Child Is A Child

When looking back on the “Child is a Criminal or Criminal is a Child” assignment, I believe that my views have not changed from the views I possessed early on in this course. The views I had were actually solidified throughout this course in learning more about the juvenile justice system. I favored the “criminal is a child” model of approaching juvenile crime in the original essay and the key point noted was that juveniles are a product of their environment and should not be punished on a standardized scale when crimes are committed. Because I favor the “criminal is a child” model of approaching juvenile crime, I believe that every juvenile’s case should be reviewed thoroughly; including the child’s background, what factors from the past may have caused them to commit this crime, and the severity of the case itself. Only by analyzing these factors can a “fair” punishment be administered. Siegel and Welsh (2014) note that nearly 25% of United States’ population of juveniles are considered “at-risk youth.” At-risk youths are extremely vulnerable to the negative impacts of poverty, health and mortality problems, familial problems, substandard living conditions, as well as inadequate education. While even just one of these factors can impact juvenile delinquency, many youths face more than one of these issues. At risk kids are involved in more than one million illegal acts
For instance, this model would level the field out so that anyone who committed a certain crime was given the same punishment. This might encourage some to abstain from committing crimes, if the punishment was great enough. This model would make the system “fair” from a legal standpoint, meaning that no matter what race, gender, background, etc. an offender belonged to, a similar punishment was given to all. This model is not the most effective in my opinion, based upon my