JUVENILE INCARCERATION

Juvenile Incarceration and Alternatives

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Abstract

This paper focuses on juvenile incarceration in detail. This paper discusses incarceration work for juvenile or not, its impact and consequences on juvenile. Additionally, evaluates alternatives to juvenile incarceration.

Juvenile Incarceration and Alternative Strategies

Introduction

There is no doubt that incarceration has speedily increased in United States over the last twenty years. Incarceration is essentially a crime college, but many researchers identified that juvenile incarceration does not work because it is proved to be dangerous, unnecessary, wasteful, ineffective, obsolete and inadequate. Juvenile incarceration resulted in less rehabilitation or cure than exposing youth to habits and beliefs of older inmates. It was evidence, since 1970 that incarceration impacted juvenile badly due to system violence, maltreatment, extreme use of restraints or isolation and abuse during imprisonment.

The facts showed that during 1984 to 1992, there was an increased trend observed in rates of arrest of juveniles who were under 18 years of about 1,176 to 1,306. Furthermore, there was the highest increase of imprisonment in 1984 to 1990 of 400,000 to 570,000 respectively (Taylor, 1996).

Discussion

There are a number of cases evident in various states of US regarding juvenile incarceration. For instance, in New York during December 2009, the task force of governor identified that there is convincing evidence that juvenile justice system of New York is not safe, as the juvenile corrections system is badly broken, and require reforms urgently.

Other studies demonstrate that juvenile incarceration is ineffective because it resulted as a hurdle for future education and employment of juveniles and destroyed youth future, as well as resulted in re-arrest of juvenile within two or three years from the release, according to research 70 to 80 percent of juveniles were re-arrested (Henggeler, Melton, & Smith, 1992).

Juvenile imprisonment posses a bad impact on the future life of juveniles, as they their school life is diminished, and hopes to be successful in the labor market is also lessened. It is also manifested that incarceration of juvenile lead to mental health disorders and learning disabilities. One study identify that incarceration during juvenile resulted in approximately five percent reduction in future employment keeping all other factors constant.

Mainly because of violence, maltreatment or abuse during incarceration damages the successful transition to adulthood of juvenile, and impacted the learning ability and physical and mental health of juvenile badly. The finding showed that three out of ten juvenile confined in incarceration on at least on incident tried to commit suicide. Seventy percent argued that the juvenile had personally witnesses someone brutally killed or injured, and 72 percent argued that something terrible happened to juvenile. Among this juvenile, 30 percent had been sexually or physically abused during incarceration, as well as 60 percent were suffered from the issues of anger management.

Other researchers find out incarceration of juvenile resulted in severe mental health problems such as anxiety, attention deficits, anger, feelings of suicide and hallucinations. This asserted that imprisonment of the juvenile is emerged as a hurdle in the development of young ...