Incarcerated Youth Essay

Improved Essays
This journal will address my group topic of incarcerated youth or juvenile delinquents. Although, the research has just began there are some interesting facts that this journal will discuss. As we progress, this journal topic will discuss other social problems pertaining to the incarceration of African American youth and other minorities and what are the factors that contribute to youth committing crimes. Incarcerated youths are a growing problem in the United States, especially African Americans. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) the number of incarcerated person have quadrupled since 2008 from 500,000 to 2.3 million (NAACP, 2016). However, African American men are constitute to occupying near 1 million of the total 2.3 million population in prison (NAACP, 2016). Referring back to the youth, in research, I discovered an article that discuss Black Children exposure to Violence and Victimization. In this article, the author emphasized the rate of exposure to violence and victimization and how this problem can later affect adults ( (Finkelhor, 2009). In agreement with this article, I feel that early exposure to violence can contribute to negative habits to form in later adulthood, especially for those individuals who live in low income environments. Individuals that lives in these environments are more likely to witness murder (Bulka, 2001), which is the leading cause of death in African Americans living in poverty. The focus of this social issue will be to explore the juvenile court system, how social and developmental aspect contribute to this issues, and how youth that have been in the “system,” progress with re-entry into society. Juvenile delinquents are minors, between ages 10 and 18, who have committed some act that violates the law (Juvenile Delinquents, 2016). An interpretation that I have of this social problem is that we are unaware of about juvenile delinquents, often we focus more on the adults that commit crime but youth incarceration can be prevented. People are failed to realize that troubled youth can transform into troubled adults. Resolution for this issue can start in the home and at schools, if we began to reach out to those trouble youth to show them that we care about their well-being we could possibly prevent our youth from. As an African …show more content…
Therefore, I understand how some youth don’t have a friend to be the voice of reason to encourage them not to commit crimes. As a future social worker, it will be my responsibility to reach out to those at risk in hopes to prevent incarceration. Although, I have never been incarcerated, I was able to check my own personal biases that I had towards individuals who have served jail sentences. I was able to realize that good people can make mistakes and end up in jail no matter what age you …show more content…
I think that this is primarily because some African Americans and minorities may not be able to obtain a lawyer to represent them and point out the positive aspect they have accomplished. Also, I feel that juvenile with a history of troublesome behaviors are more likely to receive more jail time because when standing in court and their record is being review the judge may not be in elated with the results and their sentencing can be based on the judge mood. However, I will continue to research this topic to gain more knowledge about this

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Root Cause Analysis of hyper-incarceration of African Americans in Delaware  Define the problem Structural Violence Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals (2013). As an African American man and a lifelong resident of Delaware.…

    • 864 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On top of this there is a warranted mass incarceration problem that has become an every-day reality. At least 75% of the young men that were part of this study had previously been arrested, and at least 35% of them had parents that had been to prison, and all of the participants believed that they had a much higher chance of being incarcerated. Many of the young men were forced to deal with the stigma that is associated with their family drug problems or imprisonment…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reading the book, The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness brought attention to several different injustices that minorities face daily. It shuns light on how the African American community has been stereotyped and systematically program to dismantle the African American male figure within the family dynamics. According to Michelle Alexander Obama stated that too many fathers are AWOL, MIA and neglecting their responsibilities, which had cause the family to be weaker (Alexander, 2010,p ). However with the system continuously oppressing the African American male this is yet another way to belittle and emasculate this population.…

    • 1319 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A number of the juveniles who enter adolescent justice with outrage issues, learning inabilities, and scholarly difficulties get practically no help for those issues, and thus fall behind in school. “Way too many kids enter juvenile-justice systems, they don’t do particularly well from an education standpoint while they’re there, and way too few kids make successful transitions out” (McGuire, 2014). Racial disparities has also been a challenge for the juvenile justice system. An unbalanced number of the understudies are male and individuals from minority groups. In 2010, 66% of the youngsters in authority in the United States were adolescents of color: 41 percent African-American and 22 percent Hispanic.…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Incarcerated African American Male: The Impact on Children America has by far the largest criminal justice system in the world. Locking up African American males have fueled the extraordinary prison expansion. From 1980 – 2013, over 800,000 African American men were imprisoned. African Americans have constantly been incarcerated at higher rates than their white counterparts, at least since detailed information has been accessible from those late nineteenth century (Western & Pettit 2010). As of 2014, approximately 7 million people under some form of correctional control in the United States, including 2.2 million incarcerated in federal, state, or local prisons and jails.…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Unfortunately this process starts for these children as young as kindergarten age due to the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the past twenty years or so we have seen an increase in the number of minority children that are jailed because of school-based offenses. In fact there is a large racial disparity between white and minority children in the criminal justice system. This is due to the policies put in place at their schools to create a more focused and safe environment. A policy such as Zero Tolerance are placed at these schools and essentially destroys the child’s future before they have the opportunity to plan one of their own.…

    • 1570 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In a corrections system that is comprised of 2.3 million inmates, an estimated 1 million of those individuals are African American. In 2008, 58% of all inmates were comprised of Hispanics and African Americans. This rate is alarming considering only one quarter of the U.S population is comprised of Hispanics and African Americans (Western, B., & Pettit, B., 2010). It is expected that two- thirds of young African American boys that dropout of school will serve time in the correctional system. Young African American men who are raised in poverty areas are likely to spend time, during their life span, in prison or jail (Western, B., & Pettit, B., 2010).…

    • 275 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This shows that the juvenile justice system has no remorse or hope for African American youth. Even though there has been a drop in arrest nation wide, black youths are still twice as likely to be arrested than white youths and mainly for nonviolent crimes. Most corrupt youth situations begin at home or school due to schools not know how to address misbehavior. Black students make up 16% of all public school students and 31% of all arrests.…

    • 2175 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Juvenile solitary confinement has been used over the years to punish poor behavior in the United States juvenile prison system. However after long term negative side effects that isolation can cause in teens, the General public has been in support of isolation alternatives. In this paper, I will be discussing the state by state solitary confinement rules and regulations, how rehabilitation and therapeutic services can be a healthy option as an alternative to confinement and how our nation’s youth don’t always have to feel that segregation is the only form of discipline. A lot of modern alternatives to juvenile solitary confinement would be preferable if not more acceptable to the general public. This idea of solitary confinement started back…

    • 1942 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The study focused on three elements formed from research taken from previous studies. According to Frazier et al. , these elements are “the effects of population racial discrimination (percent white), black proportion below the poverty line (black poverty), and difference in the mean income of blacks and whites (racial income inequality) on juvenile justice dispositions” (p. 451). The results support the traditional conflict theory view in respect to minority population size; the lower the African American proportions in population the more likely African Americans are to be disadvantaged in juvenile justice processes. This is thought to be because minority races are more vulnerable due to their lack of political, social and economic resources (Frazier et al., 1992).…

    • 1353 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The drug court is a sentence that provide different options for the offenders. Alternative incarceration is one way to prosecute offenders, but it has not been successful to help the offenders to get through the abuse of drugs and committing crimes. Treatment can be very helpful for drug abuse offenders but most of these offenders drop off the programs before treatment is finished. If the offenders enter to the treatment program they will be under supervision the whole time to remind them the importance of staying in the program and the benefits of it. None of these offenders will entered the program by choice.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    2. What qualifications and/or experience is needed? (including whether you need further study). No specific tertiary degree is necessary for employment within the Youth Justice field.…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Analysis of the Juvenile Justice System and Dipartites amongst Minorities The United States incarcerates more youths than any other development country; approximately 2 million juveniles are arrested annually in the United States (Barnet et al. 2014). Although juveniles are protected against cruel and unusual punishment by the Eighth Amendment, many states in the U.S. are creating and implementing new laws designed to be more stringent with the juveniles. These new laws range anywhere from setting curfews to trying a minor as an adult. Studies show that not only has there has also been an increase in the number of minority juveniles being arrested, but minority youths are more likely to receive harsher punishments as well (Mears, Pickett, & Mancini, 2015). Specifically, African American youths are roughly 5 times more likely, and Latino and American Indian adolescents are 3 times more likely, to be incarcerated than white minors (Barnet et al, 2014).…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Funding of Rehabilitation Programs in the Federal Prison System of America and Their Effect on Prisoners Prison rehabilitation can be defined as the re-integration into society of a person who has been convicted of crime, to counter habitual offending, also known as criminal recidivism. (Rehabilitation Center., n.d.) These rehabilitation programs can take the form of educational, artistic, recreational and drug abuse programs. Many prisons in the U.S. don’t fund a substantial quality of rehabilitation programs even though they have proven to be highly effective in reintegrating prisoners to the outside world; seen through a lowered recidivism rate in those prisons that have implemented them.…

    • 1371 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The average weight and height of a 17-year-old male is 142 lbs. and 5ft. 7 in. tall. The average weight and height of a 17-year-old female is 120 lbs.…

    • 2031 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays