Plight of Juvenile Delinquents Essay
Juveniles are children who are involved in criminal activities or other activities that render them unfit to live together with the rest of the society. These children usually ran away from their homes and as a way of supplementing their daily basic needs they engage in criminal acts such as stealing and money laundering. The existence of juvenile treatment programs helps to minimize the number of such children in the streets and rehabilitate them into productive youths. Such organizations as Wilderness programs for juveniles have been doing a substantively great job in the rehabilitation process and continuation of funding is crucial to their continued service delivery. Cutting back on funding to these programs is counterproductive to the society.
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These organizations frequently require funds to finance their daily operations. But unfortunately these organizations are currently faced with a huge problem of funds because of financial cutbacks. Many grants that were received from companies have been cut while the juvenile justice department has also cut the amount of funds reserved for juvenile delinquents. These financial cut backs have the organizations unable to run their programs and consequently are on the verge of been discontinued. The state government may be going short of funds but cutting financial help would trigger many problems which would be costly to the society. Its advisable for the government to find alternative ways to remedy the situation rather than withdrawing financial support.
Results of Funding Juvenile programs
Definitely it’s not a good idea to let these financial cutbacks to continue. To consider this, we have to check the contribution this juvenile treatment programs has made to the society and the well being of the country. Apparently the juvenile crimes have reduced considerably by good margin since this treatment programs took effect. According to statistics, the rate of juvenile crime arrest was 66% of the total crime in 1980-2001. Back then the juveniles committed crimes such as assault, robbery, burglary, murder and possession of weapons illegally. However, these crimes had reduced a lot up to about 12% in 2002 (National research council, 2002, pg 283). This was a dramatic decrease in this crime rates. This attributes to help of juvenile treatment programs which have taken considerate initiative in restoring the innocence and morality of children as well as giving them a way of earning a living.
Besides if we consider taking these juveniles to trial for their crimes like adults, it will not be fair and just to them. This is solely because the children are just victims of their parents or their environment. It’s not always the children’s mistake to involve in criminal activities as well as making unsound and poor decisions. Moreover once these children are taken trial and sentenced, they are subjected to unprincipled scene and behaviors than those they were familiar with in the streets. Simply the judicial system that sends juveniles is completely unjust and inhumane. To be precise delinquency is a learned behavior but the jail is meant to mold criminal behavior (Moore, L. V, 2003, pg 144).
Continuation of Funding
It’s upon these reasons that the state should not at all cut funds to this juvenile treatment programs. It’s not something recommendable since once this programs collapse the crime rates will arise again to a very high level which might be hard to control. Deciding to arrest juveniles and send them to court for trial like adults is not just and human and this will raise eyebrows from human rights groups and organizations. Therefore the best way to deal with the problem of juvenile delinquents is to send them to treatment programmes where they are rehabilitated. These programs not only help children to correct their mistakes but they also influence the values, ethics and morals of this children. They make the child see and feel the intensity of their mistakes and the impact or effects they had on the victim.
This helps them to know that they were guilty and immoral hence they deserve to apologize or compensate the victim expensively (DuBois, D. L, Hollaway, B. E. et al , 2002, pg 158).This assists to get rid of the bad and cruel thinking the child has which might have been caused by the environment which the child was brought up or even the parents. Besides this they provide training programmes that equip these children with certain skills and talents that will enable them find their own living without engaging in criminal activities. In short they convert them to be productive people in the society.
Hence a constant flow of funds to these programs has to be maintained. This is the only way that can show the treatment programmes have not been neglected by the state or the society. In the case where funds are limited, alternative raising funds should be launched with immediate effect. It should actually be made a priority and be included in the national budgeting as well. It’s considered to be a matter of national welfare which touches a number of other departments such as national security, department of human rights, department of justice and social affairs as well as the economic wellbeing of the whole nation. All this have been explained earlier on so the only thing that remains to be accomplished and a major challenge is the way to raise finance for such organizations especially when the government has insufficient funds.
Therefore funding becomes a national priority to be considered by the local policy makers and program developers of the national federal state. Though it fluctuates depending on the state of the economy, there is need to generate sustainable strategies to fund this programs. One strategy that can be established is the creation of dedicated revenue sources. This strategy provides stable financing hence serve as an advantage to both program developers and policy makers in predicting the amounts of funs to be collected over time. There are several ways through which the state can raise dedicated revenues.
Methods of Funding
One way is through special taxing districts. These districts are independent units separate from municipals or counties. The revenues collected from taxes imposed on taxe………….
