Melendez 1
Miguel Melendez
Professor Howland
English 102
18 April 2015
Problems of Juvenile Detention and What Can Be Done to Solve Them
Every day, many parents are forced to deal with the bad behavior from their children. Some parents choose to deal with their children while others decide to have someone else take care of them, such as a relative or even foster care. In foster care, children are left to be taken care of by foster parents, which are adults that decide to take responsibility of taking care of a child. There are even some cases when a child breaks a law and they are completely separated from the people that normally take care of them. Then, they are thrown into juvenile detention. Juvie is a harsh environment that misbehaving children would have to deal with. There are bugs found in food and there are children dying from being pushed over the limit from forced exercising. Those kinds of conditions are what traumatizes children. There are more effective ways to deal with misbehaving children than juvie because juvie negatively changes the mindset of a minor.
There are ways to deal with misbehaving, but juvie is not the best way to deal with them because the harsh conditions in juvie are not ideal in teaching children to have more discipline. Zack Beauchamp, the author of the article, “STUDY: Throwing Kids In Jail Makes Crime Worse, Ruins Lives”, writes about the negative effects of juvie. Then, he writes,
More surprisingly, given that prison is supposed to deter crime, going to jail also made kids more likely to offend again. Young offenders who were incarcerated were a staggering 67 percent more likely to be in jail (again) by the age of 25 than similar young offenders who didn’t go to prison. (Beauchamp 2013)
From this quote, it is obviously that prisons/juvie is doing the opposite of what it is supposed to do. They punish people for committing crimes, but they continue to punish people for the rest of their lives. The same thing happens to children. Beauchamp also brings up,
Unsurprisingly, going to jail as a kid has “strong negative effects” on a child’s chance to get an education: youth that went to prison were 39 percentage points less likely to finish high school than other kids who from the same neighborhood. Even young offenders who weren’t imprisoned were better off; they were thirteen points more likely to finish high school than their incarcerated peers. (2013)
Therefore, juvie actually negatively affects a child’s performance at school, which leads to the idea that it is actually harming children. If it is impacting education, which is essential to keeping people out of prison due to increased opportunities, then there needs to be an alternative to juvie.
There are possible alternatives to juvie, but they have to focus on benefitting children instead of harming them in order to be a good alternative. The University of Michigan created a webpage highlighting benefits of community service. It contains mostly facts of the benefits of community service for high school children, but they are cited. One of the facts is:
Middle and high school students who engaged in quality service-learning programs showed increases in measures of personal and social responsibility, communication and sense of educational competence. (Weiler, et. al., 1998)
The fact suggests that community service improves school performance, so it can be a good alternative because juvie negatively affects school performance. In the end, there should be more effort put into making sure children complete high school because they would be educated and less likely to run into additional trouble later in their lives. In the article, “Lessons From European Prisons”, it compares and contrasts the American and European prison system. Then it says
Germany and the Netherlands rely heavily on alternatives to prison – including fines, probation, and other community-service programs – and they impose much shorter sentences when there is no alternative to incarceration. While the average state prison term in the United States is about three years, more than 90 percent of Dutch sentences and 75 percent of German sentences are 12 months or less. (2013)
Long jail sentences are not going to help children learn. They can make them fall behind, which is what stops them from graduating and encourages the never ending cycle of going to prison.
Juvie strongly affects the mindset of children because they are forced to deal with harsh conditions. Brad Palmer, the author of the article, “Throwing children in prison turns out to be a really bad idea”, writes about the negative effects juvie has on children and he explains why. He mentions:
But also, as other researchers have found, many people who end up behind bars end up making friends with other offenders and building "criminal capital." Prison turns out to be excellent training for a life of crime. (Palmer 2013)
Therefore, the mindset of the child would dramatically change because they would be around people that would be in the same situation. The child would be more likely to become influenced from the inmates because the inmates would be viewed as relatable. As a result, children need to spend more time around people that will help them become successful adults, not life-long criminals.
Works Cited Page:
"Benefits of Student Participation in Community Service: Benefits of Participation in Service."Benefits of Student Participation in Community Service: Benefits of Participation in Service. University of Michigan. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <
"Lessons From European Prisons."The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 Nov. 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2015. <
Beauchamp, Zack. "STUDY: Throwing Kids In Jail Makes Crime Worse, Ruins Lives."ThinkProgress RSS. ThinkProgress, 17 June 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <
Plumer, Brad. "Throwing Children in Prison Turns out to Be a Really Bad Idea."Washington Post. The Washington Post, 15 June 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <