Date: June 20th, 2013
School: Kaplan
Main title: Challenges For The Juvenile Justice System
The American juvenile justice system has developed over the past century with numerous differences that distinguish it from the adult criminal justice process. The juvenile system has a tremendous influence on today’s troubled youth. It is one of the criminological problems that is growing everyday not only in our country but also worldwide. At risk, juveniles that are not rehabilitated by the juvenile system are more likely to commit crime as adults. According to our text (Cox & Allen), there are many issues that can cause a juveniles to increase their criminal behavior such as; biological, …show more content…
Child abuse as well as neglect has been implicated in the development of delinquent behavior. In three different studies, childhood abuse and neglect have been found to increase a child’s risk of negative outlook on life (McCord & Widom, 2001). Also, victims of childhood abuse and neglect are at higher risk than other children being arrested for a violent crime as a juvenile. There has been a steady increase in the incidence of child maltreatment and child abuse and neglect. Secondly, there has been steady increase in juvenile delinquency and violent crimes. According to the text “ Judging children as Children” by Michael A. Corriero, the relationship between maltreatment and delinquency seems logical that one would conclude a child who is a victim of maltreatment posses more aggressive and problematic behaviors (Corriero, 2006). According to our text (Cox & Allen), being exposed to violence may impair a child’s capacity for partnering and parenting later in life, which starts this continuous cycle of violence into the next …show more content…
For the future juvenile justice system there are several aspects to look at; racial disparity, mental health, prevention programs, and detention or reform programs (Cox & Allen). Mental health programs need to be made available to all youth and not just those who commit crimes. The system should assess juvenile mental status. Plenty of times the problems with the juvenile justice system is that juveniles go untreated for their problems or are just incarcerated and not able to get proper assessment for what is causing their issues. Prevention programs such as; D.A.R.E, Youth leadership programs, Mentoring programs…etc. are very important in decreasing juvenile crime. It’s best that juveniles are educated and learn the impacts of their actions. By placing juveniles in certain programs, from there we should be able to see what works best and what does not work. A positive community and family play a strong involvement into the future juvenile justice system. A child is raised up from a home and if the home is not right, they turn to the community. If the home and the community are not right, problems will occur for the future of not only our juveniles of today, but the ones for the future as