Harsher penalties are in fact the answer to juvenile crime. Throughout the last couple of decades juvenile crime has skyrocketed. Citizens of the United States have become fed up with juveniles running around with the arrogant attitude that they can do whatever they want. I believe this is very important in regards to many different issues. Juvenile Crime is no longer something we can view as just a growing up process. This issue affects all of us who have been victimized or who know a victim of juvenile crime. Hopefully we can rehabilitate these juveniles through harsher penalties so they can become vital contributors to society. The current criminal justice view is to lock up violent youth in secure confinement, where they will learn to modify their violent behavior. (CJA, Database). This further strengthens my view that even though harsher punishments are important we must also institute rehabilitation processes in order to effectively penalize a juvenile. .
The problem of juvenile crime must go on no longer. It is true that Juveniles are still children but try explaining that to the victims. The bearing of their crime is no different than that of a crime committed by an adult. The facts speak for themselves. Since 1960 the number of delinquency cases handled by juvenile courts nationwide have nearly QUADRUPILED rising to 1.55 million in 1994. (Butterfield, 1997) Even though crime amongst juveniles declined during the late 1990's this drop in crime has been attributed not to the system reforming these juveniles but to economic prosperity.( Freeman, 2000) This period of prosperity is in stark relation to the prosperous time of the 60's when there was rising prosperity and employment. This rate did not continue though because crime exploded in the 70's. This evidence shows us that short term statistics have little or baseless value. Most Departments only put these statistics out to make themselves look good until their tenure is served.