A New Perspective Towards The Justice System - 1583 Words

Final Assignment Over the course of the semester I have developed a new perspective towards the justice system. Prior to taking the Juvenile Delinquency course I did not know much in detail about the negative effects of the juvenile justice system on youths. Personally, I thought the juvenile justice system was created to educate youths in order to prevent them from getting involved in more crimes and to lead them to have better outcomes in the future by giving them resources they may have not been able to attain on their own prior to their convictions. However, in reading books such as, Between Good and Ghetto by Nikki Jones, A Question of Freedom by Dwayne Betts, and Punished by Victor Rios I was able to firsthand understand through†¦show more content†¦However, depending on their charge some of these youths can be treated as adults and put into adult facilities. This is traumatic and completely unfair to me. I do not understand how the juvenile justice system is even functional. Youths ar e thrown into the system for a multitude of reasons and not always given the proper resources to prevent them from coming back in. In the first place they are not all necessarily given any resources or support to avoid the system. Most of the youths incarcerated are lower class, Black and Latino males. This population is targeted due to their skin tone, demeanor, and often time’s surroundings. Learning about all the minor factors that can lead youths into the system is what truly opened my eyes to what was truly happening in society. Youths are being labeled and criminalized time and again because of authority figures not just in the streets but in schools. This relates to the youth control complex I learned through reading Victor Rio’s book Punished. He speaks about this concept referring to the institutions that we come across by everyday like schools, our homes, and the workplace treating young people in a distinct way because they view everyday behavior as criminal activity. This shaping the misconstrued perspective that all black and Latino males are criminals. In the book A Question of Freedom by Dwayne Betts, I was able to follow the journey of a young teen that was accused of a crime and charged as an adult. He