Juvenile Justice, its purpose and affectivity

Juvenile Justice, its purpose and affectivity

Introduction

Juvenile justice is a category of criminology where people who are not adults are dealt with justice if they commit crime. The age standard of 18 is common in most of the states of USA but in some states the ages do differ as well. The Juvenile law is primarily practiced by the states and they have defined their own standards and codes known as juvenile codes. It primarily consists with providing the criminals falling under juvenile law with rehabilitation rather than justice.

Juveniles are that adolescence who have committed a crime as severe as killing a person but have an age below 18. Juveniles are treated in adult courts in cases where the juvenile court relinquishes or waives its jurisdiction. The idea behind raising the cases of juveniles with juvenile courts was to protect children from the brutality and evilness of criminal cells and keeping them away from criminal societies.

The idea behind raising children under juvenile justice was to create a line between criminals and keeping the young offenders away from criminal activities and rehabilitate them towards better lives. The prime reason behind this was that children do not possess an evil mind to commit crimes but it is their upbringing or circumstantial situation which causes them to commit crimes as great as killing other people. All children below 18 are not directly taken into juvenile jurisdiction and the court reviews the case and then decides whether to deal the child as a juvenile or an adult criminal (McCord & et al., 2001).

Discussion

The main idea behind the debate is whether it is effective to treat juveniles as special criminals and avoid them from being punished in a similar manner to that of adult criminals. Secondly what is the purpose behind treating young offenders as juveniles instead of criminals even though they have broken the law. These points bring in a serious debate how effective it has turned out till now treatment of young offenders as juveniles.

Purpose of Juvenile Justice

Deterrence

One of the purposes for handling young offenders under juvenile justice is to deter them instead of punishing them. Deterrence means to threat the young offender of the punishment instead of punishing him for the crime he commits. Deterrence is provided to juveniles in two cases, the first is to impose a punishment on the young offender which will deter him from committing further crimes. The second is to make an example of the young offender for others by punishing him for the crime. Deterrence punishments are common when young offenders commit crimes of drug abuse, drug dealing and stealing crimes. These are crimes when people below 18 become a part of the criminal society and work for rackets in illegal matters. In these cases they are punished for deterrence (McShane & Williams, 2003).

Incapacitation

The core idea behind sentencing a criminal is a psychological phenomenon where a criminal is physically restrained from committing crimes by sentencing him for a certain time ...