Youth Offenders and the Juvenile Justice System: Focus on Mental Health Issues

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Youth offenders/ juvenile justice system, focus on young offenders with mental health issues.
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During the last decade, much reliance has been placed on the juvenile justice system for fulfilling
the demands of juvenile offenders having mental health problems. Owing to this rising
propensity, research is undertaken to explore the efficiency of different interventions and
approaches along with treatment programs having different levels of success. At the same time, it
is suggested by the present literature that as a result of internet-related problems involved for the
youth in system having mental health matters, there is a need for a dynamic system of care that is
capable of going beyond treatment.
Introduction: the juvenile justice system is at present facing the task of giving mental health
valuations and cure services to the young, particularly in view of plans on juvenile justice system
for doing so. In this regard, Garascia (2005) has pointed out that originally the juvenile justice
was a preventive and rehabilitative approach, which emphasize on the needs and rights of the
children as compared to give encouragement to them. Therefore, it needs to be mentioned that
the ultimate goal of juvenile justice system, according to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention Act, 1974 was to keep young persons away from formal, retributive processing that is
a part of adult justice system. They result, in turn, was the use of community-based programs
instead of the larger institutions. During 1980s and 90s, there was an interesting shift presence in
the treatment of juvenile offenders by the justice system. Before 1980s, juveniles were
considered as rehabilitative. But on account of a short-lived rise in forceful crime, the main goal
became the protection of the community. The consequence was that an approach was developed
by the juvenile justice system according to which punishment/criminalization perspective was
used over the rehabilitative/medicalization standpoint. In the same way, the education system
adopted zero-tolerance attitude, during the early 1990s, nearly half of US States revised their

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laws which allowed that juvenile offenders can be prosecuted simply in adult courts. Similarly,
more punitive laws were introduced for the purpose of dealing with adolescent crime.
Even if the youth involved in vicious as well as non-violent crimes at a lower rate, it is
mentioned by Harms (2002) that the number of young persons who were processed through the
system also surged significantly. For example, in 1960, nearly 1100 delinquency cases were
possessed each day, while in 2009, nearly 4000 pregnancy cases were handled by the juvenile
courts. Similarly in 2013 the number of delinquency cases processed daily was around 2900.
According to an estimate by the National Juvenile Justice Council, the number of these cases
went up by 30% between 1985 and 2009. At the same time there was a decrease of 9% between
1985 and 2013. More particularly the delinquency cases involving drug offenses, public order
offenses and person offenses increased while there was a decrease in property offenses. Between
1985 and 2013 the number of delinquency cases in which detention was involved reached its
peak in 2002. However, it decreased by 44% through 2013 and reached its lowest level since
1985. Therefore NJJC provides that despite the decrease in the number of delinquency cases in
which detention was involved, the proportion of cases detained was hired in 2013 (at 21%) as
compared to 1985 with 19%. Between 1985 and 2013, the chances that a delinquency case was
going to be in formerly handled also decreased significantly. Even if there was an intermediate
upsurge, 31% of all the delinquency cases caused adjudication or waiver to criminal court. This
was much similar to 1985 with 30% of all cases. In view of the situation, it can be said that some
efforts were being made in the last few years for decreasing the number of youth cases that were
being processed in the juvenile justice system. However, this can be achieved by processing the
cases in a more informal manner or shifting the cases to adult courts.