Answer

FUTURE OF THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Introduction

My presentation is a proposal that I will present to state legislature concerning the future of the juvenile justice system. The presentation include :

1. How Oregon State is rehabilitating the youth, giving restorative justice and preventing recidivism and
2. Proposals on how to improve the community involvement, courts and sentencing, corrections, rehabilitation, restorative justice and recidivism prevention.

The American JJS is the main system utilized in handling teenagers convicted or criminal felonies. The framework comprise of a federal and several distinct state, provincial and local jurisdictions, with the national government and states sharing autonomous police authority under the mutual authority of the American Constitution.  The JJS intervenes in felonious conduct  via the police, court and correctional engagement , with the aim of rehabilitation. The teenagers and their parents can serve various outcomes comprising of adolescents detention, probation, alternative schooling, adolescent court , and community service. The JJS functions  from a notion that intervening early in felonious conduct will prevent teenagers from partaking in criminal conducts as grown-ups.

OREGON  STATE YOUTH REHABILITATION, RESTORATIVE JUSTICE, AND RECIDIVISM PREVENTION METHODS

• Zero tolerance Provision
• The use of community/Teen courts
• A school-based diversion program

Oregon State has collaborated with school districts to initiate community-based programs that tackle school-linked challenges like excessive truancy by amending the “zero tolerance” provision. Such initiatives permit school boards not to expel a kid who committed a zero-tolerance crime or modify the expulsion terms. Also, Oregon has adopted an Oregon hub for court innovation approach where the crime victim is engaged in the restorative justice procedure. This intervention program’s objective is to offer selected adolescents offenders a chance to be questioned, adjudicated, and sentenced by a jury of friends.  Also, Oregon State has implemented diversion programs to keep adolescents from the JJS. One of the approaches is a school-based diversion because schools often use the police in handling even small discipline issues sending several adolescents into the JJS. Sometimes a learner’s unruly conduct is in part because of mental disease. Therefore, Oregon state partnered with school boards to train school staff and police officers to pinpoint and accurately react to adolescents with mental health needs to reduce referrals to JJS. Mostly when coupled with optional community-centered mental health resources, adolescents can be referred to instead.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

• The Juvenile Justice System (JJS) should win the community trust
• Proposal to have the community integrated with the JJS
• Through creating community projects that integrate the youth and good law-abiding citizens
• Initiate mentorship programs with motivational speakers for the adolescent offenders to look up to.
• Example of engagement include the community and adolescents’ offenders are collaborating in doing home repairs and gardening for the elderly. Also the youth offenders can volunteer in community shelters and get trained in approaches of offenders handling population in shelters. An effective JJS must depend on the community and family-based diversion and intercession approaches , and less on detention. Hence to do this, JJS stakeholders should collaborate with community stakeholders in preventing adolescents from getting into the system, supporting teenagers whilst in the system and helping teenagers successfully re-integrate back into the society after release. One way Oregon state can promote community cooperation is by hosting community cafes to produce thoughts from JJ and community stakeholders regarding how best to meet the court-engaged teenagers needs.  Thus such café offer safe spaces for making arrangements that assist the adolescents and also suggestions on how juvenile court can better collaborate with the community.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

LAW ENFORCEMENT

• Lack of training
• No motivation
• Lack of resources

How do we resolve it?

• Through undertaking more training at the academies
• Post academy training
• Through organizing seminars with other departments

Police are the gatekeepers for juveniles because all juvenile cases first pass through them. Hence police assume a double role of authority and support. Thus, it is vital to concentrate on the interactions between police and adolescents’ offenders. Therefore, police need customized training on how to handle adolescents mostly in volatile and hostile circumstances. Therefore, decreasing adolescents’ detentions and giving support is crucial in reducing juvenile delinquency.  Training police and probation officers on adolescents matters is progressively acknowledged as a crucial element in enhancing involvement with teenagers. Training is crucial in helping officers comprehend how teenagers differ from grown-ups; how they are different from each other depending on their background; and also to react accurately to all teenagers.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

COURTS

• The court to monitor the social services practices concerning the services provided to maltreated and abused kids.
• Courts to integrate a trained child psychological health expert’s opinion on the effect of face-to-face testimony on a kid witness for every case whereby a kid is pinpointed as a witness.
• The resolve of the comprehension of Miranda rights by a kid is done in a developmental context.
• The juvenile court should be a vital societal institution mainly because there is not an option. The juvenile court is the society’s approach of holding kids responsible for their practices and parents liable for rearing kids to become productive and well-behaved community members (Cox, 2019). The juvenile court’s primary mandate was to behave kindly to parents seeking to enlighten and rehabilitate instead of punishing their kids. Adolescents are not charged with wrongdoings and prosecuted; petitions seeking court actions are filed. But there is apprehension regarding the punishment level that should be enforced on adolescents. Thus, several adolescents’ jurisdictions make it likely for teenagers to be referred to the adult court structure. A forensic examination of adolescents is entirely dissimilar from those of grown-ups because of the kid’s development stage. Also, specific court processes are not user-friendly to kids, always lacking a developmental context, and might challenge the juvenile court interventions.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

CORRECTIONS

• Re-authorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA).
• Transform juvenile jails into education and training hubs  with an employment focus.
• To establish or enlarge the country-based treatment facilities that can absorb the adolescent offender’s populace that is presently being accommodated in state-funded corrections.
• By creating a permanent financing stream that will transfer the resources from the state-managed correctional facilities to the county probation departments.
• Offer training for the JJS workforce in areas of child development and mental sickness.

The JJDPA initially enacted in 1974 and re-endorsed in 2002, defines the federal criteria for custody and care of court-engaged teenagers that the states voluntarily acknowledge and value. Likewise JJDPA creates a federal-state collaboration intended to decrease felonies ,  preserve community safety and avert victimization.

The most severe punishment that a juvenile court can issue is limiting an adolescent’s liberty through placement into a correctional facility. Placement happened after the teenager is adjudicated delinquent for a crime. Likewise, an adolescent might be detained after arrest or maid court proceedings. Jurisdiction over the adolescent might be transferred to the criminal court, which then implements the processing and penalizing (Tanenhaus, 2018). However, there continues to be a lot of conflict regarding facilities accreditation because of massive amounts of variability. In these teenagers’ facilities there are various specialized concerns comprising of teenager’s developmental needs, STIs, chronic diseases and different psychological health needs. also, there is much worry concerning Oregon state reduced financing resources and prioritization for the therapy, research financing, rehabilitation and execution of evidence-centred multi-model interventions in addressing the youthful offenders’ unique needs and their families irrespective of the treatment environment. In Oregon, pre-teens have no specialized credentialing programs. These kids are put into psychological health facilities, send home or a relative, and request close court-ordered follow-up and wrap-around services.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

REHABILITATION

• New policy required to enhance the usage of standardized screening approaches .
• Also these new policies will guarantee the screening happens early in the process to permit teenagers to be diverted out of the justice structure into the community-centered programs when suitable.
• Creating a care system targeted at meeting the mental health and linked needs of the adolescents who violate the law via comprehensive community-centered services and support.
• Hence, this gives a chance to comprehend the exceptional problems teenagers present and determine how best to overcome those problems via planned and detailed initiatives, strong inter-agency cooperation, and sustained financing.
• The lack of aftercare services and service synchronization indicate the requirement to formulate service framework models that better incorporate and synchronize several services for teenage lawbreakers, mainly community-centered methods. Hence policy should bolster the amalgamation, continuity, and bankrolling of these services for teenage lawbreakers both during and after their justice system engagement. To appropriate limited resources most successfully , new polices must enhance the accessibility of superior, evidence-centered therapy targeted at the sub-group of teenage lawbreakers with drug use disorders.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

• Advocate for the amendment of the  SORNA to eliminate obligatory  registration for teenagers in the juvenile court.
• Implementing a “whole school “method
• Implementation of prompt, family-centered options to court intervention has proven practical at lessening family court caseloads, reducing government expenses, and giving meaningful and enduring support to kids and families.
• The Walsh Act was enacted in 2006 to protect kids and teenagers from sex offenders. However, Title I of the SORNA comprise of obligatory directives that target specific teenagers and do not align with research and evidence-centered practices. The main amongst these directives  is the mandate that teenagers adjudicated  in the juvenile court for specific sex-centered felonies be oblige by their state to register with the countrywide public sex offender registry for a twenty-five year period to life.  Under the Walsh Act , states that do not rectify their laws to adhere  with SORNA mandates are exposed  to a ten percent reserving of their federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grant funds. Also, sex lawbreaker registrants face various direct and collateral outcomes comprising of various limitations on where they live, get employed and attend school. Thus these limitations pose specific troubling realities for teenagers who must register and be publicly reported. Also these limitations causes hindrance to the teenagers from getting an education and jobs.
• Several adolescents get into problems for criminalized actions since they are under eighteen years, and hence their actions are questionable amongst adults in their lives (Henning et al., 2018). Therefore these are often called ‘status crimes,’ and they comprise curfew breach, truancy, under-age alcohol law infringements, and escaping. Status offenses are always suggestive of deeper personal, societal and community problems that family courts and confinement are still ill-ready to tackle or prevent.  Implementing a “whole school “method where anybody is affected by an incident, such as educators, learners, and parents, sit in a circle and articulate themselves in a non-judgmental forum. Hence the participants brainstorm ways to tackle the challenge or harm the incident triggered. Accordingly, this approach can be implanted as a new discipline plan in the school district that integrates restorative justice, where learners have the right to demand a restorative circle before getting suspended.

Suggestions For How To Improve  Different Aspect Of  Oregon’s JJS

PREVENTION OF RECIDIVISM

• Advocate for more appropriations for juvenile justice programs.
• Implement the Youth PROMISE Act
• Community-focused treatment for teenagers is more practical and cost-efficient than detention. However, federal allocations to states, for primary JJP have been reduced substantially in the last decade. Federal financing to support state juvenile justice activities and enhancements safeguard the public’s security and must be perceived vital investment even in budget cutting times. States leverage on JJDPA and the  Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program (JABG) programs in prevention of recidivism and attain sustainable community security. Therefore , Oregon state should advocate for more allocations from the Senate Allocations Committee. Initiated in 2007, the Youth PROMISE Act aim was reduction of gang violence and felonies. If implemented by Oregon State, this Act will offer aimed federal investments and synchronization in supporting evidence-centered efforts at the local level such as mentoring programs, family reinforcement services, teenage leadership growth intended to decrease victimization and engage youths in pro-social actions and offer cost-effective usage of public funds.

Juvenile Justice Interview: Executive Summary 

Juvenile Justice Interview Discussion

• Several causation theories  such as life course theories  have been used in explaining   specific factors of deviance such as low self-esteem , poor parenting and violent environment ,but the theories do not explain all elements of deviance.
• Although states administer the JJPs , Congress  has a substantial impact in grant funding  such as  the JJDPA Title II State Formula Grants Program and JABG, and allocation of funds to states.

How Oregon JJS Can Benefit

• Oregon JJS can benefit by advocating for more funding allocations through the  House Appropriations Committee.
• More funding will enhance Oregon State efforts of preventing recidivism  and felonies.
• Several states have risen financing for community-centered therapy programs as options to institutional placements.
• After the 2005 Roper v. Simmons court verdict eliminating  the teenage  death penalty, various state legislatures have revoked or are contemplating revoking , laws enforcing punishments minus parole on teenage murders. Other states have reduced always in reaction to  rising economic expenses, impulsive transfer legislation that send teenagers to the adult criminal framework by statutory omission.  In some state where adolescents are below eighteen are indicted in adult criminal court rather than teenagers court. However assuring efforts are under way to enhance the age to 18 as it is in several states. Also various states have enlarged procedural protection for teenagers in criminal court by implementing statutory requirements sanctioning findings of ineptitude to stand trial on the developmental immaturity premise. Though several retributive reforms of the 1990s still exist, a policy change seems to be taking place. 
• A continued and rising concentration on reform and rehabilitation opportunities in the JJS has anticipations for reducing offenders’ numbers. Through focusing on positive youth advancement, acknowledging and giving therapy for mental sicknesses, and providing adequate educational opportunities, the JJS can attain a greater effectiveness level in the future.