Juvenile Justice Systems Reforms

Juvenile Justice Systems Reforms

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/6/juvenile-detentioncentershold70000youth.html

Aljazeera America posted an article on their website called Activists push for juvenile justice system reforms by Molly Knefel. Her article highlights the story of Marvin Bing Jr., at the age of 12 he was living in a foster home in Pennsylvania. Bing decided to take a kitchen knife to school and share it with his friends. When a teacher spotted students gathering around Bing’s desk he was sent to the principal’s office. The principal then had Bing arrested and he was taken to a juvenile holding facility to wait for a court date. When Bing went to his first juvenile justice placement he did little educational work. When he was released he had a hard time fitting back in with the community. Bing ended up in a bad environment and eventually re-entered the juvenile justice system.

Molly Knefel article talks about how younger and younger children are being placed in the juvenile justice system, which is making the number of children in the juvenile justice system grow even larger. It was stated in the article that in the United States about 70,000 children are held in juvenile justice centers. These centers are not helping the youth to stay on target for school they are honestly only preparing the youth to come back into the juvenile justice system. The article talks about how children are being tried for adult crimes ending them in prisons with adults. When these youths are put into prisons with adults they are learning new ways to commit crimes and they are being abused by the other prisoners. Neither one of these things help the youth when they are released back into the community.

Bing was able to turn his life around after he was released from his second juvenile justice placement. He now is doing social justice work and he along with others are now trying to change the juvenile justice system. Bing and others believe if the juvenile justice system changes the way they deal with children they would be able to bring down the number of children in the juvenile justice system. They believe some of the crimes that children commit they are safer and more likely not to commit more crimes if they can be punished outside of a juvenile justice center. They also talked about if the child commits a crime where juvenile justice center is appropriate measures then the child should still be treated as should and be given the proper education.