Juvenile Justice #1

While I'm just getting started on my topic of Juvenile Justice, I have not yet to put two and two together. I'm fairly positive that I believe that juveniles should have their own court however, I think my opinion may change. I know one thing for sure. Something about the way they are treated in adult court is not right. It's hard to take grasp to it. We never really know when the child's mind is fully developed and if they really can mature and, once more, become fully functioning members of society. This is definitely something to consider when looking at the crimes that they commit. There has to be an area of black and white. There has to be an age limit. The mind works in ways that we do not quite understand. This is why I think that there should be an age that they have to grasp. If a teenager commits a more violent crime than an older teenager, they should be tried under the same court. It's hard to imagine to say that a criminal can be tried in a different court based on exactly what age they are. This is where this system can have a lot of flaws. The question remains "How can we put these kids back into society"? If we were to look at an environment that put kids in jail and the statistics that show how they end up turning out, we would see varied results. This is a big issue. Why aren't there more studies? The best solution I read was a system in Denmark. Rather than have a violent criminal in a correctional facility, they would be in more of a controlled home environment. Every negative action would have a negative consequence and the same would hold for positive actions. This would slowly integrate the criminal into how society works. Rewarding young people for positive actions seems to be a decent way of getting out of the criminal mindset. They can see that there is more to live for. Positive reinforcement is my stand on the issue so far. I don't have enough research to say if they should be eventually transferred into adult facilities. It seems as though it can go either way. However, I think that this system would only work for the nonviolent. In this issue, there are a lot of grey areas. These are the areas that need more research.
-Igor

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/