It's no secret that the American Criminal justice system is flawed especially when it comes to dealing with juveniles if it wasn't we wouldn't have so many kids being harshly punished. According to the Children's Defense Fund, more than 1 million children were arrested in the year 2014 and an estimated 856,000 were arrested in 2016. There is a constant debate on whether juveniles should be sentenced to a punishment that fits the crime that they have committed. Admittedly just like any other human beings juveniles are capable of committing horrendous crimes but the main difference is that compared to adults they are not able to fully understand the actions that they do and the implications those actions have. The fact that youth are not able to understand the impact of their actions was also recognized by Supreme Court  Justice Kagan in the Supreme Court case Miller V. Alabama where Miller, a juvenile delinquent who was fighting the charge of life in prison without parole won his case and got a lesser sentence. As stated by Justice Kagan “Adolescence is marked by immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences”. Adults should be able to understand how much the mistakes made as minors are an unfair representation of character especially at such a young age when youth are barely forming character. However, in the case of juvenile delinquents because they have done something wrong and have committed a crime we as a society are able to throw away the fact that they are children away based on a wrongdoing and condemn them. Juvenile delinquents are often grouped up into one singular category and all actions and crimes are treated with the same amount of severity without looking at the deeper picture.

Juvenile delinquents are unable to fully understand the extent of their actions and decisions due to their mental development and their susceptibility to external pressures influencing the way they act and think and should not be punished to harsh sentences because they are unable to control and understand their environments, unlike adults. If a child is told to do something by a group of people or even shown behavior by a figure in their life, most likely they will copy that behavior or action because they have not been able to truly question the actions of those in their lives and make their own decisions. You wouldn't blame a child for not knowing something...yet our society blames juveniles for exactly that, not knowing right from wrong. Many juveniles don’t have the influences that would expose them to what most feel is a good moral example and so they live their lives with the limited amount of knowledge that they were exposed to and use it in the everyday situations that they are faced with. According to the University of Nebraska’s psychology department, a New York police lieutenant weighs in on his involvement with juvenile delinquents on the street of New York states “No governmental programs or police intervention can substitute for loving parental supervision. Children need that to become mature, healthy adults. If you’re a mother or father, it should be you there watching your teenagers, not me frisking them for weapons”. However, most juveniles do not have a steady example to guide them in their lives. Most juveniles come from broken families or no families or an environment that is dysfunctional in some way. This is something our society fails to see and grasp, that juveniles do not have the knowledge to make moral decisions because they have never been around those who are capable of making those moral decisions and have never been able to learn by example from the environments around them. The National Institute of Justice makes the statement that childhood abuse is a key factor in the probability that a child will become an offender in the future by promoting antisocial and dysfunctional behavior in the home at an early age. The dysfunctional examples that juveniles do get are the ones that they end up mimicking and trying to emulate. With a lack of good moral examples especially in their youth, it is unreasonable to ask that a juvenile act in a positive moral sense when that is something that they have yet to be exposed to. Rehabilitation is also something that is becoming more scarce in the courtroom for delinquents which essentially robs convicted and or incarcerated youth of a chance to correct past wrongs and improve. The University of Nebraska claims “The current juvenile justice system appears to be conflicted between its original goal of rehabilitation and its current emphasis on retribution “. The juvenile justice system has lost its path in the effort or reintegrating juveniles as productive members of society and have instead only relied on harsh punishment. The entire purpose of rehabilitation is to better a person and send them out into the world to become well rounded and productive members of society. The fact that the American court is ignoring the path of self-improvement is beyond worrying especially when it comes to children. In the eyes of the government, a juvenile delinquent committing a crime is the equivalent of an adult committing a crime. We have been so consumed in justice being served that we are doing the exact opposite and depriving a fair and justified sentence to juvenile delinquents and robbing them of a future and a path to cleanse themselves of past mistakes. It is proven that instead of enhanced interrogation and a violent approach juvenile delinquents tend to respond better to the intervention style of getting information. In a paper produced to the County Court Judgment which are legal decisions that are handed down court cases, A Meta-Analytic Inquiry Into the Relationship Between Selected Risk Factors and Problem Behavior, “interventions are more effective than others in reducing problem behavior. In other words, intervention features are used to explain the variance in problem behavior effect sizes across studies”. This being a known fact the American court has still decided to go in the other way instead of providing rehabilitation options for juveniles. As a society, America in its thirst for justice has successfully neglected those who deserve a second chance and robbing juveniles of a chance to better themselves. There is no incentive to help juveniles become the people that they have the potential to be. No two people are the exact same, no circumstances are the same and neither are all the cases of juvenile delinquents. Instead of treating them as criminals and sentencing them to harsh jail time we should be working with them to better themselves and to become productive members of our society.

The public often forgets that juvenile delinquents are children misbehaving and frequently treat them with the same negative reception as an adult. The thought of treating a juvenile as an adult is absolutely ridiculous. Just as any other child juvenile delinquents are sheltered and only know what they have been exposed to just unlike adults who are able to control their environments and make fully conscious decisions. In a 2012 study conducted by The Sentencing Project on juveniles who were sentenced to life in prison, found similarities between the juveniles. According to the study, 79% witnessed violence in their homes regularly, 32% grew up in public housing, 40% had been enrolled in special education classes and 47% were physically abused.  With these patterns found in juvenile offenders, it is no surprise that they would have their worldview wrapped from what society views as morally correct. Crime becomes normalized within the home and communities of the offenders and so they are unable to understand what is morally acceptable because the amount of time that they have been able to be exposed to moral behavior has been what we as a society would call deviant behavior. A child is unable to control the environment which they inhabit because they are unable to provide for themselves and are unable to seek means of help when faced with a problem. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information males who have been sexually molested by a family member are 45 more likely than their other male counterparts to engage in domestic and dating violence and 26 times more likely to engage in violence when they have been molested by non-family members. It is unreasonable to expect a juvenile to conform to society's moral expectations because they have not been exposed to what the American society views as moral as well as they have never seen these expectations practiced within their communities and homes. Juvenile delinquents are anything but criminals, they are victims.  Adolescent offenders live all their lives as victims and continuously fall victim to a disastrous and dysfunctional law and public criticism branding them as a group of low life criminals instead of naive children that were unable to be provided proper guidance. According to Public Opinion and Youth Justice by Julian V. Roberts “English-speaking countries reveal that most members of the public subscribe to a number of misperceptions about juvenile crime and justice. Regardless of actual trends, significant majorities believe youth crime to be increasing, and most people have quite negative views of youth courts”.  Juveniles are constantly being told that because they have chosen to act and make decisions like adults that they will be treated with the same severity and receive the same consequences and public ridicule as adults for their crimes. This response to juvenile misbehavior is illogical considering that a child and an adult do not share the same level of responsibility in our society. A child is not able to make a decision for their life because for the amount of time they have been alive the majority of juvenile offenders have not been exposed to a well-rounded sense of morality. The average child is not usually aware of the weight that their actions carry and their respective consequences because of their inexperience in life and naive nature of their minds. In an interview with CNN Glean Mcginnis a scheduled death row inmate that committed murder at the age of 17, says, “I was just young and dumb and doing things and not thinking of motive doing things, thinking about the consequences.” Mcginnis goes on to say “I didn't know the death penalty exist when I was arrested...never thought about it...living on the streets your living day for day, your trying to breathe.” A troubled and impoverished juvenile is not able to think about the future while in the present moment of their actions especially when their main objective is trying to survive in their respective environments. The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that “Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000)”. According to the Global Youth Justice Inc. The number one committed crime amount juveniles are some form of theft shoplifting, bicycle theft, lockers, and backpack stealing. In the broad view of things, it would be assumed that it would be a minor offense and a juvenile would have no need to be incarcerated however according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention the number of juveniles who are arrested for robbery in 2017 is a whopping 30,850. That is 30,850 children who have been detained by the police and could potentially serve jail time for a minor offense.

Juveniles have a limited knowledge and grasp on the world around them because no matter what is fed to the public by media outlets the fact of the matter is that they are still as inexperienced as any other child. It is cruel and immoral to punish the person based on a wrongdoing that they were unaware could have severe consequences before the crime was committed. The prison sentences and ridicule juveniles get is the same as blaming someone for not being knowledgeable on a subject and are blind to the juveniles involuntary ignorance. The American society upholds morality on a pedestal and has a set sense of morals embedded into our national ideology. Even with the pledge of allegiance emphasizing the importance of “liberty and justice for all” people under the American flag. As a nation, you would think America would be able to find the humane and individual aspects of juvenile cases worthy of recognition as it is only fair, however, in our society it is shameful to be knowledgeable of the fact that juveniles receive the exact opposite and are treated just like any other criminal. In the American society when actions deviate from our set-in-stone moral code we begin to react with criticism and negativity because we feel that it is unfathomable that the actions committed were able to be done thereby neglecting all factors in the case of juveniles delinquents. Yet the thing that we should truly think is unfathomable is punishing a child to ridiculous consequence and not acknowledging their ignorance and innocence when it comes to real-world situations. Americans often believe in the ideology “An eye for an eye” which essentially means whatever you do you will have the same done upon you because of the strong sense of justice that we as Americans have instilled in our social society as well as our justice system. This ideology can be traced to the Bible chapter Leviticus 24:19-21, "And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death”. According to Politico, even President Trump has been publicly noted glorifying the Bible passage and it’s meaning when addressing National Security and Immigration, Trump goes on to say “And some people—look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us.” However, in the case of juvenile delinquents, they are unable to have full forethought before taking part in their actions and this strays away from the idea of righteousness that many feels should be embedded in the juvenile system. Can you really call it justice if one party is not aware of the implications of their actions? If one of the parties is unable to comprehend is it really fair? Juveniles are not in full control of their lives despite popular belief. A person is not able to shape their worldview at such a young age and is not able to expose themselves to the world them and understand it and yet the American society still shows no hesitation when condemning them.

Juvenile delinquents have been neglected far too long by the modern day American society. Adolescents have been neglected in a court of law and in a  social aspect amongst the public. As Americans, we have a self-proclaimed heightened sense of morality when it comes to the legal system, however, in a case like juvenile delinquents, we are quick to throw aside the facts of their individual factors and experiences of their cases and the fact that they are still children out the window and are ready to treat them with criticism and ridicule on the same level as an adult criminal. Considering on how our society holds Justice on a pedestal and emphasizes its hold on our society and how it is embedded into our ideology as a nation we fail to meet our own expectations when it comes to delivering Justice for all the inhabitants that live under the American flag. American society is constantly and consistently negligent to juvenile delinquents when delivering them in the courtroom with a proper due process that would consider all the factors within their case and their individual encounters instead of ignoring those components and solely provide a consequence that they deem suitable for the crime committed to the juveniles and send them to spend their time in incarceration. If the American juvenile justice system would truly wish to call themselves justified then the juvenile delinquent system would not be so focused on delivering a punishment that meets the crime but instead focuses on rehabilitating and reintegrating juvenile delinquents into the American society.

In modern-day American society, we tend to blame juvenile delinquents for the decisions that they make when in reality there are not aware of the decisions that they are making and most juveniles have never had a good example of moral so there is no “ knowing better”  in their world. We forget the immaturity and passion of youth especially when something that could be considered a criminal act comes into an equation and then we are quick to point fingers and criticize the offenders of the crime and fail to recognize the children behind those actions. Society places all the responsibility of the lives of juveniles onto the adolescent offenders because there is no incentive of the government or federal juvenile justice system to attempt to fully comprehend the entirety of the case nor to even attempt to rehabilitate of the juveniles in the United States. Logistically there is no denying a constant and perpetual neglect of juvenile delinquents in the United States juvenile justice system when it comes to providing them with rehabilitating and reintegrating adolescent offenders into our society. Instead of throwing criticism at the children who have been demonized by the public the American juvenile justice system should be teaching youth offenders about their wrongdoings and their consequences and providing them with services that would be able to construct a moral pathway and eventually cultivate a better quality of lifestyle into American society.

Works cited

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