Posted: August 1st, 2023

The Future of Juvenile Justice

The Future of Juvenile Justice
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The Future of Juvenile Justice
The juvenile court system an issue of interests in shaping the future of the children in relation to reforming juveniles involved in criminal acts. The juvenile court system needs to be modeled to ensure that it achieves its goals and objectives in reforming and integrating juvenile offenders into society. In this regard, the process and operations of the juvenile justice system are addressed and handled from stage to stage to ensure that it fulfills its purpose as well as assuring a bright future for the juvenile correctional aspects. In this case, there are various sociological and psychological theories that address the issue of juvenile to enhance the unlocking beneficial explanations of delinquency. Additionally, the application of various theories related to juvenile delinquency is a matter of importance that inclines the relevant parties to adopt the best practices and strategies in handling juvenile delinquency. Equally important, the application of theories evaluates things that can be done differently to ensure a bright future for the juvenile justice system and if the same system can be applied in the adult judicial system. Moreover, there is a concern if the current judicial system can be adopted in handling issues of non-delinquent youths. The aspects of theories applied in handling current and future juvenile issues are inclined to ensuring a bright future of the juvenile justice system.
Effective sociological and psychological theories on delinquency
Different sociological and psychological are applied in the juvenile justice system to ensure that juvenile offenders are swiftly reformed and integrated into society (Hawkins and Weis, 2017). The theories are inclined to ensure that juvenile offenders are made law-abiding members of society. The theories on delinquency give insights into the delinquency and functioning of the juvenile justices system in ensuring that the juveniles fully reforms. In this case, the psychological delinquency theories include the psychopathy, behaviorism, psychology, and psychiatry. On the other hand, the sociological delinquency theories include anomie, social disorganization, and labeling theories.
First, the most effective psychological delinquency theory is anomie theory. The term anomie is used to describe the absence of norms and social regulation in a society (Hawkins and Weis, 2017). Also, the term is used to describe the consequences of a faulty relationship between goals the legitimate means of meeting them. The cultural and social structures greatly contribute towards the juvenile delinquency. The cultural define goals that such as monetary success as well as the acceptable means to the achievement such as education. In society, the success goals are widely shared while the opportunities to attain then are not thus inclining the people to engage in delinquency behaviors. Additionally, societal classes are classified according to delinquency since people in the society have a different mean of achieving the societal goals due to the different ways of gaining the opportunities (Gendreau, Smith and French, 2006). In this case, some groups in society are considered to become more delinquent more than others. People occupying the lower or the underclass are considered to be more delinquent than others because of wide differences between goals and means of attaining success. Groups that do not access the opportunity to meet goals engage in illegal and illegitimate means of achieving the goals. In the case of juvenile delinquency, the adolescents or juveniles have limited access to opportunities of meeting their different goals and needs thus inclining them to engage in illegal means of attaining the goals. Therefore, based on the theory the government and other concerned parties need to close or reduce the gap existing between the goals and means of attaining them for the juveniles. For instance, the juveniles need to be empowered to access the opportunities to meet their different goals thus ensuring that they do not engage in delinquent behaviors. Equally important, the anomie theory is most effective in addressing juvenile delinquency.
Juvenile court system address based on Anomie Theory
The juvenile court uses the Anomie theory to identify the causes of delinquency (Brown, Esbensen and Geis, 2012).In this case, the theory identifies the underlying cause of juvenile delinquency and thus developing a solution towards closing the gap between means and goals. Upon identifying the underlying cause causes of delinquent behavior the juvenile justice system identifies the most appropriate programs and projects to enroll the juveniles in the course of serving their sentence. This approach ensures that at the end of the sentence the juveniles will have an opportunity that can reduce the gap between the means and the goals.
Consequently, there are other strategies and best practices that can be adopted to enhance and improve the future of the juvenile court system (Brown, Esbensen and Geis, 2012). In this case, the strategies adopted are different but inclined to improve the existing anomie theory explanations. The juvenile justice reforms need to be adopted by the lawmakers working together to develop new policies inclined towards attaining sound fiscal responsibility, better youth outcomes, and community safety. The best practices that need to be adopted include moving resources from incarceration to societal based activities and alternatives, addressing ethnic and racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, addressing to the mental health requirements of youths engaged in offenses, improve and develop reentry and aftercare programs for the juvenile offenders and reforming detention by actively engaging the youths in developmental programs.
Additionally, some of the reforms practiced in the juvenile justice system should be replicated in the adult justice system (Cox, Allen, and Hanser, 2017). In this case, the essence of the correctional facilities is to reform and rehabilitate offenders and thus effective reforms practiced in the juvenile justice system should be used in the adult justice system. For instance, the improvement of community-based alternatives, addressing the offender’s mental health needs, and handling racial and ethnic disparities in the course of administering justice.
Effectiveness of the juvenile court system handling non-delinquent youths
The juvenile court system can be used in handling the non-delinquent youth to ensure that they maintain proper behaviors (Katsiyannis et al., 2008). The non-delinquent youths are law-abiding and thus the juvenile justice system needs to ensure that the youths main their way of life in the interest of their society. In this case, the court system comes up with programs directed towards reaching out to the law-abiding youths in the society. First, the juvenile court system develops model education programs for families and children on information to adapting to the societal laws and being law-abiding citizens. In this case, the programs teach parents on the model ways of raising healthy children, to teach children on the impacts of weapons, sex, gangs, and drugs. The educational programs create awareness among families and the youths to ensure that youths do not engage in delinquent behaviors such as violence, inappropriate sex.
Moreover, the juvenile justice system creates recreational activities to reduce crime rates (Katsiyannis et al., 2008). In this case, the recreation activities such as drama, karate, art, music, dancing, sports and bowling keep the youths engaged thus reducing the crime rates. Additionally, the recreational activities are scheduled in the period between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. when the youths are likely to be engaged in delinquent behaviors. The recreational programs reinforce the relationship between the youths and the community thus reducing incidences of crime.
More so, the juvenile court system engages in community involvement thus reducing delinquencies among the youths and the society (Katsiyannis et al., 2008). In this regard, the juvenile system engages the community through the volunteers, church youth groups, boys scout and girls scout. The involvement ensures that the youths can interact in safe social environments such that they cannot be influenced by delinquent organizations.
On the other hand, then there is an issue on whether the juvenile courts should not continue to handle cases and issues of dependency, abuse, and neglect. In this case, cases of neglect, abuse and dependency are grave and need to be transferred to the adult judicial system. Additionally, cases of repeated crime need to be transferred to the adult court system to ensure that appropriate punishment is administered.
Conclusion
In the juvenile justice systems need to be effectively handled to ensure that the future of the justice system is inclined to enhance reforming and rehabilitating future offenders. The sociological or physiological theories are used in addressing delinquency among the youths. In this regard, the theories identify the source of the delinquency making it easy to reform and rehabilitate the youth’s offenders. The anomie theory is effective in handling delinquency behavior since it identifies the root cause of delinquency making it easy to develop effective programs and best practices to counter delinquency among the youths. Equally important, the juvenile justice system can be adopted in ensuring that non-delinquent youth can maintain their behaviors and the preferred code of conduct.

Reference

Brown, S. E., Esbensen, F. A., & Geis, G. (2012). Criminology: Explaining crime and its context. Routledge
Cox, S. M., Allen, J. M., & Hanser, R. D. (2017). Juvenile justice: A guide to theory, policy, and practice. Sage Publications.
Gendreau, P., Smith, P., & French, S. A. (2006). The theory of effective correctional intervention: Empirical status and future directions. Taking stock: The status of criminological theory, 15, 419-446.
Hawkins, J. D., & Weis, J. G. (2017). The social development model: An integrated approach to delinquency prevention. In Developmental and Life-course Criminological Theories (pp. 3-27). Routledge.
Katsiyannis, A., Ryan, J. B., Zhang, D., & Spann, A. (2008). Juvenile delinquency and recidivism: The impact of academic achievement. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 24(2), 177-196.

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