Adult Prisons

Is sending kids to adult prisons and trying them as adults the best solution for our crime problem or would rehabilitating juveniles be a better option? Most people agree that kids who commit violent crimes need to be punished. However, do they really learn anything from being punished as an adult? In today’s society, punishment and rehabilitation has always been a big problem within our views in the Juvenile Justice System. Rehabilitation beats punishment! Adolescents who are tried and convicted of a crime should be placed in a rehabilitative system rather than a punitive system in order to shift behavior as rehabilitative systems lower recidivism rates.
Juveniles convicted of a felony are typically sent to the adult system. Juveniles that
For instance, prison behavior have a big effect of the development of the juveniles because it includes many misconducts such as threats, fights, or assaulting a prison official or other inmates. (Shook 3). This shows bad conditions of the environment that it is poorly equipped which will delay the development of the youth’s behavior. It also proves that the juveniles are always in danger and they wouldn't know what to do since they’re not experienced in this type of environment. Since the adults are way experienced, they have a big advantage to abuse the kids. Another example, the adolescents development of the prison environment confines levels of intimidation or abuse, stressful conditions, and problematic relationships with the prison staff which decreases the youth’s maturity level than adults. (Shook 6). For this reason, the juveniles are nowhere to be safe because it’s not a good way to change the kids due to the poor conditions. In which, this will reflect on the offender's actions to repeat bad behavior and actions again. At this point it starts to get intense because there’s a letter from a 15-year old boy, named Paul Jensen, imprisoned in South Dakota State Penitentiary to his sentencing judge. He said, “Judge Zinter, I have an important question to ask you! Would you please move me out of here? Please don’t leave me here with all
Treatment programs are beneficial for altering behavior. They receive special treatments/programs to strengthen their ability to become a better person such as Narrative Therapy, and Restorative Justice. Narrative therapy within the rehabilitative system is a way to identify patients problems, in order to reduce clinically relevant psychological symptoms among the youth. (Ikonomopoulos, Smith, and Schmidt 3). It’s design to help juveniles with their problems and to rewrite their experiences through guidance. A 17-year old Hispanic boy named Isaac is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, cannabis abuse, and inhalant abuse. In which, he received mental health services that include skills training, counseling services, and psychotropic medication management. (Ikonomopoulos, Smith, and Schmidt 3). As a result, testings show it was very effective on reducing his symptoms because the evaluation of the PEM statistic measure is 1.00, Isaac scored below the baseline of 31 which shows improvement. (Ikonomopoulos, Smith, and Schmidt 3). Another effective alternative program is called Restorative Justice. Restorative Justice is a broad program that consists of different models to rebuild a sense of justice. It’s focus is to build relationships with the affected offenders, victims, and communities and healing the wounds through the process. This includes: victim offender mediation,