California State Prison in 2006

If I could design the entire criminal justice system myself, I would like to combine the adult and juvenile prison and court systems so that they function essentially the same way.

I like that the juvenile prisons seem to have more of a focus on rehabilitation than adult prisons. I imagine this sort of thinking could be helpful for many adult criminals as well. Since juveniles are getting ever increasing punishments now it seems fair that they would get all the rights that adults get in court to defend themselves. Many of the more serious juvenile offenders are already being waived into adult courts as it is.

Prisons would be reserved for only the most serious and dangerous offenders. Many people are kept in prison for a long time even though they have just committed relatively minor drug offenses. Putting people in prison affects not only that individual but their family as well.

I would want to use the money saved from decreasing the prison population to improve community programs that help with decreasing crime and rehabilitating criminals. There are many programs that already do helpful things like this and in my opinion they should be the focus of both the juvenile and adult justice system.

When the juvenile justice system first started the idea was to take to the place of parents of children who needed that. The state was supposed to be filling in as the role of the parent, parens patriae. In recent years the purpose has shifted to punishing delinquents. Predictions about the rise of superpredators justified this shift for many people. Now we have a much harsher juvenile justice system than when it started and the superpredator prediction ended up being false.

I am not arguing to completely abolish the juvenile justice system because it is helpful for connecting juveniles to community services. It is also useful for protecting juveniles who are in danger. I do think, however, that the focus of the system should shift into trying to prevent crimes and rehabilitate delinquents.

Long prison sentences will keep criminals off the streets, but they will still pose problems when they are released, not to mention the high cost of keeping people locked in prison.

There are many programs that sound useful, but it is also important to collect data and see if they are actually accomplishing what they are going for. For example the Scared Straight program, where they took at-risk juveniles to adult prisons to scare them, was a very popular and well-liked program, but studies did not show it to be effective. There should be research done on different programs so we know how well they’re doing and how they can be improved.

I work as a preschool teacher and often the kids will get into arguments and sometimes even hurt each other. It’s not always clear who the victim is and who the perpetrator is. Often I miss the very beginning of arguments so it’s hard to know who is right and who is wrong. That’s part of why once both children are calmed down we make them talk to each other to figure out what went wrong. Often it’s just a simple misunderstanding. I understand that this is not often the case in delinquent and criminal cases, but I do think it’s important that the victim and perpetrator are able to talk about what happened if they are willing. This would be helpful for both of them.

Partly because of working with children I am hesitant to place blame on the youth instead of the parents. Parents are often part of the problem. It’s difficult to prove cause and effect with parenting, because bad parenting can lead to misbehaving children. On the other hand misbehaving children are stressful which can cause parents to be stressed and therefore less effective parents sometimes.

I’m not sure how I feel about punishing parents for their children’s crimes. Each situation is so different I think it would be impossible to write a law that would work well in every class. It would have to be very flexible.

At my work when there is a clear victim and wrongdoer, the wrongdoer has to stop whatever they are doing and make sure the victim is okay. If the victim is not okay they get to tell the wrongdoer what they need, essentially becoming the boss of the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer broke something the victim made, they might have to help them fix it. This seems to be effective with young children. Even if the child does not feel guilty they still get to associate being mean with then being inconvenienced. They have to do what the victim wants instead of continuing with what they were doing.

This is part of why I especially like the idea of restitution. It would not work in all cases, but when it does work the delinquent or criminal would have to see the effects of their crime and help to fix them. I think it would be nice to use restitution as much as possible, but not focus on the paying back of money. I think it would be useful for people who’ve done something wrong to see what it does to the victims. Obviously this would not work for all crimes and not all victims would be interested, but whenever possible I think it would be a good deterrent and would hopefully reduce recidivism. I think it could also be helpful for adult offenders. For example if someone hurts someone else I would want them to have to help nurse the person back to health.

In conclusion, I think there are many ways that we could improve both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. There are good aspects of both. We should continue to do research about effective techniques and programs. We should attempt to rehabilitate offenders and give them what they need in order to be successful once they are back out in society. We should fight to ensure that everyone is treated fairly, no matter their age, race, or whether they have a mental illness.