Youth Criminal Justice System in the United States

Youth Criminal Justice System in the United StatesNameInstitutional AffiliationDate
Introduction
The Juvenile justice system was established so that it can serve the needs of a child in ensuring that there is the delivery of justice to the young people and also to ensure that if a young person commits a crime, they will be dealt with by the law. It is established bearing in mind that the needs of a child are so different from those of the adults. On the other hand, most of the adult criminal justice system is not well equipped to meet the needs of the youth offenders at the various stages in the criminal justice system beginning from trial and even sentencing. According to statistics, the young people are represented in crime and violence as victims and also perpetrators of criminal activities. In most of the developed countries, there is an increase in the number of the young people who commit crime than in the past, and this raises concern about the juvenile system.
Youth Criminal Justice System in the United States
There are different statistics on the number of the young people who are tried in the adult court. Researchers approximate the number of the young people prosecuted in the adult courts to be approximately 200,000 in each year. However, one of the things that can be noted about this is that even though the law was established so that it can deal with the youth who commit the most serious they issued crimes, there are youths who are still tried in the adult courts even though their offenses are minor. A good example is legislation that was passed by states such as North Carolina and New York that stipulate that young people who are at the age of sixteen or seventeen are fit to be taken to court and tried as adults CITATION Liz12 \l 1033 (Liz & Peter, 2012).
One of the common policies that hinder delivery of justice to the young people is that the youths who are charged as adults can have a pre-trial in an adult jail where they face some challenges. One of the greatest challenges that they face is the fear of the risk of assault, abuse, and even their death. An estimated number of 75,000 young people are locked up in the jails for the adults where they mingle with them and come into contact with the adults. Such a situation can lead to physical or emotional harm to the young people when they are in custody. The jail officials work hard to separate the young people from the adults, but on the other hand, if they take them and place them in different places, it is viewed by the youth as isolation or confinement. Given that they are young people, they might begin to think that they have been isolated and get into depression over the issue. The youths can also get suicidal thoughts. However, the American Jail Association has also weighed in on the matter. They issued a recommendation that juveniles should not at all be housed in the jail courts for the adults if they are not designed in such a way that they meet the needs of a young person and no trained personnel can be able to handle the young person. The youth is also placed in adult jails before being taken to the juvenile courts for trial.
Locking the youths who are sentenced as adults in the adult prisons is also another challenge in the criminal justice ...