Juvenile Justice Essay example

Submitted By kingstund101
Words: 1073
Pages: 5

Juvenile Justice

Everyone is ultimately responsible for their actions, and when you break a law in the United States you are put through our criminal justice system. For children under the age of 18, they are considered minors and are not held to the same standard of regular adults; there simply not as responsible for their actions. So instead of ringing them through the rough and brutal normal criminal justice system. We have made a softer and gentler system (processes) for minors called Juvenile Justice. Today we will be discussing the process and the actual pro and cons of the system.

The first juvenile court was established in 1899 in Chicago before that anyone who is under the age of 17 was placed in the same system as an adult. Research done by Psychologist established that children don't need to be in jail to learn the lesson, they are just kids that lost track and need to be talk to to get back on the right path.The Juvenile System have the same goal which is to change these kids bad behavior to positive.Many juvenile system gave the kids a chance to earn high school diploma G.E.D or even work in the facility as teacher guardian or kitchen staff. The system created other ways too punished juveniles and get them on the on the right track instead of throwing them into jail to have their lives ruined and marked by the system.

Juvenile cases first encounter a juvenile has with the juvenile system is usually his or her first arrest. Another way is if a referral include parents, school, probation officers or delinquency victim. The decision is usually made by the juvenile past history on whether they should be detained, release, or sent to another welfare program. Research shows approximately 50% of juvenile case are heard informally and some dismissed. Statistics shows that majority of the time when a adolescent gets in trouble it's, under the influence or hanging with the wrong people at the wrong place and wrong time. Family seems to be the reason why a lot of juveniles get misled compared to adults. Status offense are brought up in court and handled depending on what the status is the juvenile can get off the hook or not. When a juvenile goes thru court and sees a judge and had a previous record the judge most likely as punishment put him or her on probation.While on probation the judge might give the individual a curfew and have a probation officer stop by their house to make sure they not getting into more trouble.School grades need to be up to par and they are entitled to go up too the school and check up with teachers.

Juvenile Justice system has a very great concept of catching potential criminal while they're young and steering their way to a good prosperous life. But with all the good ideas and methods put into place, it has some flaws that need to be fixed. Some people think that crimes committed by the youth should be punished to the full extent of the law and should go straight to an adult court and prison. Regardless there is a massive injustice that need to be more wide pressed.

A scam involved the Juvenile Prison were operating a kickback scheme where they would sentence kids to Juvenile prison for petty crimes. A kick back The prisons were privately owned and got paid of the contracts per person in the jail. The Warden of the prison would then give money back to the judges for sending so many kids their way. The Judges thought that since they were sentencing just helpless kids, the system would just overlook them. Now you’re probably wondering how they shutdown the county prison and made them into private prisons because without having the jails privately owned the scam goes nowhere, the government would instantly find out. The judges simply refused to sentence any kid to the prison for a long time. And running the prisons cost the