Arguments Agains Sending Children to Adult Prisons
Prison Is Too Violent for Young Offenders
Gary Scott was arrested at age 15 for 2nd-degree murder and was sentenced to xv years to life at historic period 17. He has served xiv and a half years and is currently at San Quentin Country Prison. He works with at-take a chance youth and is studying toward an associate of arts degree.
June v, 2012
Like many states, California allows youth offenders as young as fourteen to be transferred from the juvenile system to adult courts. From at that place, nigh of the teenagers who are tried as adults and sentenced to life in adult institutions are placed in Level four maximum-security prisons that are extremely violent.
If rehabilitation is the goal for teenagers who are tried and sentenced as adults, and so prison is not the answer.
This happens fifty-fifty though courts have said that juveniles are different from adults and in some situations must be treated differently. For example, in 2005, the Supreme Courtroom banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders considering "people nether 18 are young, irresponsible, susceptible to peer-pressure and often capable of alter." However, the justices have not withal applied this same logic when because the sentencing and housing of juveniles in the developed system.
In my observation, the incarceration of immature prisoners in adult prisons has an extremely destructive effect. Young prisoners are more susceptible to negative influences than adults. Facing the reality of their lengthy sentence and potentially never going home makes them seek protection and endeavor to fit in somewhere in their new world. Considering a juvenile'south identity is still developing, he or she can potentially adopt negative behaviors that are the norm in a hostile prison house environment. The fear of beingness victimized or assaulted produces a need for security, which leads many young prisoners to rely on gangs and weapons for survival. Young prisoners overwhelmed past feelings of helplessness and hopelessness cannot focus on changing their thinking and behavior, because they are focused on how to survive. Younger prisoners are also at a disadvantage because they are not as mature (mentally and physically) as older prisoners. The suicide and sexual corruption rates of younger prisoners are higher than those of the physically mature. How tin rehabilitation exist possible in such a unsafe environment?
The only way to change the behavior of young prisoners is to provide them with the opportunity to gain insight into why they think and deport the way they do. If rehabilitation is the goal for teenagers who are tried and sentenced equally adults, then prison is not the reply. There should be a different place for youth offenders. Prison is besides violent, and the necessary programs that can contribute to immature prisoners' rehabilitation are underfunded. Rehabilitation is more possible in an environment that is conducive to instruction, where young prisoners tin gain insight into their behavior to produce a positive transformation.
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Prison Is Too Fierce for Young Offenders
Gary Scott, inmate, San Quentin -
In Sentencing, Think the Victims
Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, National Organisation of Victims of Juvenile Lifers -
Behind Confined, Teenagers Get Prey
T.J. Parsell, writer and homo rights activist -
Adult Punishments Should Be an Selection
Charles Stimson, Heritage Foundation -
Prison Does Not Make Skillful Citizens
R. Daniel Okonkwo, D.C. Lawyers for Youth -
The Race Factor
Jennifer Fifty. Eberhardt and 
Aneeta Rattan, Stanford University -
Seeing Juveniles' Maturity, and Immaturity
Laurence Steinberg, boyish brain researcher -
Teenagers Besides Ofttimes End Up in Solitary
Amy Fettig, A.C.L.U. -
The Cost of Prison house, in Dollars and Lives
Michael Jacobson, CUNY Constitute for State and Local Governance
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/05/when-to-punish-a-young-offender-and-when-to-rehabilitate/prison-is-too-violent-for-young-offenders
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