Challenges in the Juvenile Justice System

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Background
Literature Review
Methodology
Solutions
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Sometimes crimes are performed by young people below the age of attainment of adulthood. But these offenders are not suitable for going through the justice system meant for adult people, i.e. the courts and the prisons meant for adult people. Therefore, the juvenile justice system was established which was aimed at diverting the children from the trauma of going through the adult court and the influences of adult prisons. It was also aimed at the rehabilitation of the children charged with delinquency or adult crimes. However, the juvenile justice system has certain drawbacks or faces certain challenges which hinder the actual purpose of such a system (Boots 2010). This research is aimed at developing insight into the challenges that exist in the juvenile justice system.

The hypothesis – the juvenile justice system cannot provide justice to juvenile offenders if the challenges are not taken care of.

Background

The background for this research was made keeping in mind the fact that the juvenile justice system needs a new configuration for proper functioning. There are several instances when juvenile offenders committing adult offenses are not tried in the juvenile system. In Massachusetts offenders of the ages between fourteen and seventeen who are accused of murder or gun violence are charged as an adult youth offender instead of a juvenile.

Though meant for juveniles, the prisons have become no better than adult prisons. Instances of violence are there involving the inmates with each other and the guards and the inmates. Inmates are subjected to extreme mistreatment by the prison guards. This includes both physical abuse and restraint and sexual abuse. Sometimes death is also reported (Boots 2010).

This paper has reviewed various literature to get a clear picture of the situation and then a sampling of five previous types of research has been carried out. The reviewed sampled literature is described in the next section.

Literature Review

This paper has reviewed the problems or issues coming in front of five peer-reviewed literature along with their strength or weaknesses.

The first sample, by Odgers, (2007) deals in the content about the various aspects regarding the violence in the juvenile justice system. This sample is a report of a panel side event organized by the Human Rights Council, OHCHR, UNICEF, DCI, Penal Reform International (PRI) and Save the Children UK and Terre des Hommes Foundation. This sample was chosen because of the solid information and effective suggested solutions. Violence and abuse, both physical and mental are the first things a minor offender encounters upon arrest, during pre-trial detention, or because of belonging to vulnerable groups like street children, children of racial or religious minorities, and children with disabilities. Violence results in the deprivation of liberty and trauma. The sample covers the issues of violence faced by child witnesses of crimes as well.

As a solution to the issue, the paper has proposed various solutions regarding the violence issue which if implemented can bring real differences. These include the treatment of the child offender’s liberty with dignity and humanity, designing interview rooms suitable for children, active parts played by the government and the media on the issue. It opposed the actions like protective custody, sentences in the shorter format of adult sentences, or liberty deprivation which goes against the best interest of the child (Odgers 2007).

The second piece of literature is by Knight (2009). This sample was chosen for the focus is placed on the issue the juvenile justice system faces regarding the children offenders having disabilities. The research had expressed concern over the fact that more and more underage youth with some sort of disabilities are getting involved in the juvenile justice system. It is a hard fact the 9% of the school children have some disabilities in the US whereas the figure is 32% when it comes to involvement in the juvenile justice system. The youth with disabilities should not be treated with the same hard sentences as the able children as they special personalized treatment due to their special needs. The paper talked of two approaches as solutions: one restorative justice and wrap-around justice. The former is a community-based approach that aims at the rehabilitation of the youth in the community instead of incarceration. The latter is a family-based approach to provide individualized preventive justice to the youth for reducing delinquency (Knight 2009).

Though the paper had highlighted a major concern in the juvenile justice system it approached in a generalized way rather than to be specific on the problem issue.

One of the major issues is the increasing presence of youth offenders with some mental health issues in the juvenile justice system. White’s (2009) article is focused on the probable solutions of dealing with offenders of delinquency due to pathological reasons of California. It is a hard task to balance the job of ensuring public safety from the activities of juvenile offenders when there is a special need for their rehabilitation when they have issues related to mental health. The paper stresses the role of family and community to prevent such children from doing wrong along with setting a standard definition of mental health. The other suggestions mentioned were implementing validated gender-responsive mental health screening and assessment tools, outcome-based treatment procedures, and holding of public–private collaborative programs (White 2009).

The needs of girls arrested on the charges of delinquency are different than boys. This article by Bradshaw (2006) points the fact that girls mainly come to the system when they are already victims of violence, physical, mental and sexual abuses. Mainly for runaway cases and self-medication, the number of female offenders is increasing. The girls face harsh physical treatment in the prison even in the case of teen pregnancy and sexual assault is also very common. The paper suggested that at least one member of the State Advisory Board have gender-specific services expertise, direct funding to gender-specific prevention and treatment programs along eliminate the Valid Court Order exception for status offenders (Bradshaw 2006).

The fifth and last literature is by Schwalbe, Fraser, and Day (2006). The children in the juvenile justice system face various categories of risk. This sample deals with the predictive validity of risk factors faced in the “juvenile justice system with a Revised North Carolina Assessment of Risk (NCAR-R), an instrument for risk assessment” (Schwalbe, Fraser and Day 2006). The result shows that the predictive validity is higher than NCAR which shows “Non-Latino White youths (AUC=.737) and males (AUC=.709) had higher AUC scores than African American youths (AUC=.676) and females (AUC=.650)” (Schwalbe, Fraser and Day 2006). The instrument no doubt would become useful in the juvenile justice system.

Methodology

The research aimed at finding out the various challenges faced by the juvenile justice system. So from the available literature sampling was done to find out five samples that focus on five different issues. Care was taken to avoid the repetition of any issue. The research paper has taken a descriptive nonexperimental research design. The design is descriptive and nonexperimental because in a topic that discussed certain things related to tourism there is no scope for experimenting. The qualitative research method is mainly used in social science and some other disciplines. This research method is generally associated with nonexperimental research as it aims for a detailed understanding of the problem statement in the place of studying the behavior of one problem group against a control one. Qualitative research yields open-ended data which is generally not numerical. Hence the method appropriate for conducting this research was qualitative. There was a definite need of understanding the problem and relate the three angles such that they take the proper shape. All the three points were equally deep and therefore open-ended data were appropriate in the method of understanding (Creswell 2009).

Solutions

After reviewing the current situations this paper suggests the following steps:

Spreading the cover of juvenile justice to include crimes like violent murder or gun offenses.
Separate treatment for girls, youth with disabilities, and special mental needs so that the chances of assaults and mental harassment are minimized.
Rehabilitation programs should be widened and strengthened by public and private collaborations to keep children as far as possible from prisons.
Media. Governments, policymakers, and general people should consider these issues seriously and launch awareness programs (Boots 2010).

Conclusion

The research had collected separate issues faced by the juvenile justice system to bring a collective picture of the system. It therefore would help portray the situation as a whole rather than pieces. There are limitations as more issues are there which could not be covered, but the main challenges have been dealt with.

References

Boots, D. (2010). Does controlling for comorbidity matter? DSM-oriented scales and violent offending in youth. Aggressive Behavior, 36, 141-157.
Bradshaw, W. (2006). The effect of victim offender mediation on juvenile offender on Gender difference: A meta-analysis. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 24, 87-98.
Creswell, J.W. (2009). Research design. Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. Second edition. New York: Sage Publications.
Knight, R. (2009).Persistence risk indicators for juveniles who are disable. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 27, 878-909.
Odgers, C. (2007). A latent variable modeling approach to identifying subtypes of serious and violent juvenile offenders. Aggressive Behavior, 33, 339-352.
Schwalbe, C., Fraser, W., & Day, S. (2006). Challenges in Juvenile Justice Risk Assessment: the Predictive Validity of the Revised North Carolina Assessment of Risk (NCAR-R).
White, S. (2009). Differential correlates to self-report and parent-report of callous-unemotional traits in a sample of juvenile offenders with health issues in the juvenile justice system. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 27, 910-928.

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