Why Do We Need A Juvenile Drug Court?

Messing Around with Addiction: The Struggle of America’s Youth Rehabilitation is the act of restoring something to its original state. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone needs a chance to change from the mistakes they’ve made. Legally if you are over the age of eighteen you are recognized as an adult but scientifically our brains are not fully developed until age twenty-five. So how can a judge hold a fifteen year old fully accountable for his or her actions when he or she can’t even fully understand the consequences? The United States government has set up two different types of court systems: juvenile and adult court to separate children from adults; within both of these court systems you have a drug court. Juvenile drug courts are dockets
After graduation of the program the citizens can become functioning members of the society. How can this be done effectively for juveniles? The first drug courts were created for adults in 1989 and the procedures used within the adult drug court system were used to create the juvenile drug court system (Franco, 4). However through research and time the juvenile drug court system has made substantial changes to benefit the juvenile. For example “the psychological attributes and developmental needs of adolescent offenders who enter the drug court system are substantially different from adult offenders and must be taken into account when planning any behavior change intervention” (Stein, 2). This means that juveniles do not have the full brain capacity to fully understand the process and the consequences that come with their actions, so if they were to just lock up a thirteen year old boy for the possession of cannabis he would never fully learn his lesson, but if you were to provide him with the resources to learn about the dangers of cannabis and the legal punishments that come with possessing the drug, he would learn from his mistakes. Drug courts represent a coordinated strategy between the judiciary, prosecution, defense bar, probation, law enforcement, treatment, mental health, social services, and child protection services to
“It is now generally accepted that cannabis may produce an acute toxic encephalopathy in adolescents and young adults, marked by disorientation in time and space, shortened attention span, impaired short-term memory, lowered psychomotor performance to name a few” (Helliker 53). The United States has created many rehabilitation programs to directly help juveniles that are arrested for possession, consumption, or anything thing that is related to drug usage. “The programs created for this cause use a combination of resources: incorporation of drug testing, creating a non-adversarial relationship between the defendant and the court (so the defendants needs can be meet without a legal cloud) as well as providing access to a continuum of treatment and rehabilitation service” (Franco 10). The most effective types of rehabilitation programs to combat cannabis abuse are programs that focus on individual counseling programs. This is because every one is different and even the slightest environmental aspects can change the type of treatment needed and the use of behavioral programs to shape the individuals behaviors into positive behaviors.