The effects of trying juveniles as adults in adult courts in the juvenile justice system

Justin McNaull grew up in a hurry. By the time he was 23, McNaull had graduated from college, married and gone to work for his local

The Experience of Imprisonment This chapter summarizes what is known about the nature of prison life and its consequences for prisoners. The dramatic rise in incarceration rates in the United States beginning in the mids has meant that many more people have been sent to prison and, on average, have remained there for longer periods of time.

Therefore, the number of persons experiencing the consequences of incarceration—whether helpful or harmful—has correspondingly increased. Although this chapter considers the direct and immediate consequences of incarceration for prisoners while they are incarcerated, many of the most negative of these consequences can undermine postprison adjustment and linger long after formerly incarcerated persons have been released back into society.

In examining this topic, we reviewed research and scholarship from criminology, law, penology, program evaluation, psychiatry, psychology, and sociology.

These different disciplines often employ different methodologies and address different questions and at times come to different conclusions. In our synthesis of these diverse lines of research, we sought to find areas of consensus regarding the consequences of imprisonment for individuals confined under conditions that prevailed during this period of increasing rates of incarceration and reentry.

Prisons in the United States are for the most part remote, closed environments that are difficult to access and challenging to study empirically. They vary widely in how they are structured and how they operate, making broad generalizations about the consequences of imprisonment difficult to formulate.

It is possible, however, to describe some of the most significant trends that occurred during the period of increasing rates of incarceration Page Share Cite Suggested Citation: The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences.

The National Academies Press. After reviewing these trends and acknowledging the lack of national and standardized data and quality-of-life indicators, we discuss aspects of imprisonment that have been scientifically studied. From the available research, we summarize what is known about the experience of prison generally, how it varies for female prisoners and confined youth, its general psychological consequences, and the particular consequences of extreme conditions of overcrowding and isolation, as well as the extent of participation in prison programming.

We also consider, on the one hand, what is known about the potentially criminogenic effects of incarceration and, on the other hand, what is known about prison rehabilitation and reentry in reducing postprison recidivism. Not only are correctional institutions categorized and run very differently on the basis of their security or custody levels, but even among prisons at the same level of custody, conditions of confinement can vary widely along critical dimensions—physical layout, staffing levels, resources, correctional philosophy, and administrative leadership—that render one facility fundamentally different from another.

One of the important lessons of the past several decades of research in social psychology is the extent to which specific aspects of a context or situation can significantly determine its effect on the actors within it e. This same insight applies to prisons. Referring to very different kinds of correctional facilities as though the conditions within them are the same when they are not may blur critically important distinctions and result in invalid generalizations about the consequences of imprisonment or the lack thereof.

It also may lead scholars to conclude that different research results or outcomes are somehow inconsistent when in fact they can be explained by differences in the specific conditions to which they pertain.

This chapter focuses primarily on the consequences of incarceration for individuals confined in maximum and medium security prisons, those which place a heavier emphasis on security and control compared with the lower-custody-level facilities where far fewer prisoners are confined Stephan and Karberg, Prisoners in the higher security-level prisons typically are housed in cells rather than dormitoriesand the facilities themselves generally are surrounded by high walls or fences, with armed guards, detection Page Share Cite Suggested Citation: Obviously, these, too, are gross categorizations, with countless variations characterizing actual conditions of confinement among apparently similar prisons.

The assertions made in the pages that follow about broad changes in prison practices and policies, normative prison conditions, and consequences of imprisonment all are offered with the continuing caveat that as prisons vary significantly, so, too, do their normative conditions and their consequences for those who live and work within them.

The first and in many ways most important of these trends was due to the significant and steady increase in the sheer numbers of persons incarcerated throughout the country.

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As noted in Chapter 2significant increases in the size of the prisoner population began in the mid-to-late s in a number of states and continued more or less unabated until quite recently. The resulting increases in the numbers of prisoners were so substantial and occurred so rapidly that even the most aggressive programs of prison construction could not keep pace.

Widespread overcrowding resulted and has remained a persistent problem. Congress became concerned about prison overcrowding as early as the late s Subcommittee on Penitentiaries and Corrections, Although the reasons for this high prevalence are not entirely clear, some scholars have pointed to the effect of the deinstitutionalization movement of the s e.

Some have suggested that untreated mental illness may worsen in the community, ultimately come to the attention of the criminal justice system, and eventually result in incarceration Belcher, ; Whitmer, Other scholars and mental health practitioners have suggested that the combination of adverse prison conditions and the lack of adequate and effective treatment resources may result in some prisoners with preexisting mental health conditions suffering an exacerbation of symptoms and even some otherwise healthy prisoners developing mental illness during their incarceration e.

In any event, the high prevalence of seriously mentally ill prisoners has become a fact of life in U.

Further discussion of mental illness among the incarcerated is presented in Chapter 7. Another trend resulted from the high incarceration rates of African Americans and Hispanics, which changed the makeup of the prisoner population and altered the nature of prison life. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3during the past 40 years of increasing imprisonment, incarceration rates for African Americans and Hispanics have remained much higher than those for whites, sustaining and at times increasing already significant racial and ethnic disparities.

Racially and ethnically diverse prisoner populations live in closer and more intimate proximity with one another than perhaps anywhere else in society.

In some prison systems, they also live together under conditions of severe deprivation and stress that help foment conflict among them. Despite this close proximity, racial and ethnic distinctions and forms of segregation occur on a widespread basis in prison—sometimes by official policy and practice and sometimes on the basis of informal social groupings formed by the prisoners themselves.

Race-and ethnicity-based prison gangs emerged in part as a result of these dynamics Hunt et al.The terms used in the juvenile justice system differ from those used in adult courts, but while they have distinct meanings and describe different processes, in many cases they .

DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE POLISH PENITENTIARY SYSTEM The basic document that organizes functioning of polish penitentiary system in matters of rights and duties of prisoners is criminal Executive Penal Code (ustawa z dnia 6 czerwca r.

The reformative approach to curb crimes such as these and reform the convicts has come up in order to protect the basic rights a human is entitled to. The Juvenile Justice System For Juvenile Offenders - Mediation history can be dated back to in Ontario, and the same principles are still being used to date (1).

Jurisdictional boundaries. States vary in how each sets the basic playing field for juvenile justice with lower and upper age boundaries.

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State legislatures further create a range of complex exceptions for transfer to criminal court based on case-by-case, age and offense specifics. Typology. The clinical and criminal dimensions of juvenile male sexual abusers often vary. As with their adult counterparts, juvenile sexual abusers fall primarily into two major types: those who target children and those who offend against peers or adults.