Juvenile Justice System - Essay Example

Introduction

Incarceration of young offenders is proven to be the ineffective method of reducing crimes and delinquency rates. Not all the youths who commit crimes are arrested after committing crime. Criminologists claimed that the best method to reduce the number of crimes is by age, but not all those in incarceration centers are likely to change afterwards. Criminologists argue that maturation changes the behavior of a person, as they grow old the less they are to do some crimes. They believe that as a person grows is likely to leave bad habits and mature up and catch up with productive behaviors rather than those delinquent habits. Incarceration of youths is likely to lead to more serious crimes this is because they are separated from the community and families and hence they meet new gangs. There is no enough proofs that by incarceration of youths will reduce or stop the delinquent behaviors since in those centers there are not enough measures to really correct the behaviors.

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Life After Incarceration

The youths undergo a different type of life after incarceration, this is because many of the detention centers do not promote emotional development. The situation under which children undergo make most of the fall into depression thereafter. It happens mostly after they are taken to detention facilities which later may lead to suicide or self-injury. The different type of treatment they receive and the environment affects the mental set up of a child ( Ford & Feierman, 2016). Most of them even commit suicide while still into those facilities.For example, when a child is arrested and taken to those centers they start wondering what they did wrong and kind of regrets, they may there have self- rejection feeling. They may in return pick objects and inflict themselves as a way of releasing stress. This is also applicable due to different lifestyle in the detention centers, no quality sleeping materials, the kind of food, children see this a an extreme punishment and some of them find reliable item to hang themselves.

Special Lessons

Another challenge experienced by the children after incarceration is that most of them find it hard to continue with school. After detention, children will be absent from classes which they find it hard to go back to school after serving their term. Children also with special needs after incarceration also do not go back to school and those who go back to school report drop outs rate after going back to school. In detention, children with special needs are offered special lessons in the centers but still becomes hard for them to really accept themselves back in to former classes. Such behaviors are possibly because of the situation experienced in those in centers which remains as trauma to most of them (Barnett & Morris, 2016).

Also the impact of behavior from fellow inmates which make some of them try out new behaviors and may form a gang as well which is a threat to public safety. The increased cases of drop outs in return will lead to unemployment cases, shorter life spans and poor health in such children. It is evident that these incarceration centers have different impacts to the children as there is also a percentage which will be corrected. After incarceration the children may seclude themselves from other youths and fear to take up employment challenges. And also the fear of the clearance certificate from police departments may indicate their crimes and hence fear applying the jobs as the chances of getting employed because of the reputation, are lower.

Personal Well Being

In market places, formerly incarcerated youths results to less success in the competitive business. Compared to normal people, youth from detention facilities work less hours because their interrupted education makes them less competitive and their experiences in the incarceration makes them less stable in their jobs (Brown, 2014, p.377). They tend to withdraw from people, seem not psyched up and do not put more efforts in their jobs compared to those who are not incarceration centers. Their experiences in detention centers seem to affect them mentally which affects their production levels. In communities where youths are incarcerated at higher rates this is a threat to the community especially African American who are victims. There is a threat to the personal well-being of the youths as they are less productive compared to youths of their ages who did not spend time in the incarceration centers.

Youths with the history of incarceration have general poor health status, this is because of many reasons such as poverty and minority statuses which in return with the detention facilities situations poses a greater risk to their health (Barnett & Morris, 2016, p 101). Individuals also with poor health status has high probability of incarceration. For example, a person with mental illness will probably commit a crimes which will get them to detention. Another example is a person who uses drugs is at a higher probability of committing crime which will get them to be tried. The environments to which a person is poses such as to communicable diseases which is transmitted, dust and stuffy affects people with breathing difficulties making their situations even worse. Some people die from the situations in detention centers and some may end up have long term issues with their health status.

Conclusion

After incarceration, a person is subjected to economic and social disadvantages. They mainly undergo post-traumatic stress after the trauma in the detention facilities this affects them as the whole outlook changes (Ford &Feierman, 2016). They also receive stigma from members of the community as well as some family members who may call them names according to crimes they committed. They may also be avoided by peers, for example a child from detention centers, the neighbors children do not play with him referring to him as a drug dealer in a case when a child was imprisoned for using drugs.