Issues Affecting the Juvinile Justice System in the United States (Essay Sample)

Juvenile Justice System
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Juvenile Justice System
In the American juvenile justice system, the existence of structural racism is not a new phenomenon that extends in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Through various processes and policies, injustice in the justice system has promoted mass incarceration on African-American youths. As indicated by ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"tL2ARRbL","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Zimring, 2018)","plainCitation":"(Zimring, 2018)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":4128,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/qBtJ3Wwt/items/DZQVFPJA"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/qBtJ3Wwt/items/DZQVFPJA"],"itemData":{"id":4128,"type":"book","publisher":"Oxford University Press","source":"Google Scholar","title":"American juvenile justice","author":[{"family":"Zimring","given":"Franklin E."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} Zimring (2018), the existence of discrimination and disproportionate black in youth's justice system reflects inadequate fundamental fairness and equity treatments of youths by police, courts, and other parties in the justice processes. Recognizing the inequality within the juvenile justice system, the American government, through congress, amended the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, requiring the state governments to safeguard minorities in secure facilities. This approach sought to respect the human rights aspect of juveniles, which brought a little sanity when handling black youths. However, the current situation in the juvenile justice system can be traced back to various policies that have been established since the inception of the system.
Early Policy and Black Youths' Incarceration
Before the establishment of the juvenile justice policy, the United States criminal justice system had jurisdiction over delinquent children. This meant that children were tried as adults, held in the same facilities, which increased recidivism rates. However, in 1899, the first juvenile court was established that was mandated to correct children who came into contact with the justice system. Moreover, the establishment of the court facilitated the establishment of specialized juvenile probation services to monitor all the youths that were in contact with the court. In most cases, the beginning of the juvenile court era promoted policies of utilizing nonpunitive measures for youths. However, for black youths, they continued to be tried as adults, leading to an increased number of incarcerated African youths compared to white youths. As such, the tension arose between goals of rehabilitation and punishment of the youths in the juvenile justice system ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"j9FLzRf4","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Simon, 2016)","plainCitation":"(Simon, 2016)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":