family Therapy (FFT), and Multidimensional Treatment Foster care (MTFC). MST was the most common method used and showed very significant outcomes. In long term treatment, studies found recidivism rates were lower for participants receiving MST at only 34.8% compared to individual therapy at 54.8% over a 21.9-year follow-up. Another advantage of MST is that it has an average completion rate of 86% where the average child and family treatments have a 50% dropout rate.
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The study was done on youths between the ages of 13 and 18 years old. Even though in the US youths are considered anyone under the age of 18, children slightly younger than 14 can be sentenced to adult prisons depending on the crime they committed. In 2008 there were an estimated 263 juvenile offenders within every 100,000 people in a general population. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is also known as JJDPA of 1974 demanded that juvenile offenders are to be what they called, “sight and sound”, which meant separated from adult inmates when detained in a facility. Once a juvenile offender’s case has been transferred to adult court, they no longer fall under the jurisdiction of the JJDPA and are considered adults as well.
Different states have different requirements when it comes to adults and juveniles. For example, in 31 states the youth offenders are housed with adult offenders no matter the age difference. In 6 states they require segregated housing in state prisons for offenders under the age of 18 due to the youth being more vulnerable. The remaining states most likely use a system where the youth is put into a juvenile facility and once, they turn 18 to become a legal adult they are transferred to an adult prison.
Youths are rarely found committing crimes when they live a great life and have nothing better to do. Most juvenile offenders are considered, “a particularly disadvantaged population and often come from backgrounds of family dysfunction and maltreatment. Between 70% and 95% of detained youth offenders have at least one psychiatric diagnosis, along with coexisting mental health problems” (Lambie, 2013). Substance abuse is also a major factor seen among these offenders with 40% to 70% being users. Over one-third of youth offenders are said to have special education needs are below their chronological age level in terms of reading, spelling, comprehension, and cognitive abilities.
Incarceration has shown to be more damaging than rehabilitative on juvenile offenders. They explain how, “This vulnerable population suffers negative consequences when placed in an environment that fails to address, and often heightens, existing mental health, learning, and behavioral problems” (Lambie, 2013). When we incarcerate a youth individual, we are removing them from the only place they can learn to change and experience ways to rehabilitate. This causes implications because the youth no longer has a chance to change nor learn while incarcerated.
Whether its adult males or females, studies have shown that facilities do indeed cause people to have psychological problems. In more recent years, studies have been done to focus on juveniles as well. Ian Lambie and Isabel Randell were able to prove that there are better ways to rehabilitate a juvenile offender rather than incarceration. Instead, we can look into therapy or community programs.
