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Teenagers In The Juvenile Justice System

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During the ages of being a teenager, young individuals may go through the pressure of getting into a good college, have personal or family issues, and the experiences of being abused. A portion of these teenagers end up performing deeds that violate the law and are sent to juvenile justice systems. At these juvenile justice systems, juveniles are meant to be disciplined and taught to become a better citizen; however, there have been cases that show that the juvenile court systems have not only done little to nothing to benefit the juveniles, but also held them back in both school and life. Because of the harm and delay to these juveniles’ life, juvenile justice systems are not beneficial for troubled teens.

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Many groups consider other groups of different color to be inferior to them. Even at the beginning of finding America, the white settlers have seen African Americans as slaves and lower people than themselves. This idea has been abolished, but is still hinted in today’s economy and its juvenile justice systems. A large population of the teenagers in juvenile justice systems are African American, more than any other race. This large population suggests that African Americans are the most targeted by the police, which shows that juvenile justice systems treat teenagers of different races differently. For instance, in the case of the sixteen year old white teenager, Ethan Couch, where he killed four pedestrians while driving around Tarrant County drunk. He was sent to the juvenile court system on “his third alcohol-related offense, yet a judge did not sentence Couch to serve jail time”(Program 17). This sentence would not be given if this was the case with an African American. With the continuing judgement of other races, juvenile justice systems are biased and can give different sentences to different races committing the same …show more content…
The juvenile court programs have meeting routines with the juveniles and try to help them, but the juveniles may become tired of the routines and not actually comprehend what their supervisors wish to help them with. With getting tired of the daily routines, they may not pay attention anymore and would be wasting precious time of which they could be benefiting their own lives. In addition, they juvenile court programs requires a significant amount of money to support their existence. Recent statistics have shown that the annual spendings on juvenile justice systems range from two billion dollars to four billion dollars, and has been gradually increasing over the years. With the money that is spent on the juvenile court programs, they could use it to benefit the life and future of the juveniles. With the money, they could replace their poor education plan with a special school just for juveniles and give them the same curriculum as a regular school would. This would provide the juveniles with a similar education plan like everyone else and could lead them to become successful adults in the future. By poorly disciplining the juveniles and annually using a large amount of money, juvenile court systems are not beneficial for the troubled teenagers.

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