Juvenile Crime Essays - Penology, Crime, Juvenile Detention Centers

Juvenile Crime Thirteen dead, over twenty wounded in a suburb of Denver Colorado, from a threat far greater than any Iranian terrorists. The threat is from within, the threat is our children. Youth Violence is a more common occurrence than the media would like us to believe. Similar instances have happened many times before: in Paducah, KY, three students were killed by a fellow student during a morning prayer circle(Leung). Also in Pearl MS, two were killed over a simple breakup (CNN), and in Springfield, OR, a sixteen-year-old killed one youth and critically wounded twenty-three over the alienation from his schoolmates (Barnard). Not to mention the sad atrocity in New Jersey where a young teen couple threw their newborn kid into a dumpster on a subfreezing night(Bad Seeds). This kind of delinquency is a problem, luckily all problems have solutions. Unfortunately the proper solutions are simply overlooked for the similar programs that address the problems cheaper. So the public believes that this type of treatment will do. However, we need something new, something radical to curb the growing violence among the youth in America. Society needs boot camps. Not just any type of boot camp. Those have been tried, and in some places, they worked, but not well enough. For any juvenile treatment to work research shows that it must address three basic needs of all children (NCCP): 1. A locus of control. 2. Significant adult role models. 3. Significant accomplishments. While many of the instituted plans have included some of the above goals they have not included all due to the cost of implementation. The problem affects kids of ages as shown in a survey taken in 1992, sixty-five percent of kids ages seven to ten feared they would die young, while that fear was shared by forty-two percent of eleven to seventeen year olds. (NCPC Report) With the arrest rate of juveniles increasing significantly during that time period, I don't blame kids for being scared. (Canada and the World) I have the solution, and recommendations for the implementations of what I like to call, "self-sustaining" boot camps. They will be self-supporting and cost very little maintenance fees save those for the main initialization process, which can be taken out of the government slush fund. Crime has increased greatly over the past ten years with an increase of over seventy-five percent in arrests of juveniles. (Current Events 2a) This increase is unacceptable. It shows just how little we have done to curve the growing problem of youth crime in America. Society today seems to have developed a not my child kind of outlook. It is no longer the Hispanic-American male age fifteen to eighteen that are committing all the crimes and causing the increase of violent crimes by eighteen percent from '91 to ?92. Nor, were they the ones mainly responsible for the increased arrests for homicides to 14.5 of 100,000 children in 1993. Surprisingly, children under age fifteen are responsible for thirty six percent of the crimes. With this age group committing thirty-six percent of the forcible rapes, and forty-five percent of the larcenies. While the leading race committing the crime is the Caucasians. They committed seventy percent of the total crimes and fifty-two percent of the forcible rapes. (FBI Uniform Crime Report) These statistics show how people today have turned a blind eye to the real problem and ignore the basic needs that a youth tries to fulfill through the crimes. If we continue to let this type of violence grow unchecked, it will rage from what could be considered a small ember, to a mighty conflagration of violence and anarchy by the middle of the twenty-first century. We look around us now and shake our head, telling ourselves that it's not our problem, or that the kid has bad parents. If we let this continue we will be condemning ourselves to our fate. Yet, "self-sustaining" boot camps are the way to get through the darkness, and a way to take back our streets and once again feel safe. It is cost effective and capable to turn or kids into responsible adults. There is one major problem that holds this plan back, and that is money. Whenever a new program is started more money has to be spent on it then on a program already in effect. However with the type of boot camp I recommend implementing would be of significant enough saving to fund the program. The price for keeping a single juvenile incarcerated for a year in a detention facility is approximately $47,400, While a