Many people in today’s society don’t realize how different Juvenile incarceration really is. By watching these two videos we saw a lot of things that most Americans probably don’t realize is happening. One of the first things that amazed me but yet was not shocking to hear was that the U.S locks up more children than any other country in the world. The amazing part about this is that the age group in which kids are starting delinquent behavior is very early on in their life. In one of the video clips we see Zion who started engaging in delinquent behaviors in the first grade. He started out by having multiple suspensions in school, then it escalated to kick me a teacher at the age of seven. He could have faced repercussions of having charges filed against him because of that incident. One of the interesting things at mini noticed throughout the clip was that all the kids were either diagnosed for showing symptoms of mental disorders, including Zion. Many of these disorders including ADHD, anxiety, depression, mood disorder, and bipolar disorder. Now the question is, do these disorders having an effect on these children’s delinquent behavior? For many adults mental disorders or illnesses affect there day to day lives which we are now seeing has a huge role in how they act. Now seeing how adults act with these illnesses and disorders, children are going to react worse based on their age difference and maturity level. Most children in these detention centers are being held for only status offenses; such as not attending school, smoking, drinking, and etc. There are a few that do commit high level crimes and receive a good amount of jail time. The problem that could arise from this is that they are indeed children in the way you think as a child is way different than you thinking as an adult. There is a problem arising that many think we could possibly be punishing some children a little to harshly. One of those instances stuck out in the video when we met Alan, who entered a juvenile facility at the age of 15 and was held in solitary confinement. He believed that being by himself, for so many hours and days upon end, that he became a little deranged. Which in turn made him become more aggressive. He did believe it was good for reflecting on your actions but the time period that he was in solitary confinement was a little harsh. He and some other children that were shown in this clip mentioned that they were put on psychotropic drugs that were in turn making things worse. -hollywood007
We live in a day in age where most still believe incarceration is better than rehabilitation. What good is it going to do to punish a 15 year old kid for smoking a little marijuana. We should rather be rehabilitating the kid and getting them the proper help that they need, because more than likely something might be going on at home that the child is acting out. That is another thing that needs to be mad aware of is that most of these children come home unstable homes. They could be coming from abuse or single parent homes where a lot of pressure is put on them to help out the family. These type of situations are very likely for children nowadays. It was also pointed out that the child will most likely come into connect with some type of violence in their life. That again including abuse on them, watching the abuse of others, or joining a gang where they will protect their “blood” in any situation that is bestowed upon them. These types of things are only increasing the population of juvenile delinquents. This rising population has been going on for quite some time now as well. It pointed out that in 2000 we had the most juveniles in jail across the U.S, which was at a staggering 1,009 children. Which is so unbelievably bad. Another problem with this is that we could possibly not be counting the children that are being tried as an adult. In the first clip we watched it was said that in the state of Louisiana,1 of 11 states, kids that are already 16 or 17 years old are automatically charges as an adult. Which is very concerning especially since we have to consider that they are even of a legal age yet. So why are we trying them as adults, even for petty crimes. Now some do have the legal right to be in their if there offense was at a high level. An example being that in the second clipped we watched, we heard that a 17 year old was being sentenced to 65 years for murder. How many people do believe, including myself, that children such as these do need to serve some time. The length of it is questionable though. The sad part of the case of the 17 year old is that there might be 40 year olds serving shorter sentences for doing the exact thing. Which is a flaw in our justice system that we need to look at and correct. Children are still learning, growing, and maturing until there mid 20’s. So the concern that we need to be looking at is, why do we rather incarcerate children than rehabilitate them. -hollywood007
PART 1: 60% of children that are committing suicide in prison were put in solitary confinement. 70% of the kids in the juvenile justice system have a mental health illness as well. One of the children behind bars that was in a gang at 9 years old stated, "they had me doing things you get locked up for". He was put in solitary and said he hallucinated a lot and saw things and heard things that truly were not there. Another child said, "the system took away my life". Kids of color are two times more likely to be locked up and charged as adults than any other race. He said powerful psych drugs are handed out like candy. A public official had said regarding incarceration of younger adults, "we can create a criminal by locking them up". For certain crimes, children absolutely should be locked up but for crimes that are just flat out petty and minor, when we put these children behind bars so often for these offenses, it is doing really nothing for them at the ages they are at because they do not understand necessarily what they are doing or to what extent what they are doing can be considered a crime. When these children go to confinement, they are locked up for 23 hours and at 14 years old, let alone any age, but being so young, you really do not grasp the understanding or what is going on. A young woman said it made her feel like she was crazy. They are put in for volatile or violent behaviors and although those are negative behaviors, children are already under this great deal of stress being put where they are, they need educated and more than being thrown in a small room and having to sit there for so incredibly long unsure as to why they are even sitting there. In the end it is really doing nothing for them. At the Indiana Maximum security prison they house 2000 criminals and 40 teens are there being tried as adults. They are in there from two years to 65 years. A 16 year old got 10 years for robbery due to robbing a family friends' home and beating the older man with a socket wrench to rob him of his money. It was over drugs. The man was seriously injured and suffered major damages from this incident. There was also a 17 year old currently in for murder and serving a 65 year sentence. He did not want to talk about it and is really looking for any possible way to shorten his sentence. He was really working on his behavior and just keeping his head low to try anything possible to be on good terms and shorten his time. He fears that a rival gang is going to harm his family and his father was not really ever present during his life. He said "the only way to get out of a gang is to die" -notacop007
PART TWO: Another child is in prison for 15 years, at the age of 18 currently and is in for battery. He said it was revenge for someone hurting his mother and he ultimately shot the person and caused great bodily harm. He said the guy deserved it and he did not regret it. There was also a 18 year old that is in for 55 years because of murder. He said he completely regrets it and he just was not thinking. Many teenagers have joined gangs from a young age. They say you either fit in or you end up completely isolating yourself inside a cell. They get one hour free time in the morning and a one hour of free time in the evening. It is obvious that these kids are truly suffering. They know their sentences and the length and some may just have the thought of they already do not have too much left to lose. One let his anger get the best of him and went to throw liquid on another inmate but got the correctional officer instead and had to go before someone to see if they wanted to move him to adult side of prison since he was 18 years old and he had originally been doing well but knew if he screwed up getting sent to the adult side was a possibility. The person that ultimately could make the decision ruled him okay to stay in the juvenile side but he had to go to solitary and although it was better than having to go to the adult side of prison, it is still not a favorable outcome because although it separates the person with people to be or get angry with, it puts them alone for so long and may amp them up even more or not even affect them at all and end up driving them to the point of feeling like they are hearing things. Kids who are sitting behind bars, not all of them deserve to be there. It could be as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time but now that they are there they have to make the best of it they can. Kids deserve second, third chances because we do not expect people to be perfect but we cannot expect kids to not find the limits or try to push through them and see where or how far they can go because they are children and children are and can be extremely immature. -notacop007
Part 1 There are many states in the United State that have no minimum age for when a child can be incarnated, Florida is one of the states. Mass majority of juveniles had minor offense. Why so harsh for adolescents in Chicago 3 children one under the age of 5, the 5 year old did not want to steal candy from the store for the other two so the oldest dangle the 5 year old outside a 14th- floor window and dropped to his death. That could be a reason why there are so many strictest laws against adolescent that commit “adult” crimes. In the 2000s incarnation for children peaked in America, black or brown got incarcerated more. Locking children up was a discipline action, states called “isolation for juveniles a safety plan. But there are facts from juveniles who have been incarcerated to adult jails ,says solitary confinement can make things worse for them. In Ohio juvenile center found out that all children who were in solitary condiment had mental health problems- adolescents in Ohio spent 200 thousand hours in isolation. 92% were on some type of drugs that can alter the brain function. 60 % of kids committed suicide come from being in solitary confinement. 17% of juvenile system struggles with mental health illness. Although that might seem like a major problem there’s more, Black Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than any other color. In Florida 50 % of children arrested are black. Between January 97% are incarated 72% of the minors are black. It seem to happen more at school blacks are more than likely to incarated at school for disciplinary action than any other color. National blacks students ⅓ are arrested at school. Jefferson Parish school had made the most arrest in all the schools in Louisiana, the 90’s came a popular time for schools arrest. If a black child is acting up at school they criminalize them if it was a white child they look at ways to prevent it from happening again, stated a guardian in Louisiana. -Smiles007
Part 2 Thinking that incarnating adolescence would solve the issue of delinquency. Your wrong a child does not just act on their own. Research shows that peer group relationships are closely tied to delinquent behaviors. Although parents are the primary source of influence and attention in children’s early years , between age 8 and 4 children seek a stable peer group, and both the number and the variety of friendships increase as children go up. Adolescent Peer Relations plays a major part in juvenile delinquency. Many kids are initiated into pro-deviant attitudes are then used to help support continued involvement in antisocial behavior or illegal acts. In a process called deviancy training, close friends reinforce deviant behavior through talk and interaction.
Socialization and status can also cause delinquency and if it goes longer can lead to incarnation. Another significant aspects of the educational experience is that children spend their social school hours with their peers, and most of their activities after school talke place with school friends. Since youth tend to spend more time with their friends they tend to rely more on them. The norms of the peer culture are of often odds with those of the adult society, and psedoculture with a distinct social system develops. Law- abiding behavior among the values promoted in such an atmosphere. Kids enmeshed in this youth culture may be admire bravery, defiance, and having fun much more than adults do. Incarnated a child is bad of you too do. Educational problems and issues in 2010, America woke up to some sobering educational news. It seems that for the first time ,China participated in an international standardized testing curriculum. The test made the US question why aren't are children achieving educational. The reason for that can lead to minority groups and the dropout rates. Everyday, hundreds of thousands of youths are absent from school; many are absent without an excuse and deemed truant. Some large cities report that unexcused absences can number in the thousands of certain days. Truancy can lead to school failure and dropping out. Which can also lead to severe long term financial and personal consequences. Dropouts are less likely to find jobs than their educated peers, and they frequently experience considerably higher unemployment rates. Why do kids drop out usually kids say because they didn't like school or wanted a job. But the real reason is kids who grow up fast, who are involved in drug abuse or other risky behaviors, may drop out of high school that can result in failure and also lead to delinquency. I feel that there are many reasons why juvenile who commit adult crime can be incarcerated.- Smiles007
PART 1: Watching the documentary on Prison Kids was a interesting and informative watch. The statistic that the United States locks up more children than any other country was kind of surprising. It puts into light that some of these kids get put in these centers for offenses that we don’t even think are bad enough to warrant them being arrested. There was a kid named Zion who was seven. He could be charged with battery in his home state of Florida for what he did at school. He started out by having multiple suspensions in school, then it escalated to kick me a teacher at the age of seven. He could have faced repercussions of having charges filed against him because of that incident.Another statistic was that it costs the United States eight billion dollars to incarcerate kids. There was a peak in 2000 when there was over 190,000 kids incarcerated in the United States. A statistic I found interesting was that most kids incarcerated are black. Some people see the solitary confinement as torture to the kids. Most of the kids in the documentary described themself as going mad when sitting by themselves. Some say that most of the kids going into these facilities are hoping the system can help them. Sometimes they leave worse than when they went in. In Ohio juvenile center found out that all children who were in solitary condiment had mental health problems- adolescents in Ohio spent 200 thousand hours in isolation. That is a ton of time to be by yourself. 92% of the kids were on some type of drugs that can alter the brain function. 60 % of kids committed suicide come from being in solitary confinement. 17% of juvenile system struggles with mental health illness.There was a couple of interviews with kids saying they experienced PTSD and even hallucinations when they were incarcerated. They sometimes would feel like they were going crazy. There was a kid in the documentary dealing with this. His name was Alan, who entered a juvenile facility at the age of 15. He was held in solitary confinement. He believed that being by himself, for so many hours and days upon end, that he became a little deranged. Which in turn made him become more aggressive. Maybe if he had a more time to go around others maybe his aggression would be not as high as it was when he is by himself. There was a story of a kid that got six days in a facility for throwing skittles, which I found to ge unfortunate for that child. I also learned that there was no death penalty for juveniles. Another statistic was that 60% of children that are committing suicide in prison were put in solitary confinement. Also, 70% of the kids in the juvenile justice system have a mental health illness as well. At the Indiana Maximum security prison, it was stated that they house 2000 criminals. 40 teens are there being tried as adults. They are in there from two years to 65 years.-CUBSFAN007
PART 2: This ties into my term paper topic, which was on judicial waivers. Judicial waivers, some say, creates an impression of lost hope. By handing out harsh sentences to juveniles, it gives off the impression that there is no hope for them. They think their future is completely ruined. This in turn might cause them to continue down the path of illegal activity due to the notion that they think their lives will not amount to anything. This what we saw in the documentaries. These kids lost hope for themselves and found themselves coming right back to being locked up. Judicial waivers also put young juveniles at risk. If they in fact make it to adult court, then they have a chance of being sent to an adult facility. This is very dangerous for most of juveniles who might be around the ages of 16-18. They might lack the ability to protect themselves in an adult facility. This also introduces the problem of what that juvenile might be like when he or she gets out of an adult facility. Some of the kids in the documentaries picked up bad habits such as gangs and fighting and they took that with them outside the facility. Kids who are sitting behind bars incarcerated are not all bad. Not all of them deserve to be there for their actions. It could be being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that they are behind bars at these facilities that have to make it the best they can make it. There is probably a solution for these kids that don’t need to be locked up for non serious crimes, but right now it doesn’t seem like much is happening to reach that goal for these kids.-CUBSFAN007
Part 1: The American Juvenile Justice System, is broken, is dangerous, and is only getting worse. One thing children do not like to be is locked up, isolated from, what they love and care about. What is worse is when children are placed in solitary confinement, nothing can break a person, mentally, and physically than solitary confinement. Juveniles with mental illnesses while in solitary confinement commit suicide, their symptoms that are a result of their mental illnesses make it tougher to survive in their surroundings. No one likes to be mentally confined as well as physically confined in a small cell.
Why should juveniles be subjected to a form of mental torture? Why is America torturing its juvenile offenders? In this country we get on our soapboxes, and preach about reform, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. That is not happening, the sad fact is that America is treating its juveniles that are locked up like much like their adult counterparts. There are some juveniles who are tried as adults and are incarcerated with adults. Just like those juvenile inmates a Wabash Correctional Facility. There are 40 kids there who eat, sleep, exercise, and learn in separate section of the facility.
In this country we have two sides when it comes to rehabilitation. On one side there are those who believe in actually helping juveniles in ways that will make actual lasting and sustaining contributions towards keeping them out of court, and in trouble with the law. On the other there are those who want more facilities built, more guards, harsher laws to punish juveniles who do not want to conform to societal norms or expectations. These kind of people believe that punishment is the only rehabilitation required, and just for kicks throw in solitary confinement.
A lot of juveniles who enter the juvenile justice system, are from single-parent, or house holds where they may be raised by other family members. During a child's formative years, as a society we supposedly try our best to help those youth who we may feel at risk for committing crimes. There are programs in place that help these juveniles, but these programs, simply do not no enough, or they help but they do not help in the way they were originally intended. Where does the blame for that ultimately land? That is hard to tell because of all the finger pointing, and arguing. The real loss in all of this is the continuing number of juveniles who become just another in the criminal justice system. --YouMustAcquit007--
Part Two: America is supposed to be the most powerful, most advanced, most freedom loving/freedom fighting country in the world. Yet, as a country America locks up more people, including juveniles than any other country on the face of the earth. How is that possible? How is it that our society is still ruled so much by the mentality of, lock em' all up, toss away the key, and let god sort them out. America is a country that screams freedom, that is all for "We the People", but those same people screaming freedom are the ones who want society to be even more protected.
They say that children are our future, in any society children are the future. It would make more sense now, to start completely overhauling criminal justice system, both adult and juvenile. We need to focus on helping children create a better future for themselves, in doing so they will stay out of the adult criminal justice system. Right now that is not the case. That will not be the case, until people realize that you cannot treat juvenile inmates, the same way as adult inmates are treated in the criminal justice system. Lawmakers are not listening to the experts in fields relating to childhood growth and development. These people know about rehabilitation, and how to improve children's lives. Politicians, are just that politicians, people who think they know how to change things, but quickly become jaded, because they want to be liked, and be seen. If children are our future in America, then we must do what we can help change the lives of children now who need help.
Watching both the films had a huge impact on me, in terms of knowing where America stands on incarcerating its youth. Other countries look at us and laugh for locking up children the way we do. What makes us so different than from other countries? Why are we spending billions of dollars on our criminal justice system? Children need help and guidance, not solitary confinement and life long prison sentences, where there is no hope. The worst thing a child can feel is being helpless and feeling completely hopeless. America is hurting its own future, and there is plenty of finger pointing to go around. Life as to get better for those juveniles who are locked up. ---YouMustAcquit007--.
(Part 1 of 2)It is crazy to think that the United States incarcerates more juveniles than any other well developed country. We lock up 54,000 juveniles who have some kind of disorder. Also most of these kids do not due violent crimes such as murder and rape. They locked up most of these kids out of a fear of the super predator, which turned out to be false. Most of these kids come from a broken home and have seen or had some sort of trauma. One moment in their lives changed how they would live as adults forever. Most of the kids that are locked up in juvenile detention have some sort of mental disorder. The video stated that up to 70 percent that are locked up have a mental illness. In the second video that we watched in class we saw that the child had ADHD which cause him to act out in class and have major panic attacks. He even went as far as kicking a teacher while she was trying to restrain the little boy. While being locked up they are given all the necessities that they need and hygiene products. They are given 1 hour of recreation in the morning and 1 hour of recreation in the afternoon. They are also given 3 meals a day, if they would want to they can buy extra snacks. It is crazy to think about that 92 percent of the kids locked up are given a psychotic drug. I would assume that most of these children do not need to be on these drugs. Worse yet they spend a lot of time in solitary confinement. They spend 23 hours a day locked in a cell. They could spend up to 302 hours in isolation. For one of the kids that they put in isolation named Allen, said that it made him a more violent person in isolation. In the other video that we watched in class we say that the female juvenile delinquent also said that it made her worse being in solitary confinement. The video stated that 60 percent of the suicides that happen are from solitary confinement. You can see that solitary confinement has a major toll on the well being of the child. -ClarkKent007
(part 2 of 2)To be tried as an adult most of the juveniles are repeat offenders or they did a horrific crime. Of the 54,000 kids that we incarcerate in the United States at any given time there are close to 10,000 children in an adult prison. Safety issues in prison is a big concern especially for juveniles that are sent to adult prison. In the video we watch in the adult prison the violent offenders had drugs and a loaded gun. How they ever got a gun in prison just amazes me. In my paper I had an example of when a child went to an adult prison, in this example this juvenile fell victim to violent offenders just like the ones in the video we watch. The case starts off with 16 year old delinquent Texas boy was sent to prison for setting a fire in a neighborhood dumpster. We can assume that this child is acting out from a trauma that has happened to him or that he has some sort of mental issue. The damaged that he caused to the dumpster only caused 500 dollars, he really probably should have gotten a fine or sent to the JDC but he was sent to an Adult Texas prison with violent criminals. This boy was only 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighed about 125 pounds. Even if he was not a juvenile at that size he would be a victim as an adult in a prison. This boy honestly probably was not strong enough to hurt a fly, but he was sent into a violent prison. When he was sent to prison he was imminently sexually assaulted by the bigger and stronger adult prisoners. This boy tried to get out of general population of adults but the prison did not care and they sent him back to the cell where he was raped. He would be continually raped and beaten by the prisoners. He ended up writing a letter to the prison officials asking for help because he was always afraid that he might die one of the times. That should have been enough to get him out of danger but they did not care. Just 75 days into his prison sentence this boy would take his life. It is sad that this boy took his life because he made a stupid mistake. One moment in his life changed how it would be forever. He did not commit a horrific act such as murder or rape. All he did was set a dumpster on fire. He should have never been sent to an adult prison for the crime that he did. -ClarkKent007
While watching the inclass video over Juveniles being sent to adult prisons, I found that the United States tends to lock up more kids than any other country. Gang relations most times will increase the punishment given to the Juvenile due to the intensity of the crime committed and the odds of the Juvenile falling right back into the gang once out. So, maybe by locking kids up, that will keep them away from making movements to return to the gang. 33 states within the United States have no minimus age limits to charge juveniles with crimes. This could take petty crimes and alter their records so when they are caught later with slightly serious crimes, they skip the option of juvenile detention and get sent to adult court. In the year 2009, 109,000 kids were locked up, and the video we watched said that most of the juvenile jails are filled with kids convicted with status offenses. Status offenses are minimal offenses that are often victimless crimes. Such offenses include things like skipping school, also known as truancy, curfew problems or staying out too late, underage drinking or smoking/chewing of tobacco, running away, and being too hard to control by your guardians. One major problem is that by incarcerating people that run away, oftentimes girls, they are sent back to their guardians. Once sent back to their guardians, people who may abuse them mentally or physically, they are abused again and often run away again because of this. Juveniles that would run away, sensing that nowhere is safe for them, including their own home, may turn to a gang to find the love and support they cant find from their guardians. This will have them in turn completing more crime, often more serious crimes that can get them locked up in prisons due to the crimes committed or the involvement within the gang. Within the juvenile detention facilities or juvenile jails, kids that are often seen as problem children are often thrown into solitary confinement. Studies show that by throwing a child in solitary confinement the problem of problems that the child faces will not be resolved, but instead intensify. Solitary confinement doesn't find and abolish the root of the problem, but lets it fester and grow. Combining medication and solitary confinement is a deadly combination as told by the in class video. The children do nothing but sit in a cell and think about what they've done, while medicated, which could make them act out or have side effects that could end deadly for the child. Hallucinations while being thrown into a room where nobody is watching over you could end in the childing performing self harm to get the hallucinations to stop or even completing suicide to allow for the side effects to end and for them to stop feeling like they are crazy. While 70% of kids within the juvenile jails suffer from mental illness and disabilities, it's hard for them to concentrate as is. Combining isolation and medication could leave them to their own thoughts which often times is what got them placed into juvenile jails in the first \place. -Jar007
11 states allow for kids as young as 16 to be tried as adults. Along with that, it is seen that minorities are often tried and charged as adults more often than other types of people. I find this interesting, because the makeup of lots of gangs are based on minorities, like kids that don't fit in due to skin color, religion, or anything that may allow them to stand out to the general public that they can be made fun of for and ostracized because of. In Florida, 53% of the kids arrested in schools were black. Over half of all arrests within the schools are found to be black kids. When brought to the light, it was said that while kids just don’t do such things to get arrested in schools. Black kids and minorities were heavily picked out and punished for their actions, actions that white kids commit as well, but just don’t get arrested for. Problems like this make issues today such as racial injustice more prevalent day by day. The amount of kids that are imprisoned as adults is a scary number, and the fact that minority kids are being charged at high rates is alarming. The United States is built on cultural diversity, and this diversity has also ripped this nation apart. The amount of kids that run to gangs to find refuge because they can’t find comfort within their own house and can’t find a group of peers to fit in with is sad and will continue to be a way that kids can and will be tried as adults due to gang activity. Kids belong out in schools, learning, having fun with friends, playing sports and on playgrounds. They don’t belong in cells, behind bars, locked away from their friends and family, but maybe no friends and family is what got them there in the first place. -Jar007
PART 1: In my section of the paper, I had to talk about why juveniles are being tried as adults and what type of people are more likely to be sent to adult facilities. Those that are under the age of eighteen can be tried as an adult in court because of state laws. Looking at the states laws is the first step in deciding if a juvenile’s crime committed should be taken into the criminal justice system or if it should stay in juvenile court. There are thirteen states that do not have an age limit for adult prosecution. Judicial waiver is a part of the state laws. It is the process where juvenile court cases meet the qualifications for criminal court and the juvenile court judge agrees to send the cases to the criminal system. Most of the time juveniles are tried as adults if the crime they committed is considered an adult crime. From the two videos that we watched in class, more than half of the juveniles that were in the adult facility committed murder. The juvenile court judges were sending kids cases to the criminal justice system that were under the age of eighteen with no history of delinquency. Kids were sentenced to be kept in adult facilities for years twice their age. They were even sentenced to life with no parole which is unfair. I feel it is unfair because kids’ brains are still developing so they should not be getting sentences that long. Then they were not offered parole meaning the kids did not get a second chance at life. There is a one hundred percent chance that the teen will not think the same way as they did before when they are in their 30s. They mature just like everyone else. It is against the law for judges to give juveniles the death penalty which is why they sentence them to life instead. Keeping juveniles in adult jails and prisons can make them a lot worse then they were when they went into the facilities. Since they are still children, the adults in the facilities can influence the juveniles to do bad things because they look up to them. In the videos we watched, majority of the juveniles imprisoned had mental disorders. The most common that were shown in the video were those diagnosed with ADHD and mood disorders. Kids who needed mental help were instead locked away in jails/ prisons. Just like the Zyon boy that was in first that had ADHD and anxiety which made it hard for him to focus. -pieface007
PART 2: His anxiety attacks were so bad that he would flip out and have fits; once resulting in him hitting a teacher. Instead of the teachers trying to understand why he acted out and could not focus, he was punished and labeled as this disobedient kid. The juveniles hoped that their time being sentenced would change them in a positive way. Instead it only made them worse. They made a problem that did not exist, creating a criminal. Being locked up drove them crazy and made some of the begin to hallucinate. There were a lot of them that wanted to commit suicide because they had life in prison, so they thought they had no point in living. Juveniles are thirty-six times more likely to commit suicide being imprisoned with adults. Others on the other hand tried to stay strong and felt they still had something to live for, being seventeen with fifty and up years. There was one boy that was seventeen years old and was sentenced to fifty-five years in prison for a murder he did not commit. It was the story about the boys that broke into someone’s house and their friend had been shot by the home owner. The friends had to do the time for the murder they did not commit because if it was not for them breaking into the house, he would not have gotten shot. I feel like that was unfair that they had to do the sentencing because they were not the ones that killed the boy. Now they are sentenced to years in an adult prison with their childhood taken away from them. Even if it did come down to it being their fault of their friend’s death, they should not have been sentenced adult time knowing they did not commit the crime. The other boy that I felt bad for was the one that got sentenced to a lot of time for killing someone over his mom. Someone had hit is mother and he went after them. His intensions were not to kill the person that hit his mom, but he just had so much adrenalin that that is what it came down to. The court system sees no violent offenses as juvenile crimes. pieface007
Part 1 Our country’s criminal justice system is all kinds of messed up. For example, we live in the country that locks up more children than any other country in the entire world. Also, most of the children that are locked up in the U.S. are dark skinned or suffer from a mental illness. It is sad to say, but it is true, that some people are still racist, and others do not care about mental illness enough to try and step in to help battle it. Another thing that makes this specific system messed up is the fact that some states within the U.S. do not have a minimum age in which a child can be arrested for crimes. Kids at very young ages who commit certain crimes face the possibility of serving prison sentences that last for multiple years, which could negatively affect their development as time goes on. When a child commits the crime of theft, for example, the U.S. automatically tries to lock them up, sometimes even putting them into solitary confinement for long periods of time. It has been shown that instead of locking children up for crimes like theft, we need to try and help the child learn right from wrong, rather than punish them for their mistakes with the help of rehabilitation. By locking a child away, they are actually hurt more than it helps them. This means that a child is doing fine prior to serving their prison sentence. However, after being put into prison, the child actually develops worse behavior without any treatment. We have discussed things like this in class before. The child gets worse due to two reasons: 1) the fact that humans are social creatures and 2) the child’s brain is still developing. As more time passes by and a human is isolated from anyone else, they will start to go insane. Without socializing with anyone, our brains begin to malfunction, and we get crazier and crazier. Also, a person’s brain is still developing until around the age of 24 or 25. By isolating them from others at the age of 15, 16, etc., this is mentally hurting the child immensely, causing them to not be able to think or function properly. After serving this time alone and facing this mental trauma, kids who leave prison leave changed, in a bad way, carrying the PTSD they got from the damaging time done in solitary confinement. -Fozz007
Part 2 Many kids are finishing out their prison sentences in adult prisons. This is due to something called a judicial waiver. These judicial waivers allow juvenile offenders to be transferred to adult prisons if it is found that the offense, they committed is bad enough to send them there. Most kids that are in adult prisons because of judicial waivers have committed some of the worst crimes imaginable. For example, a kid in one of the videos we watched explained how he got stuck in adult prison for beating an elderly family friend with a wrench and then stealing valuables from him. By committing horrible crimes like this, kids are spending more and more time in adult prisons. Also, when these horrible crimes are committed, almost every time the motive is to get revenge on someone else. Research suggests that the child’s upbringing is the cause of their crime-related activities. This is similar to what we have discussed in class. For example, we talked about how if a child grows up without a father figure in their life, they are much more likely to commit crime compared to a child who had a father figure present. However, once a juvenile is in an adult prison, they do not see the adult prisoners as much as one would think. Juveniles in these prisons are separated from adult prisoners so no problems between the two can occur. Also, counseling and guidance is provided to the juveniles. Because they are still juveniles, rehabilitation is included in their everyday lives. This is due to the fact that rehab is the main focus for juveniles, while incarceration is the main focus for adults. By putting a juvenile through rehab, their chances of learning how to avoid crime and live a good, straightforward lifestyle are a lot better than an adult’s. Rehab is still included in adult prisoner lifestyles. But it is not nearly as emphasized as it is for juveniles. Despite being locked up in an adult prison, these juveniles do have the opportunity to earn rewards. By having a consistent basis of good behavior, juveniles can earn things like TVs in their cell, etc. This process of sending juveniles to adult prisons does greatly impact each one of these kid’s lives. But we can see how this process helps these kids as well. For example, we talked about in class how rehab is a good idea for juveniles, as it could possibly keep them out of jail when they’re older, compared to giving adults a chance at rehab, when they may never leave their cells again. -Fozz007
Part 1 : The United States incarcerated the most children than any other country. Listening to Zion’s story was really interesting. He lives in Florida with his mother. He is seven years old and he already has forty referrals on his record. Zion has ADHD, anxiety, and depression and that was found out at five years old. The mom would have to leave two to three times a week because of something that happened at Zion’s school. He displayed unrolly play and he had a battery on a district employee and he can be legally arrested for a battery. The thought of arresting a seven year old seems very wrong to me. He had a major anxiety attack and he threw his desk. There can be contributing factors to this behavior. There can be some family influences on delinquency. There is no mention of a father being actively involved in his life so a broken home can contribute to that. There was no mention of a divorce but there could of been one and that can also contribute. The mother shows good parental efficiency so I don’t think that’s a contributor. The mom said “you want them to be better than you were”. She is so afraid that he’s going to go down the wrong path and go to prison or jail and she wants what is best for him. There has been evidence of kids that have working mothers and it shows that they can have a higher chance of being involved in delinquency. There has also been evidence that there is little to no effect on children that do have mothers with jobs. This means that the kids have little to no chance of being involved in delinquency. Genetic factors can also contribute to this. There can be link that is between parental deviance and child misbehavior. This can be genetic. They could both have antisocial behaviors and this can be inherited genetically. If the child has the same behavior as the parent, they are sharing the same genes and not because they have learned this bad behavior or live in an environment that causes both of them to do wrongdoing. In the documentary, it seemed that Zion’s mother was a single mom. Single moms are likely to live in poverty and the experience long term physical and social disabilities. There does not seem to be financial issues or physical issues. Zion can have social disabilities. He has really bad anxiety, depression, and angry outbursts. He also displays unrolly play and this can make it hard for him to make friends. Family break ups deal more with behavior that is bad. Depending on the situation, if there was a family break up, this could of had an effect on Zion. He does not seem to be doing things with others kids. There could be a part of intra family violence that contributes to this. Children that experience any form of family violence are more likely to act out than those who avoid relational conflict. Relational conflict deals with hurting someone’s relationship or social status. Relational conflict is not involved in Zions situation. We don’t know if Zion has experienced family violence. If he did experience family violence, he could've learned at a young age that violence pays off. -Soccer31007
Part 2 : The video mentioned that there was an eighth grader that got arrested for battery by throwing skittles. The eighth grader was African American. There are some states that don’t have an age on battery. If you committed a battery in one of those states and you are twelve, you can get arrested. I don’t think the eighth grader should of gotten arrested for battery. That seems very unreasonable. African American kids are twice as likely to get arrested and charged as adults than kids. There was a girl named Nicole and she was eleven years old. She fought at school and went to jail. She said that “they try to treat me like a criminal”. She is eleven years old and she should not be treated like a criminal, let alone even people thinking she is a criminal. She has a twin brother named Deaon. He got incarcerated two months after the interview was taken. His mother explained that it seems like he has given up on everything including himself. Nicole and Deon both have special needs. The extent of them were not mentioned but locking them up can make things way worse than what they were. The video mentioned that “once they get in, they get worse”. Sixty percent of kids commit suicide when they are in solitary confinement. All the kids that are locked up, most likely have a mental health issue. There can be sibling influences on delinquency. They both have have similar social and economic factors. Traits can cause one sibling to engage in delinquency and they can be shared by his or her brother or sister. If they are deviant, they can grow slower because of shared interests. There was a man named Brian and he was from a family of eight. He had no dad and he watched someone die and he was diagnosed with PTSD. He joined a gang at the age of nine and he went to the detention center at the age of twelve. He spent a lot of time in confinement and he began hallucinating and hearing voices. He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar. Spending a lot of time in confinement could be the reason on why he has multiple mental disorders. Brian joined a gang at a very young age. He probably gravitates toward the cliques that could give him support, assurance, protection, and direction. The age of gangs is very wide. They can be as young as eight or as old as fifty five. Research shows that youths hear about gangs around the age of nine. -Soccer31007
Part 1: Nowadays, you hear about juveniles being locked up, and your first thought is what? A stupid kid, unsupervised got into trouble? Just another kid raised wrong that deserves to be in a juvenile detention center or prison? People don’t realize that not all juveniles are absolutely horrible. Personally, I really liked the videos we watched because even I realized, not all kids deserve to be locked away, and juvenile detention centers don’t always help them as well. The United States locks up more children than any other country. We believe that if a child is willing to act like an adult, or commit a crime/join gangs like an adult, they will be treated and tried like an adult. Curfew violations and running away and two common reasons why a youth may end up locked up. They didn’t even commit a serious crime. In the video it discusses a child named Zion. Zion struggles with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Because of Zion’s anxiety and ADHD, it makes sitting at school all day long a struggle. He had a panic attack at school, and ended up throwing a desk that hit his teacher. His teacher told his mother that she could press charges on him if she wanted. Zion is 7. A teacher wanted to press charges on a 7 year old child. Instead of immediately thinking on how to punish the child, or press charges, maybe teachers should learn how to deal with mental illnesses a little better. I have 2 out of the 3 of the same mental illnesses that Zion has. I can’t imagine having to go through that as a seven year old child. When you’re supposed to be goofy, and fun and just run around and live while you can. The majority of our juveniles incarcerated, struggle from some form of mental illness. If our children didn’t have some time of mental illness before being locked up, they might have developed one by the time they get out. Incarceration has made children worse than they ended up there. Children have shown having ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, and Aggressive Tendencies. Being put into solitary confinement doesn’t help any either. Children are put into solitary confinement to “be a better inmate,” but what it really does is test their mental state. Savannah was 14 when she was incarcerated. She came from a single mother, so she was on her own quite often, and ended up getting into too much trouble. Before getting put into the juvenile detention center, she says she as never so angry or never fought as much. She was put into solitary confinement for 23 hours. Another one, Allen, was kept in solitary confinement for 313 days out of a year. Allen said he was given some random medication that made him space out for hours at a time. He said he didn’t feel right. stlblues007
Part 2: 92% of kids incarcerated are given some type of medication. The majority of them don’t even know what the medication is, because they aren’t required to tell them. Being given too much of a random prescription everyday, can later alter their brain development. Only 8 states out of all 50, have laws against putting kids in solitary confinement. Illinois is not one of them. The majority of suicides in prison and juvenile detention centers are from being in solitary confinement for too long. So instead of helping our children with their mental issues, and helping them live a better life, we live in a world where we are locking them up and punishing them for some things they cannot control. In the second video we watched, it shows juveniles that are locked up for 10 years, to life in prison. At the Walbash Prison, there’s a Block D specifically for teenagers that were/are so violent, they were tried as an adult. Most of the teens locked up were for 10 years or less. They are locked in their cells for 18 hours out of the day, with one hour of recreation in the morning and at night. If you were “good” for months on end, you eventually get a TV in your cell, good to watch for an hour or two out of your day. They may be alone most of the day, but good behavior can go a long way. If you commit murder under the age of 18, juveniles are not allowed to be sentenced the death penalty. So most states give them life without parole. Which doesn’t always help either because someone may of committed a murder at 17, but at 42 they may no longer have that mindset anymore. Jesus is a juvenile locked up in Block D for committing a murder at 16 years old. He said it was a heat of the moment decision where he turned around and shot another 15-16 year old. Since he’s not allowed the death penalty, they sentenced him to 65 years to life in prison. Jesus is not eligible for parol until he is 49 years old. There’s so many different things that need changed in our system, especially to help our juveniles since solitary confinement can’t solve every problem. Hopefully, one day in the future we will see something done, but this isn’t their first priority at the moment. stilblues007
In the documentary, Prison Kids Juvenile Justice in America, we get the run through of the ever-so-present changle of juvenile delinquency. We start off learning about Zion, who suffers from ADHD. Causing him to act out, and to have uncontrollable fits of energy. I don’t blame the mother for being worried about her son. People with mental illnesses are treated poorly, and we have thrown mental health people into jails, or even prisons. Just because we didn’t know what else to do with them. We have gotten better of this, but it still happens. In Zions case, I feel that some schools need to update their policies on how to handle school law legal trouble. In a lot of cases, the school can handle the incident themselves. Although, most of the time the cops are involved. With a strong zero tolerance policy in most schools, anything done to the school or school officials is a call to the police. The school will file charges, unless there is no reason to. I feel that if the issue is little, then handle it with the parents. There’s no need to be trying to ruin a child's life. Especially when they are going to school to better their lives. In the case where Zion kicks the teacher. Instead of calling the police department, they should’ve called the mother and told her what he did. They discuss the best form of punishment, and it is enforced. Now, most judges won’t charge a kid too hard to avoid this trend of juvenile delinquency, but if the school wouldn’t have started the long process, then no record is there. Savannah is a good example of living a life of crime, but still wants to do right. I feel there is a lot of juveniles that regret what they have done, or are doing. These types of kids have the highest chance of changing, and to start benefiting society more. We, has the justice system needs to see this, and jump on it. At the age of 14 she is already in prison! Now I don’t know if they ever say what she’s in there for, but it’s something serious. The age is surprising, but the fact she is a female is more surprising. Not because she committed a crime, but because it was a serious crime. Males have a 5:1 ratio to women on committing serious crimes. Savannah also talked about missing school, and friend life. Almost everyone feels this way. Cliques are huge in delinquency, and also staying out of it. For some, Cliques are the reason they are in trouble. If you are hanging out with people who steal from stores, more than likely you will start to steal from stores. Another term, deviancy training, is taking place here. The friends will teach the others how to do stuff, and be supportive about it. That is the worse situation to be in. You start talking yourself out of all the bad things that you are doing to people, and don’t even worry about your well-being. ^~^Itis007 Part 1 of 2
That’s how a lot of petty crimes happen, along with the big ones. This can also be a cause of bad parenting. Or even bad living. If you don’t have a supportive family that is always looking out for you, and wondering what you are doing, you will have an increased likelihood do bad things. Families that work a lot due to economic stress have less time to take care of their children. In some cases, family has to take care of themselves. Older siblings need to step up, and help their younger siblings. But what if the older sibling is the trouble maker? Then you have a chance of the older kids teaching the younger kids bad habits. They could end up following their footsteps. Family influences are good only when the influencer is trying to better their life by doing good. Disorganized neighborhoods are a huge problem today as well. Within these neighborhoods, crime is common, and sometimes is taught to the young. Also, with no one caring, or stopping them, it won’t stop. In the case with Alan, he was respected a lot because, in the jail, he helped all the kids talk to their families. He made sure to take care of people, and a lot of the kids looked up to him. Most of these juveniles never had anyone to look up to. He made sure a lot of them were looking out for their futures outside of the detention center as well. Last thing to touch on is the amount of kids with a mental disorder that are in detention. 70% of the kids locked up have some sort of mental illness. I feel this isn’t just random. I think a lot of this kids suffer from some sort of conduct disorder, and we need to find a way to help these kids. For the other kids, making sure our juvenile detention centers are kept up to date, and are making mental health a top concern. Hopefully, getting these kids to stop their crime streak before it even happens. Most kids get in trouble with the juvenile system, and have to go through the degradation ceremony and don’t ever reoffend. For the kids that do recommit crimes, they are the ⅓ of the serious crime being committed every year. Finding a way to get these kids to stop reoffending would put a huge, needed dent in serious crime. At Least the serious crime that is reported. ^~^Itis007 Part 2 of 2
Part 1: By watching this video I realized just how little I knew about juvenile incarceration. I knew that juveniles could be taken to a detention center after arrest, but I did not know that juveniles could be sentenced to terms in juvenile prisons. This video taught me a lot of other things as well, such as the effects of solitary confinement on a childs/young adult’s brain. I feel that solitary confinement should only be used as a last resort. I feel like the Ohio prison did not have any or many steps before solitary, and that the solitary was too harsh. They should follow the models of other states and prisons and only allow 8 hours maximum in solitary confinement, and even then I think that maximum should only be reserved for the most severe offenses. I think that more programs like the one that Zion was in should exist. When I was in k-2 grades, we had a card system. Each child had a slot with a green, yellow, and a red card. Each day you would start with a green card, but if you acted up you would go to yellow, and then to red. Sometimes you would go straight to red. Just about every day I would come home with a yellow or red card. We did not know it at the time, but would later go on to be diagnosed with ADHD, similar to Zion. Redranger007
While mine was/is not as severe, it would still cause problems for me. Even today at 18 my ADHD causes issues for me. In class I cannot seem to focus, and sometimes at my job I cannot focus. I take medication for it on days I think I may need it, but even then I have to weigh the benefits against the side effects; such as being able to focus, but I will have motor tics. I will not be as hyperactive, but I will likely forget to eat because of the lack of appetite from my meds. For me this system sort of works, but what about kids that cannot afford medication, or even a diagnosis for a doctor? I am not saying it is not their fault they are acting the way they are, but they truly sometimes cannot help it, and then they are being punished for an “outburst” that they just could not suppress. These prisons need to realize that not all of the kids in their “care” have complete self control. It is not completely their fault they are spacy and out of focus. Another thing I noticed is these juvenile prisons are doing stuff to help the kids while they are in there, but upon release there is no follow up. No one is there to make sure they are kept out of trouble. Nobody goes to the homes of these kids and tells the parents “you have to do this to help your child.” These kids go back to the homes they came from, and go right back to doing what they have to do to survive, even if it means getting arrested and sent back. They need someone working with the correctional system who can go and make sure these homes and the parents are ready to receive their child back, and the child will not run the risk of getting into trouble all over again. Redranger007
Part 1: After watching these two videos, I was able to realize and understand how serious it is for a juvenile to be incarcerated in an adult prison/facility. In the United States, locking people away for committing crimes and breaking the law is not uncommon. Actually, no other country in the world incarcerates children as much as the United States does. Before I watched this video, I thought that placing children in adult prisons was a bad idea. Once I watched and listened to how serious some of these kids crimes were and how they talked about their feelings towards their crimes, I did not feel to bad for some of them. When the inmates spoke about the crimes that they committed, some of them regretted their decisions and others did not regret them at all. Some of the delinquents who were locked up only regretted their bad decision making because they did not like being locked up and all they cared about was getting out of the prison systems and being free again. One thing that really interested me was when the video mentioned that most of the children incarcerated had mental illnesses. Some people suffered from extreme Depression, ADHD, Bipolar Disorders, and many other illnesses. Often times, the prisons would prescribe the inmates who have mental illnesses with medication which was supposed to help them. This did not always help. For some kids in the video, the drugs that were given to them were way too high of doses and made them have hallucinations such as hearing voices in their heads. These hallucinations oftentimes happened when the juvenile delinquents were put into solitary confinement. Being locked away in solitary confinement is meant to help the inmates by allowing them to be alone and think about their decisions that they have made. Some of the kids who spoke in the video said that solitary confinement actually made them worse. They said that they were locked in the room alone for far too long and it really caused more harm than good. The amount of time they had to spend in solitary confinement put a huge amount of pressure on their mentality and saness. In the United States, there are laws that state that juveniles are not able to be given the death penalty. They are still able to be given extremely long sentences. The maximum sentence for a juvenile delinquent in an adult prison is 65 years. I personally thought this was an extreme number because a person’s brain continues to grow and develop until around the age of 25 years old. A teenager who committed a crime is not going to be the same person when he is 25 or 30 years old, so in most cases I do not think that locking up children for years on end is necessarily the greatest idea the government has thought of.-KiiNG007
Part 2: One of the kids in the video was convicted and incarcerated in an adult prison for murder. The kid was 17 years old when he was convicted of his crime. He said in the video he did not realize what he was doing completely when he shot and killed a 16 year old boy who was in a rival gang. He now is serving 65 years in an adult prison. I think the saddest part about this 17 year olds situation is the fact that all he seemed to care about was himself and getting out of the prison as soon as possible. He did not seem to act as if he thought he deserved to be punished and that really bothered me. In the videos that we watched, there was another kid who nearly beat an old man half to death just so his friends could steal possessions from this man’s house. The juvenile mentioned that he was beating this man and he just couldn’t stop. He stated that he was beating him so bad and the man was bleeding so bad that he couldn’t even see his skin color anymore. All he could see was the man’s blood on his hands. Juveniles like this kid and the 17 year old who was sentenced for 65 years deserve to serve maximum punishments in my opinion, along with receiving all the help they can get from mental health facilities. Something I thought that was interesting in these videos is that it talked about how it was two times more often for an african american to be locked up. All other races were less likely. While some kids do deserve the punishment of being locked up in adult prisons, there are many who do not and are placed there anyway. Some kids who are locked up would be better off going to a juvenile facility and receive rehabilitation services. Incarcerating youths can do the opposite of help them get better.-KiiNG007
Part 1 As juveniles are often influenced by different factors to commit crimes, they are more likely to get caught and sent to a JDC. As we have been learning in class, the influence of family and peers has the strongest effect on juveniles. The living environment aren't giving a good example, so they find an easy way to make money. In our country, we have far more juveniles locked up for petty crimes than any other country in the world. In the “Prison Kids” video, it is mentioned that instead of locking up juveniles for the offenses made, they should be helping them rehabilitate to return to society. Usually, the juveniles that commit crime and are in prison are the ones with unhealthy homes and have gone through a trauma in their life. While being locked up most of them feel as if they are going crazy especially if place in solitary confinement and later a lot of them are diagnosed with some type of mental health. Not only did it affect them mentally but also affected their behavior. Instead of thinking about what they could do better to listen and understand, it would only make them worse according to one other the juveniles in the video. Juveniles are still maturing and developing until the average age of twenty-five. They are still learning to distinguish the positive and negative reasoning for certain behaviors, but as a society we punish them instead of understanding and helping them. There are juveniles that can be charged as adults and once charged as an adult the Juveniles Justice System doesn’t have any jurisdiction. According to “Prison Kids” it is said that Black Americans and other minorities are mostly charged as adults. It is not a hundred percent positive that being charged as an adult will help, so it is a risk that is being taken. There are many cases where the juvenile is just punished and not given a chance to change before getting out and returning to the community. There one juvenile that was incarcerated said that if he committed the crime the needs to man up and deal with the consequences. I think that shows maturity in someone’s mentality and rehabilitation to understand that you can get in trouble again. I also think that for a juvenile the death penalty shouldn’t be a choice once transferred to an adult court for the jury or judge because of his/his brain is still developing of the juvenile. I also think that if a juvenile is ever sentenced life in prison that there should be given the chance of parole so that could be an incentive to not cause problems with other inmates in prison. Nor become an influence on other people that are most likely to get out before themselves. As a society we label them right away making them believe it and not putting a stop is making them worse. While they believe the labelling the first time them forever it is something they have to deal with mentally. taco007
Part 1: We live in the country that locks up more children than any other country in the entire world. Also, most of the children that are locked up in the U.S. are dark skinned or suffer from a mental illness. A specific example if gathered was from listening to Zion’s story he lives in Florida with his mother. He is seven years old and he already has forty referrals on his record. Zion has ADHD, anxiety, and depression and that was found out at five years old. The mom would have to leave two to three times a week because of something that happened at Zion’s school. He displayed unrolly play and he had a battery on a district employee and he can be legally arrested for a battery. The thought of arresting a seven year old seems very wrong to me. He had a major anxiety attack and he threw his desk. There can be contributing factors to this behavior. There can be some family influences on delinquency. There is no mention of a father being actively involved in his life so a broken home can contribute to that. More specific to my paper is just the fact that we in america try many kids as adults. As I said in my paper that we are writing judicial waivers often play very large role in deciding the fate of a young individual who may have committed a violent or more serious crime as a juvenile. In juvenile court a judicial waiver is something no defendant wants to hear because it means that he or she will be tried as an adult in adult court. Often times judges, lawyers, and lawmakers refer to pass cases when deciding how to deal with trying a juvenile in adult court. -RHB007
There are some great examples local and even supreme court cases that I really influenced the outlook on juveniles being tried as adults. It has been shown that instead of locking children up for crimes like theft, we need to try and help the child learn right from wrong, rather than punish them for their mistakes with the help of rehabilitation. By locking a child away, they are actually hurt more than it helps them. This means that a child is doing fine prior to serving their prison sentence. However, after being put into prison, the child actually develops worse behavior without any treatment. We have discussed things like this in class before. The child gets worse due to two reasons, first the fact that humans are social creatures and second the child’s brain is still developing. I will say that the first video we watched the inmates in that detention center had more opportunities to learn and more opportunities for rehabilitation from what I could tell. The second video we watched edit looks more like prison in the sense that a lot of their time was spent in their cells and there looked to be less of a focus on rehabilitation. Throughout my research of various cases that involve judicial waivers I have noticed a trend that is trying to make its way into juvenile courts around the country. Many of the articles I found are not in favor of judicial waivers unless his violent. I would have to agree that violent crimes should not warrant these harsh punishment because locking someone up when they are 16 years old for 50 years would completely ruin their lives by not giving them a chance to show they are not a criminal and that they have learned from their mistakes because most of their lives will be over and it will be extremely hard for them to be a productive member of society if they have been institutionalized that long. One of the biggest cases I talked about in my paper was Graham versus Florida. This was the case went to the Supreme Court and the ruling ultimately said that you cannot any circumstances sentence a juvenile to life without parole in a non-homicide case. It also had implications across the country in a number of states because gave juvenile offenders the sliver of hope that some day the might make parole. Overall these two videos were extremely relevant as it pertains to our term papers and a lot of information from these videos are what I am finding threw out my research. The only thing I did not see in these videos were hell the decisions are made it to move do you know how to adult court. Depending on state law there are a number of different criteria is that the juvenile offender question must meet and I love these criteria are supposed to be taken into consideration the juvenile judge.
Watching the Documentary was very interest and it showed a lot. One thing that I found interesting 60% of children that are committing suicide in prison were put in solitary confinement and 70% of the kids in the juvenile justice system also reported to have a mental health illness.The documentary showed was that putting juveniles in solitary confinement for longs periods of time does not help the juvenile at all. It actually shows that solitary confinement hurts the kids in the long run and could end up giving them mental health problems. This shows that the juvenile and the adult system need to get rid of solitary confinement all together. In the documentary it shows how some states don’t even have an minimum age limit for kids when they commit a crime. Which means that some juveniles can commit one crime and be with the adult offenders where they do not belong. There was a man named Brian that had a rough childhood growing up. He watched someone’s eat shot and die and he was diagnosed with PTSD after that. After the incident he was getting into trouble.He joined a gang at the age of nine and went to the detention center at the age of twelve. He was put in solitary confinement for a too long of a time and that’s when he began hallucinating and hearing voices. He obviously went through a lot as a kid and instead on trying to help him and make him better putting him through the system and in solitary confinement it made him to end up have worse problems then when he entered. In the video it talks about a kid named named Zion. Zion at a young age struggled with ADHD and anxiety. Due to Zion’s anxiety and ADHD it makes sitting and focusing during class very challenging for him. He had a panic attack at school one day and ended up throwing a desk that hit his teacher. His teacher then told his mother that she could press charges on Zion who was only about seven years old at the time. She did not want to to take the time to help him and understand his illness. At the Indiana Maximum Security Prison they have over 2000 criminals and 40 teens are there being tried as adults. Teens in the prison are in facing anything from two years to 65 years. A boy who was about to burglarize someone house was tired for his friends death that got shot during the incident. He need not even really want to be there in the first place in the video he said he know he should just have went home. Now he is still in prison when he never actually completed the crime. A 16 year old got 10 years for robbery due to robbing a family friends' home and beating the older man with a wrench to rob him of his money. There was another teen who was being tried because he beat up someone who had hit his mother. He was young and saw his mom get hit and reacted off that. I do not think he should be looked up for trying to defend his mother. They could have put him through other programs such an anger management program. These way he does not have to get locked up for what he did and now he can learn ways to control his anger and not have to react straight from his emotions. Now with him belong in the system he could probably turn out worse then how he was before he got in the system. The video said that a lot of this when first brought in were under the influence of some kind of drug during the incident that cause them to get arrested. To know that a lot of these kids brains are still developing and during their offense that they were under the influence of some drug I would think that the system would have more understanding to try to help the kids with their problems to prevent them from repeating their action. Instead we treat them like they are adults when they are not and they end up coming out worse then how they were before they entered. Hoop007
Part 1
ReplyDeleteMany people in today’s society don’t realize how different Juvenile incarceration really is. By watching these two videos we saw a lot of things that most Americans probably don’t realize is happening. One of the first things that amazed me but yet was not shocking to hear was that the U.S locks up more children than any other country in the world. The amazing part about this is that the age group in which kids are starting delinquent behavior is very early on in their life. In one of the video clips we see Zion who started engaging in delinquent behaviors in the first grade. He started out by having multiple suspensions in school, then it escalated to kick me a teacher at the age of seven. He could have faced repercussions of having charges filed against him because of that incident. One of the interesting things at mini noticed throughout the clip was that all the kids were either diagnosed for showing symptoms of mental disorders, including Zion. Many of these disorders including ADHD, anxiety, depression, mood disorder, and bipolar disorder. Now the question is, do these disorders having an effect on these children’s delinquent behavior? For many adults mental disorders or illnesses affect there day to day lives which we are now seeing has a huge role in how they act. Now seeing how adults act with these illnesses and disorders, children are going to react worse based on their age difference and maturity level. Most children in these detention centers are being held for only status offenses; such as not attending school, smoking, drinking, and etc. There are a few that do commit high level crimes and receive a good amount of jail time. The problem that could arise from this is that they are indeed children in the way you think as a child is way different than you thinking as an adult. There is a problem arising that many think we could possibly be punishing some children a little to harshly. One of those instances stuck out in the video when we met Alan, who entered a juvenile facility at the age of 15 and was held in solitary confinement. He believed that being by himself, for so many hours and days upon end, that he became a little deranged. Which in turn made him become more aggressive. He did believe it was good for reflecting on your actions but the time period that he was in solitary confinement was a little harsh. He and some other children that were shown in this clip mentioned that they were put on psychotropic drugs that were in turn making things worse.
-hollywood007
part 2
DeleteWe live in a day in age where most still believe incarceration is better than rehabilitation. What good is it going to do to punish a 15 year old kid for smoking a little marijuana. We should rather be rehabilitating the kid and getting them the proper help that they need, because more than likely something might be going on at home that the child is acting out. That is another thing that needs to be mad aware of is that most of these children come home unstable homes. They could be coming from abuse or single parent homes where a lot of pressure is put on them to help out the family. These type of situations are very likely for children nowadays. It was also pointed out that the child will most likely come into connect with some type of violence in their life. That again including abuse on them, watching the abuse of others, or joining a gang where they will protect their “blood” in any situation that is bestowed upon them. These types of things are only increasing the population of juvenile delinquents. This rising population has been going on for quite some time now as well. It pointed out that in 2000 we had the most juveniles in jail across the U.S, which was at a staggering 1,009 children. Which is so unbelievably bad. Another problem with this is that we could possibly not be counting the children that are being tried as an adult. In the first clip we watched it was said that in the state of Louisiana,1 of 11 states, kids that are already 16 or 17 years old are automatically charges as an adult. Which is very concerning especially since we have to consider that they are even of a legal age yet. So why are we trying them as adults, even for petty crimes. Now some do have the legal right to be in their if there offense was at a high level. An example being that in the second clipped we watched, we heard that a 17 year old was being sentenced to 65 years for murder. How many people do believe, including myself, that children such as these do need to serve some time. The length of it is questionable though. The sad part of the case of the 17 year old is that there might be 40 year olds serving shorter sentences for doing the exact thing. Which is a flaw in our justice system that we need to look at and correct. Children are still learning, growing, and maturing until there mid 20’s. So the concern that we need to be looking at is, why do we rather incarcerate children than rehabilitate them.
-hollywood007
PART 1: 60% of children that are committing suicide in prison were put in solitary confinement. 70% of the kids in the juvenile justice system have a mental health illness as well. One of the children behind bars that was in a gang at 9 years old stated, "they had me doing things you get locked up for". He was put in solitary and said he hallucinated a lot and saw things and heard things that truly were not there. Another child said, "the system took away my life". Kids of color are two times more likely to be locked up and charged as adults than any other race. He said powerful psych drugs are handed out like candy. A public official had said regarding incarceration of younger adults, "we can create a criminal by locking them up". For certain crimes, children absolutely should be locked up but for crimes that are just flat out petty and minor, when we put these children behind bars so often for these offenses, it is doing really nothing for them at the ages they are at because they do not understand necessarily what they are doing or to what extent what they are doing can be considered a crime. When these children go to confinement, they are locked up for 23 hours and at 14 years old, let alone any age, but being so young, you really do not grasp the understanding or what is going on. A young woman said it made her feel like she was crazy. They are put in for volatile or violent behaviors and although those are negative behaviors, children are already under this great deal of stress being put where they are, they need educated and more than being thrown in a small room and having to sit there for so incredibly long unsure as to why they are even sitting there. In the end it is really doing nothing for them. At the Indiana Maximum security prison they house 2000 criminals and 40 teens are there being tried as adults. They are in there from two years to 65 years. A 16 year old got 10 years for robbery due to robbing a family friends' home and beating the older man with a socket wrench to rob him of his money. It was over drugs. The man was seriously injured and suffered major damages from this incident. There was also a 17 year old currently in for murder and serving a 65 year sentence. He did not want to talk about it and is really looking for any possible way to shorten his sentence. He was really working on his behavior and just keeping his head low to try anything possible to be on good terms and shorten his time. He fears that a rival gang is going to harm his family and his father was not really ever present during his life. He said "the only way to get out of a gang is to die" -notacop007
ReplyDeletePART TWO: Another child is in prison for 15 years, at the age of 18 currently and is in for battery. He said it was revenge for someone hurting his mother and he ultimately shot the person and caused great bodily harm. He said the guy deserved it and he did not regret it. There was also a 18 year old that is in for 55 years because of murder. He said he completely regrets it and he just was not thinking. Many teenagers have joined gangs from a young age. They say you either fit in or you end up completely isolating yourself inside a cell. They get one hour free time in the morning and a one hour of free time in the evening. It is obvious that these kids are truly suffering. They know their sentences and the length and some may just have the thought of they already do not have too much left to lose. One let his anger get the best of him and went to throw liquid on another inmate but got the correctional officer instead and had to go before someone to see if they wanted to move him to adult side of prison since he was 18 years old and he had originally been doing well but knew if he screwed up getting sent to the adult side was a possibility. The person that ultimately could make the decision ruled him okay to stay in the juvenile side but he had to go to solitary and although it was better than having to go to the adult side of prison, it is still not a favorable outcome because although it separates the person with people to be or get angry with, it puts them alone for so long and may amp them up even more or not even affect them at all and end up driving them to the point of feeling like they are hearing things. Kids who are sitting behind bars, not all of them deserve to be there. It could be as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time but now that they are there they have to make the best of it they can. Kids deserve second, third chances because we do not expect people to be perfect but we cannot expect kids to not find the limits or try to push through them and see where or how far they can go because they are children and children are and can be extremely immature. -notacop007
ReplyDeletePart 1
ReplyDeleteThere are many states in the United State that have no minimum age for when a child can be incarnated, Florida is one of the states. Mass majority of juveniles had minor offense. Why so harsh for adolescents in Chicago 3 children one under the age of 5, the 5 year old did not want to steal candy from the store for the other two so the oldest dangle the 5 year old outside a 14th- floor window and dropped to his death. That could be a reason why there are so many strictest laws against adolescent that commit “adult” crimes. In the 2000s incarnation for children peaked in America, black or brown got incarcerated more. Locking children up was a discipline action, states called “isolation for juveniles a safety plan. But there are facts from juveniles who have been incarcerated to adult jails ,says solitary confinement can make things worse for them. In Ohio juvenile center found out that all children who were in solitary condiment had mental health problems- adolescents in Ohio spent 200 thousand hours in isolation. 92% were on some type of drugs that can alter the brain function. 60 % of kids committed suicide come from being in solitary confinement. 17% of juvenile system struggles with mental health illness.
Although that might seem like a major problem there’s more, Black Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than any other color. In Florida 50 % of children arrested are black. Between January 97% are incarated 72% of the minors are black. It seem to happen more at school blacks are more than likely to incarated at school for disciplinary action than any other color. National blacks students ⅓ are arrested at school. Jefferson Parish school had made the most arrest in all the schools in Louisiana, the 90’s came a popular time for schools arrest. If a black child is acting up at school they criminalize them if it was a white child they look at ways to prevent it from happening again, stated a guardian in Louisiana. -Smiles007
Part 2 Thinking that incarnating adolescence would solve the issue of delinquency. Your wrong a child does not just act on their own. Research shows that peer group relationships are closely tied to delinquent behaviors. Although parents are the primary source of influence and attention in children’s early years , between age 8 and 4 children seek a stable peer group, and both the number and the variety of friendships increase as children go up. Adolescent Peer Relations plays a major part in juvenile delinquency. Many kids are initiated into pro-deviant attitudes are then used to help support continued involvement in antisocial behavior or illegal acts. In a process called deviancy training, close friends reinforce deviant behavior through talk and interaction.
ReplyDeleteSocialization and status can also cause delinquency and if it goes longer can lead to incarnation. Another significant aspects of the educational experience is that children spend their social school hours with their peers, and most of their activities after school talke place with school friends. Since youth tend to spend more time with their friends they tend to rely more on them. The norms of the peer culture are of often odds with those of the adult society, and psedoculture with a distinct social system develops. Law- abiding behavior among the values promoted in such an atmosphere. Kids enmeshed in this youth culture may be admire bravery, defiance, and having fun much more than adults do. Incarnated a child is bad of you too do. Educational problems and issues in 2010, America woke up to some sobering educational news. It seems that for the first time ,China participated in an international standardized testing curriculum. The test made the US question why aren't are children achieving educational. The reason for that can lead to minority groups and the dropout rates. Everyday, hundreds of thousands of youths are absent from school; many are absent without an excuse and deemed truant. Some large cities report that unexcused absences can number in the thousands of certain days. Truancy can lead to school failure and dropping out. Which can also lead to severe long term financial and personal consequences. Dropouts are less likely to find jobs than their educated peers, and they frequently experience considerably higher unemployment rates. Why do kids drop out usually kids say because they didn't like school or wanted a job. But the real reason is kids who grow up fast, who are involved in drug abuse or other risky behaviors, may drop out of high school that can result in failure and also lead to delinquency. I feel that there are many reasons why juvenile who commit adult crime can be incarcerated.- Smiles007
PART 1:
ReplyDeleteWatching the documentary on Prison Kids was a interesting and informative watch. The statistic that the United States locks up more children than any other country was kind of surprising. It puts into light that some of these kids get put in these centers for offenses that we don’t even think are bad enough to warrant them being arrested. There was a kid named Zion who was seven. He could be charged with battery in his home state of Florida for what he did at school. He started out by having multiple suspensions in school, then it escalated to kick me a teacher at the age of seven. He could have faced repercussions of having charges filed against him because of that incident.Another statistic was that it costs the United States eight billion dollars to incarcerate kids. There was a peak in 2000 when there was over 190,000 kids incarcerated in the United States. A statistic I found interesting was that most kids incarcerated are black. Some people see the solitary confinement as torture to the kids. Most of the kids in the documentary described themself as going mad when sitting by themselves. Some say that most of the kids going into these facilities are hoping the system can help them. Sometimes they leave worse than when they went in. In Ohio juvenile center found out that all children who were in solitary condiment had mental health problems- adolescents in Ohio spent 200 thousand hours in isolation. That is a ton of time to be by yourself. 92% of the kids were on some type of drugs that can alter the brain function. 60 % of kids committed suicide come from being in solitary confinement. 17% of juvenile system struggles with mental health illness.There was a couple of interviews with kids saying they experienced PTSD and even hallucinations when they were incarcerated. They sometimes would feel like they were going crazy. There was a kid in the documentary dealing with this. His name was Alan, who entered a juvenile facility at the age of 15. He was held in solitary confinement. He believed that being by himself, for so many hours and days upon end, that he became a little deranged. Which in turn made him become more aggressive. Maybe if he had a more time to go around others maybe his aggression would be not as high as it was when he is by himself. There was a story of a kid that got six days in a facility for throwing skittles, which I found to ge unfortunate for that child. I also learned that there was no death penalty for juveniles. Another statistic was that 60% of children that are committing suicide in prison were put in solitary confinement. Also, 70% of the kids in the juvenile justice system have a mental health illness as well. At the Indiana Maximum security prison, it was stated that they house 2000 criminals. 40 teens are there being tried as adults. They are in there from two years to 65 years.-CUBSFAN007
PART 2:
ReplyDeleteThis ties into my term paper topic, which was on judicial waivers. Judicial waivers, some say, creates an impression of lost hope. By handing out harsh sentences to juveniles, it gives off the impression that there is no hope for them. They think their future is completely ruined. This in turn might cause them to continue down the path of illegal activity due to the notion that they think their lives will not amount to anything. This what we saw in the documentaries. These kids lost hope for themselves and found themselves coming right back to being locked up. Judicial waivers also put young juveniles at risk. If they in fact make it to adult court, then they have a chance of being sent to an adult facility. This is very dangerous for most of juveniles who might be around the ages of 16-18. They might lack the ability to protect themselves in an adult facility. This also introduces the problem of what that juvenile might be like when he or she gets out of an adult facility. Some of the kids in the documentaries picked up bad habits such as gangs and fighting and they took that with them outside the facility. Kids who are sitting behind bars incarcerated are not all bad. Not all of them deserve to be there for their actions. It could be being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that they are behind bars at these facilities that have to make it the best they can make it. There is probably a solution for these kids that don’t need to be locked up for non serious crimes, but right now it doesn’t seem like much is happening to reach that goal for these kids.-CUBSFAN007
Part 1: The American Juvenile Justice System, is broken, is dangerous, and is only getting worse. One thing children do not like to be is locked up, isolated from, what they love and care about. What is worse is when children are placed in solitary confinement, nothing can break a person, mentally, and physically than solitary confinement. Juveniles with mental illnesses while in solitary confinement commit suicide, their symptoms that are a result of their mental illnesses make it tougher to survive in their surroundings. No one likes to be mentally confined as well as physically confined in a small cell.
ReplyDeleteWhy should juveniles be subjected to a form of mental torture? Why is America torturing its juvenile offenders? In this country we get on our soapboxes, and preach about reform, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. That is not happening, the sad fact is that America is treating its juveniles that are locked up like much like their adult counterparts. There are some juveniles who are tried as adults and are incarcerated with adults. Just like those juvenile inmates a Wabash Correctional Facility. There are 40 kids there who eat, sleep, exercise, and learn in separate section of the facility.
In this country we have two sides when it comes to rehabilitation. On one side there are those who believe in actually helping juveniles in ways that will make actual lasting and sustaining contributions towards keeping them out of court, and in trouble with the law. On the other there are those who want more facilities built, more guards, harsher laws to punish juveniles who do not want to conform to societal norms or expectations. These kind of people believe that punishment is the only rehabilitation required, and just for kicks throw in solitary confinement.
A lot of juveniles who enter the juvenile justice system, are from single-parent, or house holds where they may be raised by other family members. During a child's formative years, as a society we supposedly try our best to help those youth who we may feel at risk for committing crimes. There are programs in place that help these juveniles, but these programs, simply do not no enough, or they help but they do not help in the way they were originally intended. Where does the blame for that ultimately land? That is hard to tell because of all the finger pointing, and arguing. The real loss in all of this is the continuing number of juveniles who become just another in the criminal justice system. --YouMustAcquit007--
Part Two: America is supposed to be the most powerful, most advanced, most freedom loving/freedom fighting country in the world. Yet, as a country America locks up more people, including juveniles than any other country on the face of the earth. How is that possible? How is it that our society is still ruled so much by the mentality of, lock em' all up, toss away the key, and let god sort them out. America is a country that screams freedom, that is all for "We the People", but those same people screaming freedom are the ones who want society to be even more protected.
ReplyDeleteThey say that children are our future, in any society children are the future. It would make more sense now, to start completely overhauling criminal justice system, both adult and juvenile. We need to focus on helping children create a better future for themselves, in doing so they will stay out of the adult criminal justice system. Right now that is not the case. That will not be the case, until people realize that you cannot treat juvenile inmates, the same way as adult inmates are treated in the criminal justice system. Lawmakers are not listening to the experts in fields relating to childhood growth and development. These people know about rehabilitation, and how to improve children's lives. Politicians, are just that politicians, people who think they know how to change things, but quickly become jaded, because they want to be liked, and be seen. If children are our future in America, then we must do what we can help change the lives of children now who need help.
Watching both the films had a huge impact on me, in terms of knowing where America stands on incarcerating its youth. Other countries look at us and laugh for locking up children the way we do. What makes us so different than from other countries? Why are we spending billions of dollars on our criminal justice system? Children need help and guidance, not solitary confinement and life long prison sentences, where there is no hope. The worst thing a child can feel is being helpless and feeling completely hopeless. America is hurting its own future, and there is plenty of finger pointing to go around. Life as to get better for those juveniles who are locked up. ---YouMustAcquit007--.
(Part 1 of 2)It is crazy to think that the United States incarcerates more juveniles than any other well developed country. We lock up 54,000 juveniles who have some kind of disorder. Also most of these kids do not due violent crimes such as murder and rape. They locked up most of these kids out of a fear of the super predator, which turned out to be false. Most of these kids come from a broken home and have seen or had some sort of trauma. One moment in their lives changed how they would live as adults forever. Most of the kids that are locked up in juvenile detention have some sort of mental disorder. The video stated that up to 70 percent that are locked up have a mental illness. In the second video that we watched in class we saw that the child had ADHD which cause him to act out in class and have major panic attacks. He even went as far as kicking a teacher while she was trying to restrain the little boy. While being locked up they are given all the necessities that they need and hygiene products. They are given 1 hour of recreation in the morning and 1 hour of recreation in the afternoon. They are also given 3 meals a day, if they would want to they can buy extra snacks. It is crazy to think about that 92 percent of the kids locked up are given a psychotic drug. I would assume that most of these children do not need to be on these drugs. Worse yet they spend a lot of time in solitary confinement. They spend 23 hours a day locked in a cell. They could spend up to 302 hours in isolation. For one of the kids that they put in isolation named Allen, said that it made him a more violent person in isolation. In the other video that we watched in class we say that the female juvenile delinquent also said that it made her worse being in solitary confinement. The video stated that 60 percent of the suicides that happen are from solitary confinement. You can see that solitary confinement has a major toll on the well being of the child. -ClarkKent007
ReplyDelete(part 2 of 2)To be tried as an adult most of the juveniles are repeat offenders or they did a horrific crime. Of the 54,000 kids that we incarcerate in the United States at any given time there are close to 10,000 children in an adult prison. Safety issues in prison is a big concern especially for juveniles that are sent to adult prison. In the video we watch in the adult prison the violent offenders had drugs and a loaded gun. How they ever got a gun in prison just amazes me. In my paper I had an example of when a child went to an adult prison, in this example this juvenile fell victim to violent offenders just like the ones in the video we watch. The case starts off with 16 year old delinquent Texas boy was sent to prison for setting a fire in a neighborhood dumpster. We can assume that this child is acting out from a trauma that has happened to him or that he has some sort of mental issue. The damaged that he caused to the dumpster only caused 500 dollars, he really probably should have gotten a fine or sent to the JDC but he was sent to an Adult Texas prison with violent criminals. This boy was only 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighed about 125 pounds. Even if he was not a juvenile at that size he would be a victim as an adult in a prison. This boy honestly probably was not strong enough to hurt a fly, but he was sent into a violent prison. When he was sent to prison he was imminently sexually assaulted by the bigger and stronger adult prisoners. This boy tried to get out of general population of adults but the prison did not care and they sent him back to the cell where he was raped. He would be continually raped and beaten by the prisoners. He ended up writing a letter to the prison officials asking for help because he was always afraid that he might die one of the times. That should have been enough to get him out of danger but they did not care. Just 75 days into his prison sentence this boy would take his life. It is sad that this boy took his life because he made a stupid mistake. One moment in his life changed how it would be forever. He did not commit a horrific act such as murder or rape. All he did was set a dumpster on fire. He should have never been sent to an adult prison for the crime that he did. -ClarkKent007
ReplyDeletePt 1.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching the inclass video over Juveniles being sent to adult prisons, I found that the United States tends to lock up more kids than any other country. Gang relations most times will increase the punishment given to the Juvenile due to the intensity of the crime committed and the odds of the Juvenile falling right back into the gang once out. So, maybe by locking kids up, that will keep them away from making movements to return to the gang. 33 states within the United States have no minimus age limits to charge juveniles with crimes. This could take petty crimes and alter their records so when they are caught later with slightly serious crimes, they skip the option of juvenile detention and get sent to adult court. In the year 2009, 109,000 kids were locked up, and the video we watched said that most of the juvenile jails are filled with kids convicted with status offenses. Status offenses are minimal offenses that are often victimless crimes. Such offenses include things like skipping school, also known as truancy, curfew problems or staying out too late, underage drinking or smoking/chewing of tobacco, running away, and being too hard to control by your guardians. One major problem is that by incarcerating people that run away, oftentimes girls, they are sent back to their guardians. Once sent back to their guardians, people who may abuse them mentally or physically, they are abused again and often run away again because of this. Juveniles that would run away, sensing that nowhere is safe for them, including their own home, may turn to a gang to find the love and support they cant find from their guardians. This will have them in turn completing more crime, often more serious crimes that can get them locked up in prisons due to the crimes committed or the involvement within the gang. Within the juvenile detention facilities or juvenile jails, kids that are often seen as problem children are often thrown into solitary confinement. Studies show that by throwing a child in solitary confinement the problem of problems that the child faces will not be resolved, but instead intensify. Solitary confinement doesn't find and abolish the root of the problem, but lets it fester and grow. Combining medication and solitary confinement is a deadly combination as told by the in class video. The children do nothing but sit in a cell and think about what they've done, while medicated, which could make them act out or have side effects that could end deadly for the child. Hallucinations while being thrown into a room where nobody is watching over you could end in the childing performing self harm to get the hallucinations to stop or even completing suicide to allow for the side effects to end and for them to stop feeling like they are crazy. While 70% of kids within the juvenile jails suffer from mental illness and disabilities, it's hard for them to concentrate as is. Combining isolation and medication could leave them to their own thoughts which often times is what got them placed into juvenile jails in the first \place. -Jar007
Pt 2
ReplyDelete11 states allow for kids as young as 16 to be tried as adults. Along with that, it is seen that minorities are often tried and charged as adults more often than other types of people. I find this interesting, because the makeup of lots of gangs are based on minorities, like kids that don't fit in due to skin color, religion, or anything that may allow them to stand out to the general public that they can be made fun of for and ostracized because of. In Florida, 53% of the kids arrested in schools were black. Over half of all arrests within the schools are found to be black kids. When brought to the light, it was said that while kids just don’t do such things to get arrested in schools. Black kids and minorities were heavily picked out and punished for their actions, actions that white kids commit as well, but just don’t get arrested for. Problems like this make issues today such as racial injustice more prevalent day by day. The amount of kids that are imprisoned as adults is a scary number, and the fact that minority kids are being charged at high rates is alarming. The United States is built on cultural diversity, and this diversity has also ripped this nation apart. The amount of kids that run to gangs to find refuge because they can’t find comfort within their own house and can’t find a group of peers to fit in with is sad and will continue to be a way that kids can and will be tried as adults due to gang activity. Kids belong out in schools, learning, having fun with friends, playing sports and on playgrounds. They don’t belong in cells, behind bars, locked away from their friends and family, but maybe no friends and family is what got them there in the first place. -Jar007
PART 1: In my section of the paper, I had to talk about why juveniles are being tried as adults and what type of people are more likely to be sent to adult facilities. Those that are under the age of eighteen can be tried as an adult in court because of state laws. Looking at the states laws is the first step in deciding if a juvenile’s crime committed should be taken into the criminal justice system or if it should stay in juvenile court. There are thirteen states that do not have an age limit for adult prosecution. Judicial waiver is a part of the state laws. It is the process where juvenile court cases meet the qualifications for criminal court and the juvenile court judge agrees to send the cases to the criminal system. Most of the time juveniles are tried as adults if the crime they committed is considered an adult crime. From the two videos that we watched in class, more than half of the juveniles that were in the adult facility committed murder. The juvenile court judges were sending kids cases to the criminal justice system that were under the age of eighteen with no history of delinquency. Kids were sentenced to be kept in adult facilities for years twice their age. They were even sentenced to life with no parole which is unfair. I feel it is unfair because kids’ brains are still developing so they should not be getting sentences that long. Then they were not offered parole meaning the kids did not get a second chance at life. There is a one hundred percent chance that the teen will not think the same way as they did before when they are in their 30s. They mature just like everyone else. It is against the law for judges to give juveniles the death penalty which is why they sentence them to life instead. Keeping juveniles in adult jails and prisons can make them a lot worse then they were when they went into the facilities. Since they are still children, the adults in the facilities can influence the juveniles to do bad things because they look up to them. In the videos we watched, majority of the juveniles imprisoned had mental disorders. The most common that were shown in the video were those diagnosed with ADHD and mood disorders. Kids who needed mental help were instead locked away in jails/ prisons. Just like the Zyon boy that was in first that had ADHD and anxiety which made it hard for him to focus. -pieface007
ReplyDeletePART 2: His anxiety attacks were so bad that he would flip out and have fits; once resulting in him hitting a teacher. Instead of the teachers trying to understand why he acted out and could not focus, he was punished and labeled as this disobedient kid. The juveniles hoped that their time being sentenced would change them in a positive way. Instead it only made them worse. They made a problem that did not exist, creating a criminal. Being locked up drove them crazy and made some of the begin to hallucinate. There were a lot of them that wanted to commit suicide because they had life in prison, so they thought they had no point in living. Juveniles are thirty-six times more likely to commit suicide being imprisoned with adults. Others on the other hand tried to stay strong and felt they still had something to live for, being seventeen with fifty and up years. There was one boy that was seventeen years old and was sentenced to fifty-five years in prison for a murder he did not commit. It was the story about the boys that broke into someone’s house and their friend had been shot by the home owner. The friends had to do the time for the murder they did not commit because if it was not for them breaking into the house, he would not have gotten shot. I feel like that was unfair that they had to do the sentencing because they were not the ones that killed the boy. Now they are sentenced to years in an adult prison with their childhood taken away from them. Even if it did come down to it being their fault of their friend’s death, they should not have been sentenced adult time knowing they did not commit the crime. The other boy that I felt bad for was the one that got sentenced to a lot of time for killing someone over his mom. Someone had hit is mother and he went after them. His intensions were not to kill the person that hit his mom, but he just had so much adrenalin that that is what it came down to. The court system sees no violent offenses as juvenile crimes. pieface007
ReplyDeletePart 1
ReplyDeleteOur country’s criminal justice system is all kinds of messed up. For example, we live in the country that locks up more children than any other country in the entire world. Also, most of the children that are locked up in the U.S. are dark skinned or suffer from a mental illness. It is sad to say, but it is true, that some people are still racist, and others do not care about mental illness enough to try and step in to help battle it. Another thing that makes this specific system messed up is the fact that some states within the U.S. do not have a minimum age in which a child can be arrested for crimes. Kids at very young ages who commit certain crimes face the possibility of serving prison sentences that last for multiple years, which could negatively affect their development as time goes on. When a child commits the crime of theft, for example, the U.S. automatically tries to lock them up, sometimes even putting them into solitary confinement for long periods of time. It has been shown that instead of locking children up for crimes like theft, we need to try and help the child learn right from wrong, rather than punish them for their mistakes with the help of rehabilitation. By locking a child away, they are actually hurt more than it helps them. This means that a child is doing fine prior to serving their prison sentence. However, after being put into prison, the child actually develops worse behavior without any treatment. We have discussed things like this in class before. The child gets worse due to two reasons: 1) the fact that humans are social creatures and 2) the child’s brain is still developing. As more time passes by and a human is isolated from anyone else, they will start to go insane. Without socializing with anyone, our brains begin to malfunction, and we get crazier and crazier. Also, a person’s brain is still developing until around the age of 24 or 25. By isolating them from others at the age of 15, 16, etc., this is mentally hurting the child immensely, causing them to not be able to think or function properly. After serving this time alone and facing this mental trauma, kids who leave prison leave changed, in a bad way, carrying the PTSD they got from the damaging time done in solitary confinement.
-Fozz007
Part 2
ReplyDeleteMany kids are finishing out their prison sentences in adult prisons. This is due to something called a judicial waiver. These judicial waivers allow juvenile offenders to be transferred to adult prisons if it is found that the offense, they committed is bad enough to send them there. Most kids that are in adult prisons because of judicial waivers have committed some of the worst crimes imaginable. For example, a kid in one of the videos we watched explained how he got stuck in adult prison for beating an elderly family friend with a wrench and then stealing valuables from him. By committing horrible crimes like this, kids are spending more and more time in adult prisons. Also, when these horrible crimes are committed, almost every time the motive is to get revenge on someone else. Research suggests that the child’s upbringing is the cause of their crime-related activities. This is similar to what we have discussed in class. For example, we talked about how if a child grows up without a father figure in their life, they are much more likely to commit crime compared to a child who had a father figure present. However, once a juvenile is in an adult prison, they do not see the adult prisoners as much as one would think. Juveniles in these prisons are separated from adult prisoners so no problems between the two can occur. Also, counseling and guidance is provided to the juveniles. Because they are still juveniles, rehabilitation is included in their everyday lives. This is due to the fact that rehab is the main focus for juveniles, while incarceration is the main focus for adults. By putting a juvenile through rehab, their chances of learning how to avoid crime and live a good, straightforward lifestyle are a lot better than an adult’s. Rehab is still included in adult prisoner lifestyles. But it is not nearly as emphasized as it is for juveniles. Despite being locked up in an adult prison, these juveniles do have the opportunity to earn rewards. By having a consistent basis of good behavior, juveniles can earn things like TVs in their cell, etc. This process of sending juveniles to adult prisons does greatly impact each one of these kid’s lives. But we can see how this process helps these kids as well. For example, we talked about in class how rehab is a good idea for juveniles, as it could possibly keep them out of jail when they’re older, compared to giving adults a chance at rehab, when they may never leave their cells again.
-Fozz007
Part 1 : The United States incarcerated the most children than any other country. Listening to Zion’s story was really interesting. He lives in Florida with his mother. He is seven years old and he already has forty referrals on his record. Zion has ADHD, anxiety, and depression and that was found out at five years old. The mom would have to leave two to three times a week because of something that happened at Zion’s school. He displayed unrolly play and he had a battery on a district employee and he can be legally arrested for a battery. The thought of arresting a seven year old seems very wrong to me. He had a major anxiety attack and he threw his desk. There can be contributing factors to this behavior. There can be some family influences on delinquency. There is no mention of a father being actively involved in his life so a broken home can contribute to that. There was no mention of a divorce but there could of been one and that can also contribute. The mother shows good parental efficiency so I don’t think that’s a contributor. The mom said “you want them to be better than you were”. She is so afraid that he’s going to go down the wrong path and go to prison or jail and she wants what is best for him. There has been evidence of kids that have working mothers and it shows that they can have a higher chance of being involved in delinquency. There has also been evidence that there is little to no effect on children that do have mothers with jobs. This means that the kids have little to no chance of being involved in delinquency. Genetic factors can also contribute to this. There can be link that is between parental deviance and child misbehavior. This can be genetic. They could both have antisocial behaviors and this can be inherited genetically. If the child has the same behavior as the parent, they are sharing the same genes and not because they have learned this bad behavior or live in an environment that causes both of them to do wrongdoing. In the documentary, it seemed that Zion’s mother was a single mom. Single moms are likely to live in poverty and the experience long term physical and social disabilities. There does not seem to be financial issues or physical issues. Zion can have social disabilities. He has really bad anxiety, depression, and angry outbursts. He also displays unrolly play and this can make it hard for him to make friends. Family break ups deal more with behavior that is bad. Depending on the situation, if there was a family break up, this could of had an effect on Zion. He does not seem to be doing things with others kids. There could be a part of intra family violence that contributes to this. Children that experience any form of family violence are more likely to act out than those who avoid relational conflict. Relational conflict deals with hurting someone’s relationship or social status. Relational conflict is not involved in Zions situation. We don’t know if Zion has experienced family violence. If he did experience family violence, he could've learned at a young age that violence pays off. -Soccer31007
ReplyDeletePart 2 : The video mentioned that there was an eighth grader that got arrested for battery by throwing skittles. The eighth grader was African American. There are some states that don’t have an age on battery. If you committed a battery in one of those states and you are twelve, you can get arrested. I don’t think the eighth grader should of gotten arrested for battery. That seems very unreasonable. African American kids are twice as likely to get arrested and charged as adults than kids. There was a girl named Nicole and she was eleven years old. She fought at school and went to jail. She said that “they try to treat me like a criminal”. She is eleven years old and she should not be treated like a criminal, let alone even people thinking she is a criminal. She has a twin brother named Deaon. He got incarcerated two months after the interview was taken. His mother explained that it seems like he has given up on everything including himself. Nicole and Deon both have special needs. The extent of them were not mentioned but locking them up can make things way worse than what they were. The video mentioned that “once they get in, they get worse”. Sixty percent of kids commit suicide when they are in solitary confinement. All the kids that are locked up, most likely have a mental health issue. There can be sibling influences on delinquency. They both have have similar social and economic factors. Traits can cause one sibling to engage in delinquency and they can be shared by his or her brother or sister. If they are deviant, they can grow slower because of shared interests. There was a man named Brian and he was from a family of eight. He had no dad and he watched someone die and he was diagnosed with PTSD. He joined a gang at the age of nine and he went to the detention center at the age of twelve. He spent a lot of time in confinement and he began hallucinating and hearing voices. He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar. Spending a lot of time in confinement could be the reason on why he has multiple mental disorders. Brian joined a gang at a very young age. He probably gravitates toward the cliques that could give him support, assurance, protection, and direction. The age of gangs is very wide. They can be as young as eight or as old as fifty five. Research shows that youths hear about gangs around the age of nine. -Soccer31007
ReplyDeletePart 1:
ReplyDeleteNowadays, you hear about juveniles being locked up, and your first thought is what? A stupid kid, unsupervised got into trouble? Just another kid raised wrong that deserves to be in a juvenile detention center or prison? People don’t realize that not all juveniles are absolutely horrible. Personally, I really liked the videos we watched because even I realized, not all kids deserve to be locked away, and juvenile detention centers don’t always help them as well. The United States locks up more children than any other country. We believe that if a child is willing to act like an adult, or commit a crime/join gangs like an adult, they will be treated and tried like an adult. Curfew violations and running away and two common reasons why a youth may end up locked up. They didn’t even commit a serious crime.
In the video it discusses a child named Zion. Zion struggles with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Because of Zion’s anxiety and ADHD, it makes sitting at school all day long a struggle. He had a panic attack at school, and ended up throwing a desk that hit his teacher. His teacher told his mother that she could press charges on him if she wanted. Zion is 7. A teacher wanted to press charges on a 7 year old child. Instead of immediately thinking on how to punish the child, or press charges, maybe teachers should learn how to deal with mental illnesses a little better. I have 2 out of the 3 of the same mental illnesses that Zion has. I can’t imagine having to go through that as a seven year old child. When you’re supposed to be goofy, and fun and just run around and live while you can. The majority of our juveniles incarcerated, struggle from some form of mental illness. If our children didn’t have some time of mental illness before being locked up, they might have developed one by the time they get out. Incarceration has made children worse than they ended up there. Children have shown having ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, and Aggressive Tendencies. Being put into solitary confinement doesn’t help any either. Children are put into solitary confinement to “be a better inmate,” but what it really does is test their mental state.
Savannah was 14 when she was incarcerated. She came from a single mother, so she was on her own quite often, and ended up getting into too much trouble. Before getting put into the juvenile detention center, she says she as never so angry or never fought as much. She was put into solitary confinement for 23 hours. Another one, Allen, was kept in solitary confinement for 313 days out of a year. Allen said he was given some random medication that made him space out for hours at a time. He said he didn’t feel right. stlblues007
Part 2:
Delete92% of kids incarcerated are given some type of medication. The majority of them don’t even know what the medication is, because they aren’t required to tell them. Being given too much of a random prescription everyday, can later alter their brain development. Only 8 states out of all 50, have laws against putting kids in solitary confinement. Illinois is not one of them. The majority of suicides in prison and juvenile detention centers are from being in solitary confinement for too long. So instead of helping our children with their mental issues, and helping them live a better life, we live in a world where we are locking them up and punishing them for some things they cannot control.
In the second video we watched, it shows juveniles that are locked up for 10 years, to life in prison. At the Walbash Prison, there’s a Block D specifically for teenagers that were/are so violent, they were tried as an adult. Most of the teens locked up were for 10 years or less. They are locked in their cells for 18 hours out of the day, with one hour of recreation in the morning and at night. If you were “good” for months on end, you eventually get a TV in your cell, good to watch for an hour or two out of your day. They may be alone most of the day, but good behavior can go a long way.
If you commit murder under the age of 18, juveniles are not allowed to be sentenced the death penalty. So most states give them life without parole. Which doesn’t always help either because someone may of committed a murder at 17, but at 42 they may no longer have that mindset anymore. Jesus is a juvenile locked up in Block D for committing a murder at 16 years old. He said it was a heat of the moment decision where he turned around and shot another 15-16 year old. Since he’s not allowed the death penalty, they sentenced him to 65 years to life in prison. Jesus is not eligible for parol until he is 49 years old.
There’s so many different things that need changed in our system, especially to help our juveniles since solitary confinement can’t solve every problem. Hopefully, one day in the future we will see something done, but this isn’t their first priority at the moment. stilblues007
In the documentary, Prison Kids Juvenile Justice in America, we get the run through of the ever-so-present changle of juvenile delinquency. We start off learning about Zion, who suffers from ADHD. Causing him to act out, and to have uncontrollable fits of energy. I don’t blame the mother for being worried about her son. People with mental illnesses are treated poorly, and we have thrown mental health people into jails, or even prisons. Just because we didn’t know what else to do with them. We have gotten better of this, but it still happens. In Zions case, I feel that some schools need to update their policies on how to handle school law legal trouble. In a lot of cases, the school can handle the incident themselves. Although, most of the time the cops are involved. With a strong zero tolerance policy in most schools, anything done to the school or school officials is a call to the police. The school will file charges, unless there is no reason to. I feel that if the issue is little, then handle it with the parents. There’s no need to be trying to ruin a child's life. Especially when they are going to school to better their lives. In the case where Zion kicks the teacher. Instead of calling the police department, they should’ve called the mother and told her what he did. They discuss the best form of punishment, and it is enforced. Now, most judges won’t charge a kid too hard to avoid this trend of juvenile delinquency, but if the school wouldn’t have started the long process, then no record is there. Savannah is a good example of living a life of crime, but still wants to do right. I feel there is a lot of juveniles that regret what they have done, or are doing. These types of kids have the highest chance of changing, and to start benefiting society more. We, has the justice system needs to see this, and jump on it. At the age of 14 she is already in prison! Now I don’t know if they ever say what she’s in there for, but it’s something serious. The age is surprising, but the fact she is a female is more surprising. Not because she committed a crime, but because it was a serious crime. Males have a 5:1 ratio to women on committing serious crimes. Savannah also talked about missing school, and friend life. Almost everyone feels this way. Cliques are huge in delinquency, and also staying out of it. For some, Cliques are the reason they are in trouble. If you are hanging out with people who steal from stores, more than likely you will start to steal from stores. Another term, deviancy training, is taking place here. The friends will teach the others how to do stuff, and be supportive about it. That is the worse situation to be in. You start talking yourself out of all the bad things that you are doing to people, and don’t even worry about your well-being.
ReplyDelete^~^Itis007 Part 1 of 2
That’s how a lot of petty crimes happen, along with the big ones. This can also be a cause of bad parenting. Or even bad living. If you don’t have a supportive family that is always looking out for you, and wondering what you are doing, you will have an increased likelihood do bad things. Families that work a lot due to economic stress have less time to take care of their children. In some cases, family has to take care of themselves. Older siblings need to step up, and help their younger siblings. But what if the older sibling is the trouble maker? Then you have a chance of the older kids teaching the younger kids bad habits. They could end up following their footsteps. Family influences are good only when the influencer is trying to better their life by doing good. Disorganized neighborhoods are a huge problem today as well. Within these neighborhoods, crime is common, and sometimes is taught to the young. Also, with no one caring, or stopping them, it won’t stop. In the case with Alan, he was respected a lot because, in the jail, he helped all the kids talk to their families. He made sure to take care of people, and a lot of the kids looked up to him. Most of these juveniles never had anyone to look up to. He made sure a lot of them were looking out for their futures outside of the detention center as well. Last thing to touch on is the amount of kids with a mental disorder that are in detention. 70% of the kids locked up have some sort of mental illness. I feel this isn’t just random. I think a lot of this kids suffer from some sort of conduct disorder, and we need to find a way to help these kids. For the other kids, making sure our juvenile detention centers are kept up to date, and are making mental health a top concern. Hopefully, getting these kids to stop their crime streak before it even happens. Most kids get in trouble with the juvenile system, and have to go through the degradation ceremony and don’t ever reoffend. For the kids that do recommit crimes, they are the ⅓ of the serious crime being committed every year. Finding a way to get these kids to stop reoffending would put a huge, needed dent in serious crime. At Least the serious crime that is reported.
ReplyDelete^~^Itis007 Part 2 of 2
Part 1: By watching this video I realized just how little I knew about juvenile incarceration. I knew that juveniles could be taken to a detention center after arrest, but I did not know that juveniles could be sentenced to terms in juvenile prisons. This video taught me a lot of other things as well, such as the effects of solitary confinement on a childs/young adult’s brain. I feel that solitary confinement should only be used as a last resort. I feel like the Ohio prison did not have any or many steps before solitary, and that the solitary was too harsh. They should follow the models of other states and prisons and only allow 8 hours maximum in solitary confinement, and even then I think that maximum should only be reserved for the most severe offenses. I think that more programs like the one that Zion was in should exist. When I was in k-2 grades, we had a card system. Each child had a slot with a green, yellow, and a red card. Each day you would start with a green card, but if you acted up you would go to yellow, and then to red. Sometimes you would go straight to red. Just about every day I would come home with a yellow or red card. We did not know it at the time, but would later go on to be diagnosed with ADHD, similar to Zion.
ReplyDeleteRedranger007
While mine was/is not as severe, it would still cause problems for me. Even today at 18 my ADHD causes issues for me. In class I cannot seem to focus, and sometimes at my job I cannot focus. I take medication for it on days I think I may need it, but even then I have to weigh the benefits against the side effects; such as being able to focus, but I will have motor tics. I will not be as hyperactive, but I will likely forget to eat because of the lack of appetite from my meds. For me this system sort of works, but what about kids that cannot afford medication, or even a diagnosis for a doctor? I am not saying it is not their fault they are acting the way they are, but they truly sometimes cannot help it, and then they are being punished for an “outburst” that they just could not suppress. These prisons need to realize that not all of the kids in their “care” have complete self control. It is not completely their fault they are spacy and out of focus. Another thing I noticed is these juvenile prisons are doing stuff to help the kids while they are in there, but upon release there is no follow up. No one is there to make sure they are kept out of trouble. Nobody goes to the homes of these kids and tells the parents “you have to do this to help your child.” These kids go back to the homes they came from, and go right back to doing what they have to do to survive, even if it means getting arrested and sent back. They need someone working with the correctional system who can go and make sure these homes and the parents are ready to receive their child back, and the child will not run the risk of getting into trouble all over again.
ReplyDeleteRedranger007
Part 1:
ReplyDeleteAfter watching these two videos, I was able to realize and understand how serious it is for a juvenile to be incarcerated in an adult prison/facility. In the United States, locking people away for committing crimes and breaking the law is not uncommon. Actually, no other country in the world incarcerates children as much as the United States does. Before I watched this video, I thought that placing children in adult prisons was a bad idea. Once I watched and listened to how serious some of these kids crimes were and how they talked about their feelings towards their crimes, I did not feel to bad for some of them. When the inmates spoke about the crimes that they committed, some of them regretted their decisions and others did not regret them at all. Some of the delinquents who were locked up only regretted their bad decision making because they did not like being locked up and all they cared about was getting out of the prison systems and being free again. One thing that really interested me was when the video mentioned that most of the children incarcerated had mental illnesses. Some people suffered from extreme Depression, ADHD, Bipolar Disorders, and many other illnesses. Often times, the prisons would prescribe the inmates who have mental illnesses with medication which was supposed to help them. This did not always help. For some kids in the video, the drugs that were given to them were way too high of doses and made them have hallucinations such as hearing voices in their heads. These hallucinations oftentimes happened when the juvenile delinquents were put into solitary confinement. Being locked away in solitary confinement is meant to help the inmates by allowing them to be alone and think about their decisions that they have made. Some of the kids who spoke in the video said that solitary confinement actually made them worse. They said that they were locked in the room alone for far too long and it really caused more harm than good. The amount of time they had to spend in solitary confinement put a huge amount of pressure on their mentality and saness. In the United States, there are laws that state that juveniles are not able to be given the death penalty. They are still able to be given extremely long sentences. The maximum sentence for a juvenile delinquent in an adult prison is 65 years. I personally thought this was an extreme number because a person’s brain continues to grow and develop until around the age of 25 years old. A teenager who committed a crime is not going to be the same person when he is 25 or 30 years old, so in most cases I do not think that locking up children for years on end is necessarily the greatest idea the government has thought of.-KiiNG007
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteOne of the kids in the video was convicted and incarcerated in an adult prison for murder. The kid was 17 years old when he was convicted of his crime. He said in the video he did not realize what he was doing completely when he shot and killed a 16 year old boy who was in a rival gang. He now is serving 65 years in an adult prison. I think the saddest part about this 17 year olds situation is the fact that all he seemed to care about was himself and getting out of the prison as soon as possible. He did not seem to act as if he thought he deserved to be punished and that really bothered me. In the videos that we watched, there was another kid who nearly beat an old man half to death just so his friends could steal possessions from this man’s house. The juvenile mentioned that he was beating this man and he just couldn’t stop. He stated that he was beating him so bad and the man was bleeding so bad that he couldn’t even see his skin color anymore. All he could see was the man’s blood on his hands. Juveniles like this kid and the 17 year old who was sentenced for 65 years deserve to serve maximum punishments in my opinion, along with receiving all the help they can get from mental health facilities. Something I thought that was interesting in these videos is that it talked about how it was two times more often for an african american to be locked up. All other races were less likely. While some kids do deserve the punishment of being locked up in adult prisons, there are many who do not and are placed there anyway. Some kids who are locked up would be better off going to a juvenile facility and receive rehabilitation services. Incarcerating youths can do the opposite of help them get better.-KiiNG007
Part 1
ReplyDeleteAs juveniles are often influenced by different factors to commit crimes, they are more likely to get caught and sent to a JDC. As we have been learning in class, the influence of family and peers has the strongest effect on juveniles. The living environment aren't giving a good example, so they find an easy way to make money. In our country, we have far more juveniles locked up for petty crimes than any other country in the world. In the “Prison Kids” video, it is mentioned that instead of locking up juveniles for the offenses made, they should be helping them rehabilitate to return to society. Usually, the juveniles that commit crime and are in prison are the ones with unhealthy homes and have gone through a trauma in their life. While being locked up most of them feel as if they are going crazy especially if place in solitary confinement and later a lot of them are diagnosed with some type of mental health. Not only did it affect them mentally but also affected their behavior. Instead of thinking about what they could do better to listen and understand, it would only make them worse according to one other the juveniles in the video. Juveniles are still maturing and developing until the average age of twenty-five. They are still learning to distinguish the positive and negative reasoning for certain behaviors, but as a society we punish them instead of understanding and helping them. There are juveniles that can be charged as adults and once charged as an adult the Juveniles Justice System doesn’t have any jurisdiction. According to “Prison Kids” it is said that Black Americans and other minorities are mostly charged as adults. It is not a hundred percent positive that being charged as an adult will help, so it is a risk that is being taken. There are many cases where the juvenile is just punished and not given a chance to change before getting out and returning to the community. There one juvenile that was incarcerated said that if he committed the crime the needs to man up and deal with the consequences. I think that shows maturity in someone’s mentality and rehabilitation to understand that you can get in trouble again. I also think that for a juvenile the death penalty shouldn’t be a choice once transferred to an adult court for the jury or judge because of his/his brain is still developing of the juvenile. I also think that if a juvenile is ever sentenced life in prison that there should be given the chance of parole so that could be an incentive to not cause problems with other inmates in prison. Nor become an influence on other people that are most likely to get out before themselves. As a society we label them right away making them believe it and not putting a stop is making them worse. While they believe the labelling the first time them forever it is something they have to deal with mentally. taco007
Part 1: We live in the country that locks up more children than any other country in the entire world. Also, most of the children that are locked up in the U.S. are dark skinned or suffer from a mental illness. A specific example if gathered was from listening to Zion’s story he lives in Florida with his mother. He is seven years old and he already has forty referrals on his record. Zion has ADHD, anxiety, and depression and that was found out at five years old. The mom would have to leave two to three times a week because of something that happened at Zion’s school. He displayed unrolly play and he had a battery on a district employee and he can be legally arrested for a battery. The thought of arresting a seven year old seems very wrong to me. He had a major anxiety attack and he threw his desk. There can be contributing factors to this behavior. There can be some family influences on delinquency. There is no mention of a father being actively involved in his life so a broken home can contribute to that. More specific to my paper is just the fact that we in america try many kids as adults. As I said in my paper that we are writing judicial waivers often play very large role in deciding the fate of a young individual who may have committed a violent or more serious crime as a juvenile. In juvenile court a judicial waiver is something no defendant wants to hear because it means that he or she will be tried as an adult in adult court. Often times judges, lawyers, and lawmakers refer to pass cases when deciding how to deal with trying a juvenile in adult court.
ReplyDelete-RHB007
There are some great examples local and even supreme court cases that I really influenced the outlook on juveniles being tried as adults. It has been shown that instead of locking children up for crimes like theft, we need to try and help the child learn right from wrong, rather than punish them for their mistakes with the help of rehabilitation. By locking a child away, they are actually hurt more than it helps them. This means that a child is doing fine prior to serving their prison sentence. However, after being put into prison, the child actually develops worse behavior without any treatment. We have discussed things like this in class before. The child gets worse due to two reasons, first the fact that humans are social creatures and second the child’s brain is still developing. I will say that the first video we watched the inmates in that detention center had more opportunities to learn and more opportunities for rehabilitation from what I could tell. The second video we watched edit looks more like prison in the sense that a lot of their time was spent in their cells and there looked to be less of a focus on rehabilitation. Throughout my research of various cases that involve judicial waivers I have noticed a trend that is trying to make its way into juvenile courts around the country. Many of the articles I found are not in favor of judicial waivers unless his violent. I would have to agree that violent crimes should not warrant these harsh punishment because locking someone up when they are 16 years old for 50 years would completely ruin their lives by not giving them a chance to show they are not a criminal and that they have learned from their mistakes because most of their lives will be over and it will be extremely hard for them to be a productive member of society if they have been institutionalized that long. One of the biggest cases I talked about in my paper was Graham versus Florida. This was the case went to the Supreme Court and the ruling ultimately said that you cannot any circumstances sentence a juvenile to life without parole in a non-homicide case. It also had implications across the country in a number of states because gave juvenile offenders the sliver of hope that some day the might make parole. Overall these two videos were extremely relevant as it pertains to our term papers and a lot of information from these videos are what I am finding threw out my research. The only thing I did not see in these videos were hell the decisions are made it to move do you know how to adult court. Depending on state law there are a number of different criteria is that the juvenile offender question must meet and I love these criteria are supposed to be taken into consideration the juvenile judge.
ReplyDelete^part2
Delete-RHB007
Watching the Documentary was very interest and it showed a lot. One thing that I found interesting 60% of children that are committing suicide in prison were put in solitary confinement and 70% of the kids in the juvenile justice system also reported to have a mental health illness.The documentary showed was that putting juveniles in solitary confinement for longs periods of time does not help the juvenile at all. It actually shows that solitary confinement hurts the kids in the long run and could end up giving them mental health problems. This shows that the juvenile and the adult system need to get rid of solitary confinement all together. In the documentary it shows how some states don’t even have an minimum age limit for kids when they commit a crime. Which means that some juveniles can commit one crime and be with the adult offenders where they do not belong. There was a man named Brian that had a rough childhood growing up. He watched someone’s eat shot and die and he was diagnosed with PTSD after that. After the incident he was getting into trouble.He joined a gang at the age of nine and went to the detention center at the age of twelve. He was put in solitary confinement for a too long of a time and that’s when he began hallucinating and hearing voices. He obviously went through a lot as a kid and instead on trying to help him and make him better putting him through the system and in solitary confinement it made him to end up have worse problems then when he entered. In the video it talks about a kid named named Zion. Zion at a young age struggled with ADHD and anxiety. Due to Zion’s anxiety and ADHD it makes sitting and focusing during class very challenging for him. He had a panic attack at school one day and ended up throwing a desk that hit his teacher. His teacher then told his mother that she could press charges on Zion who was only about seven years old at the time. She did not want to to take the time to help him and understand his illness. At the Indiana Maximum Security Prison they have over 2000 criminals and 40 teens are there being tried as adults. Teens in the prison are in facing anything from two years to 65 years. A boy who was about to burglarize someone house was tired for his friends death that got shot during the incident. He need not even really want to be there in the first place in the video he said he know he should just have went home. Now he is still in prison when he never actually completed the crime. A 16 year old got 10 years for robbery due to robbing a family friends' home and beating the older man with a wrench to rob him of his money. There was another teen who was being tried because he beat up someone who had hit his mother. He was young and saw his mom get hit and reacted off that. I do not think he should be looked up for trying to defend his mother. They could have put him through other programs such an anger management program. These way he does not have to get locked up for what he did and now he can learn ways to control his anger and not have to react straight from his emotions. Now with him belong in the system he could probably turn out worse then how he was before he got in the system. The video said that a lot of this when first brought in were under the influence of some kind of drug during the incident that cause them to get arrested. To know that a lot of these kids brains are still developing and during their offense that they were under the influence of some drug I would think that the system would have more understanding to try to help the kids with their problems to prevent them from repeating their action. Instead we treat them like they are adults when they are not and they end up coming out worse then how they were before they entered.
ReplyDeleteHoop007