Exploratory Paper on Young Offenders

Exploratory Paper
The topic of young offenders caught my eye as I was scanning for an idea to write my paper. Criminals of any fashion are of interest to me, and youth in the justice system is a subject that I have dealt with throughout my high school career. A friend of mine has been in and out of correctional facilities, and it was not till later that they discovered he had a mental disorder that he was not being treated for. This is upsetting because if he had been scanned for an issue such as this, he could have been helped rather than incarcerated. Aiding this friend the first time that he was arrested might have helped him avoid reliving these situations repeatedly. This goes not just for him, but many juvenile offenders who suffer from a mental illness who go unnoticed and untreated through the system. I understand that it is a difficult task to categorize people into certain mental disorder categories and such, do to the overlap in many disorders and the issue of there being no universally correct definition of mental disorder. There are trusted measures however and some sort of scanning system would be better than none. The two articles we were to read for our critical analysis under the topic of young offenders were both touching on subjects I was somewhat familiar with but also eye opening on other issues. In most justice systems not every part of how they operate is perfect, and as time goes on they have been improving, but at this day and age how is it not the best that it can be? This is the direction I believe I want to take my paper in. The two main reasons that the youth justice system should be concerned with identifying mental health issues is that mental illness can be linked to antisocial behaviour and young delinquents deserve to receive treatment, this idea is presented in Penner et al.‘s article that we read for our assignment. Since this article stood out and was channeling the thoughts that I had in mind, I looked through the references