Running Header: PROPOSAL ON JUVENILE OFFENDERS PUNITIVE MEASURES
Proposal:
Should Juvenile Offenders be place in Adult Prisons?
Orlando Casariego
Strayer University
Dr. Duke
11/24/2016
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JUVENILE OFFENDERS SHOULD NOT BE TRANSFERRED TO ADULT PRISONS
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1.0 Introduction
Most states in the USA and countries worldwide empower the judicial systems to decide
on where juveniles should be corrected from, after they are found guilty. They evaluate the scale
of the crime on violence and seriousness while making such a decision. As a result, some
juveniles are placed in adult prisons. Human rights organizations and activists have been strong
objecting to the practice, considering it inhuman (Brezina, & Agnew, 2015).The reasons include
the fact the young offenders are prepared for bigger crimes after their jail terms and go through
mental, physical, social and biological torture (Brezina, & Agnew, 2015). This paper evaluates
the current position of the problem and some solutions to the grave issue, torn between juvenile
rights and serious criminal activities punishment.
2.1 Problem Statement
2.1 Jurisdictional powers to Juvenile correctional centers
In some states, such as the New Mexico state, there are statutes that allow the judges to
request for juvenile offenders to adult correctional systems. However, there are conditions. The
juvenile must have committed murder of first degree, and must be above the age of 15 years. In
addition, the child must have committed two other felonies and have gone through the juvenile
correctional systems at least twice. The prerequisites are not applicable to juveniles at the ages of
16 and 17, who are transferred to the adult correctional facilities regardless of whether they have
had committed other felonies in the past. In the New Mexico state, the juvenile exclusion blend
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is practicable, where the juvenile offender’s correctional measures are to be done in an adult or a
juvenile correctional center is decided on by the juvenile judge. States with similar inclusion
systems include Connecticut, Minnesota, and Montana (Lehmann, Chiricos, & Bales, 2016).
In the states of Arkansas and Missouri, Criminal inclusive blend is allowed. The criminal
court decides whether a juvenile offender is to be sent to the adults’ correctional systems. It is
allowed when the violation is at a point of invocation. It does not necessarily have to be murder.
In Massachusetts, Colorado, South Carolina, Texas and Rhodes Island juvenile contiguous is
allowed. The juvenile testing system is given the responsibility for the adjudication. The Juvenile
court has the power to the original jurisdiction and the decision. Contiguous power allows the
judge to decide on lengthy terms that will surpass the juvenile age for the offender. Such cases
present the challenge of whether the offender, after the juvenile age will be transferred to
continue serving term from an adult correctional center or continue at the juvenile correctional
facility (Lehmann, Chiricos, & Bales, 2016).
2.2 The main issue
2.2.1. Testing children as adults on the scale of crime committed
There is a clear distinction between serious violent juvenile offenses, which include,
aggravated assault , rape, homicide robbery, and kidnapping, and serious non-violent offenses
which include motor vehicle theft, burglary, theft of more than $100, drug trafficking, , arson and
extortion. But this is the distinction between the crimes, not the distinction between the punitive
measures. In most cases the serious violent crimes are the crimes that are tried in juvenile courts,
but the corrective measures are decided on by the court. The matter of whether the offender is to
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be corrected as an adult or as a child is the main issue. It is allowed by the states that provide the
legal acceptance to criminal inclusion blend (Brezina, & Agnew, 2015).
2.2.2. Are juvenile transfers right?
Some juvenile offenders carry out crimes, violent and serious for that matter. That is not
to be questioned. In most cases, the crimes are carried out at their teenage years. If the
correctional term surpasses the time between their juvenile stages and their adulthood stage, they
are transferred from juvenile correctional centers to adult correctional facilities. It occurs in some
states that allow juvenile exclusion blend and juvenile inclusion blend (Bishop, 2000). The
question is whether a juvenile offense should transfer to adult correction because of age
advancement, or still remain in juvenile detention till the end of the correctional term?
2.2.3. Child’s well being
Juvenile offenders have some extra protection in juvenile correctional centers. They lack
such protection in adult correctional centers. Juveniles who are placed in adult correctional
systems experience traumatizing events that affect their social wellbeing and their biological
lives. Young girls are raped, and teenage boys are sodomized. The rapes may be recurrent to
points where this particular juvenile offender in an adult prison has their reproductive body parts
destroyed. They are traumatized by the series of events, and they become slaves of prisoners and
prison officers. They experience discomfort, torture, emotional and psychological torture
(Bishop, 2000).
2.2.4. Increase of future offending
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The legal consequence to the locality and the country at large is enormous. First, the
Juvenile offender always has shorter jail terms than adults. If placed in an adult prison, their
social lives are opened up to even more criminal activities. The young offenders interact with
adult offenders of even higher level crimes such as drug dealing, cybercrime, rape, first degree
murder and others. The pain of being placed in a higher level correctional center gives an insight
to the offenders to revenge after their short terms are over. They leave prisons as criminal
masterminds, with heaps of ideas, just as juvenile correctional centers produce transformed
individuals (Brezina, & Agnew, 2015).
2.2.5. Is it correction or punishment?
It is clearly punishment to place a teenager in an adult prison. In the Juvenile centers, a
form of rehabilitation is designed to help eliminate the personal traits that place the young
individuals in the position. In the same centers, education is offered. There is a higher level of
protection, compared to what a juvenile will go through in an adult correctional facilities. In
adult centers, there is little protection, there is sodomy or rape and other forms of slavery, there is
no lower level education, and there is well designed support for change (Bishop, 2000). A child
serving a term in an adult prison is always serving a punishment, while one in a juvenile prison
serves a correctional term. What happened to human rights and intuition?
3.0 Solution and Advantages to the problem
3.1 Defining a juvenile offender
A juvenile offender is a person who has committed a crime under the age of adulthood.
The age is mostly 18 years. A juvenile correctional center is a facility that is designed with the
interest of assisting people who commit crimes below the age of adulthood. A fully grown
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person, or fully developed, is termed as an adult. An adult offender is a person, who is fully
developed, and above the age of 18, in most countries and states in the USA, who has committed
a crime. The first solution to the problem understands the real meaning of the term juvenile
offenses, juvenile correctional centers and an adult. This way, the rights of children can be
safeguarded (Bishop, 2000).
3.2 Avoiding transfers due to age transition from juvenile to adulthood
After a juvenile offender turns 18, it is seen in most states, that the court had the legal
right to decide whether the juvenile offender should remain in the juvenile correctional center or
be transferred to adult correctional facility. Understanding that the felony or serious crime, or
serious violent crime was done at a juvenile age, the offender should be corrected in a juvenile
correctional center to the end of the term. The crime was committed in childhood, and
transferring the offender to an adult correctional system does not make the felony commit an
adult felony or adult serious violent crime for that matter (Bishop, 2000).
3.3 Original jurisdiction for juveniles should only have power to place them in juvenile
correctional centers
The argument is that some of the juvenile offenders have a tendency to commit crimes
and felonies, and when they get to be serious and violent, they can cause harm to themselves or
others. The correctional centers should be improved to reduce the interaction between these
individuals and other individuals in the juvenile correctional centers. Special cells and sleeping
areas for violent juvenile offenders should be designed. Only few changes should be done, to
keep the juvenile offender who has committed serious violent crimes in more alienated cells, but
not taking them to adult correctional facilities (Maguire, Morgan, & Reiner, 2012).
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3.1.0 Advantages of the solutions
3.1.1 Biological advantages
The juvenile offenders who are place in juvenile correctional centers are provided with
education and biopsychosocial therapies to evaluate the root of the problem. It is more of a
treatment plan which is done to enhance changes mildly. Some of the juvenile offenders have
been found to have committed violent crimes due to shear hormonal influence, and not free
personal will. After year’s elapses, hormonal control becomes self-adjusting, and so they can
easily change. However, in adult correctional facilities, they are more exposed and their
hormonal changes cannot be controlled due to fury, spirit of revenge and other influences of
pressure. Their growth process is retarded dues to slavery and torture, physical, social and
psychological in the adult prisons (Maguire, Morgan, & Reiner, 2012).
3.1.2. Social Advantages
Juvenile correctional centers are more correctional than punitive. They aim at restoring
the youthful offenders back to the normal sociality. The offenders are educated and treated. They
can easily recognize their mistakes and make corrections. However, if the youthful offenders are
placed in adult prisons, as described earlier, they indulge into more crime and gain more
competence. Their terms come to an end sooner or later, and they become more enlightened
criminals and a social structure disruption. They do crime to go back to prison where they feel
they belong, to try earning a living with a less marketable education or to fulfill their spirit of
revenge (Bolin, 2014).
4.0 Conclusion
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It is clear that juvenile transfers do more harm than good. The serious violent crimes
committed by the juvenile offender do not make the juvenile offender an adult (Brezina, &
Agnew, 2015).Transferring a juvenile offender to an adult court after attaining an age of 18 does
not make the crime an adult level crime. The right practice recommended by this paper includes
treating and punishing juvenile offenders as juvenile offenders, not adult criminals (Bishop,
2000). The juvenile prisons can be designed in a way that they allow alienation of individuals
who are harmful to selves and others. The advantages include behavioral improvements and
human rights reservation (Bolin, 2014). It should be correction; it is not punishment.
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5.0 References
Lehmann, P. S., Chiricos, T., & Bales, W. D. (2016). Sentencing Transferred Juveniles in
the Adult Criminal Court The Direct and Interactive Effects of Race and Ethnicity. Youth
Violence and Juvenile Justice, 1541204016678048.
Brezina, T., & Agnew, R. (2015). Juvenile Delinquency. The Handbook of Deviance,
313.
Bishop, D. M. (2000). Juvenile offenders in the adult criminal justice system. Crime and
justice, 81-167.
Muncie, J. (2014). Youth and crime. Sage.
Maguire, M., Morgan, R., & Reiner, R. (2012). The Oxford handbook of criminology.
Oxford University Press.
Baglivio, M. T., Jackowski, K., Greenwald, M. A., & Howell, J. C. (2014). Serious, violent,
and chronic juvenile offenders. Criminology & Public Policy, 13(1), 83-116.
Bolin, R. M. (2014). Adultification in juvenile corrections: A comparison of juvenile and
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adult officers.
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