Juvenile Justice System Analysis

In the criminal justice system today, we aspire to bring justice to those who deserve it. As a society we feel that justice should be served to any victim, and any offender should be punished for his or her actions. When we look at the system, we have a system based for adults; and over time we have begun to develop a system strictly made for juveniles. Juveniles are classified as anyone under the age of 18. When we talk about the prosecution of juveniles, we think about “children who are maturing into adulthood” (Juvenile Law Center) and as a society we recognize “that children who commit crimes are different from adults: as a class, they are less blameworthy” (Juvenile Law Center). Although there are issues in both systems, we can fix our …show more content…
According to Conrad, in Law and Human Behavior, “Girls make up a growing percentage of the juvenile justice population. From 1985 to 2009, delinquent crimes among girls increased by 86%...” (Puzzanchera, Adams, & Hockenberry, 2012). As we look at the juvenile justice system, most girl offenders are not in for violent offenders, they are in for “violence exposure, mental health problems, family conflict, pregnancy, and school failure (Zahn, Hawkins, Chiancone, & Whiteworth, 2008). Also according to Law and Human Behavior, “For boys, however, rates of delinquency increased only slightly (by 17%) over that same time period” (Puzzanchera, Adams, & Hockenberry, 2012). Most would find these statistics shocking, but they are not. The rate in girl offenders is so much higher because we face more of a risk of crime against us, things like rape can affect someone’s life and can drive to drug …show more content…
The Court-involved, nonincarated (CINI) make up two-thirds of the juvenile justice population (Conrad, Puzzanchera, 2009). The majority if the CINI are more at risk for recidivism because they were caught, but they were also discluded. When teenagers are not dealt with properly, this puts the idea of “if I do this and get caught, they won’t do anthing about it” in the heads of these young teens. This attitude is what draws to recidivism. Conrad discusses that CINI juveniles are at an increased recidivism opportunity if they are substances users or have psychiatric issues. In a study that was researched by Conrad, there were studies about the recidivism rates in adult women and it has shown that women are more likely to reoffend if they have “sexual abuse in childhood, interpersonal relationships (e.g., association with negative males partners and limited sources of interpersonal support) and substance…” (Daly, 1992; Hubbard & Pratt, 2002; Owen & Bloom, 1995). When there are obvious patterns such as this one, there should be a little light that clicks on. If we are going to arrest these people or put them through the system, we also need to be helping them to stop them from reoffending. Special programs, therapy, even education are all things that could help to prevent this. Another flaw in our justice system is that we are all about charging, and not about

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