Louisiana Four Juvenile Facilities example essay topic

When I was growing up I always heard the saying", that times have changed and not for the better". I've never quite understood what that meant. I can remember saying", I can't wait till I grow up, so I can be on my own. In middle and high school there was school fights, once the fight was broken up, all of the children involved in the fight made up and that was the end of the fight. In today's society that has all changed. Now when there is school fight it might lead to the street and may even result in death.

Teenagers in today's society, in my opinion are willing to take far more of a risk then I was ever willing to take. They don't think about their actions before they do them. Here in New Orleans teen violence occurs almost everyday. When people in the community want to do something about teen violence, there is no one in the legislature who wants to hear or take the blame. No one person is to blame for the rise in Juvenile crime. The purpose for my paper is to show how and why these teens are committing these violent acts.

I plan to (1) show how crime has risen within the last twenty years. (2) I plan to make an attempt to explain why these teens are committing deviant act such as shooting or killing each other. (3) I plan to talk about the facilities here in Louisiana that our Juveniles are sent to and what should be done about this. Going back twenty years you will see that juvenile crime has risen more than twenty percent. In 1997 the black youth represented eighty percent of youths being in secure facilities. In 1994 seventy percent of the youths released from prison has committed another crime.

Twenty percent of youths that are incarcerated have been diagnosed mentally ill or mentally retarded and our state is doing nothing to help them. Here in Louisiana African Americans youths are twelve times more likely to get incarcerated then white youth. In 1997 over a month period 8.5 percent of High School students carried around a weapon. Also, in 1997 1679 teenagers were charged with a violent crime. When I listen to my relatives talk about when they were growing up they were able to watch television with their doors open. The world we live in today you have to make sure that you lock your door as soon as you walk in it.

School violence is another issue America has been facing. Here in New Orleans we have had two major schools shooting take place. The first shooting happened in 2000 at Carter G. Woodson Middle School. The incident involved and thirteen year old and a fifteen year old.

There was an argument between the two students. The thirteen-year-old was passed a gun through the fence by another student. After receiving the gun the tirtheen year old shot the fifteen-year-old and in return he took the gun and shot the thirteen-year-old back. The fifteen-year-old was shot in the chest and the thirteen-year-old was shot in the back. As a result of this one of these young men became part of the juvenile system. Last academic school year we suffered another school shooting at John McDonald Senior High School.

Fifteen-year-old Jonathan Williams was shot to death in the school gymnasium. As a result of this three other people were injured. The suspects entered the school through a broken fence and walked in the gymnasium and asked who Jonathan was and then they began to open fire. After investigating the shooting police determined that one of the female students was part of the set-up along with six others.

It was also determined that this was a retaliation shooting. Apparently Jonathan had bragged to some people that he had shot a student at Joseph Clark Senior High School and members of his gang decided that it was time for Jonathan to die. In this case the shooting did not stop there, there was other retaliation shooting as a result of this. We lost two young men to street violence and we lost the seven people that were arrested in this case to our system. We ask ourselves who is to blame in these situations that our youth face. Is it the government or is it the environment that these youths are being brought up in, or is it the music they listen to?

If I were to take this question and turn it into a survey I bet you that most people would say that the explicit lyrics that the youth listen to, but I don't believe that. When you are in school the first thing your teachers tell you is that manner and good behavior starts at home. I believe this saying, I believe the way people are bringing their children up these days is the problem. When my parents were growing up, they lived in a more family oriented environment and their parents tried to let them know what was accepted and what is not. My father always said how with ten children his mother never showed any favoritism and when you did something wrong she made sure you knew it was wrong.

In the case of the John McDonald shooting when the newspapers interviewed parents of both of the teens killed, they both made their children seem as if they were angles. Jonathan's mother said that there is not way her son was a killer. My mother always said when your right your right, but when you are wrong you are wrong. Today we have parents wanting to up hold their children in their wrong, not wanting to see what is right in front of them.

If you don't scold your children on what is right and what is wrong then how are they supposed to know? The Texas Youth Commission shares some of the same points as I do, they believe that kids lack attachment, they feel as if they don't belong and they have no role models to look up to. Most of the juveniles are teens that come from the gang infested neighborhoods and as a result of they grow up seeing these illegal activities. They also talk about how most of these kids come from broken homes and live in poverty. They noticed that this mostly happens with minority children.

These days we have babies having babies, how can you raise a child when you are still a child yourself? Once these teenage girls get pregnant some not all drops out of school, in my opinion if you drop out of school then how are you going to educate your child, or how are you going to become your child's role model? The answer to that is you are not, your going to get those nickle and penny jobs just enough to by and being an African Americans that does not leave you many choices. As an African American you are stuck raising your child in a drug related and a violent neighborhood.

Then we have these drug mothers and we have the children who want a better life for themself and their sibling, but the only way they know how to do this is through legitimate means. In Criminal Justice class we learned that it is part of the modes of adaptation. We also studied in Criminal Justice class as a result of being around something or someone you tend to learn or pick up their behavior and this behavior becomes deviant and is known as the Learning Theory. According to Texas Youth Commission there is a rise in incarcerated juveniles coming from two-parent families. When you feel as a parent that you have given your child everything they have ever wanted physically that your job as a parent is done, but it's not. What is it to give a child everything they want if you are not there for them mentally?

These children may feel as if they are not important to their parents or they are a burden to their parents. As a parent your job is never done, because like my grandmother says children didn't ask to come here. You can't blame the whole thing on parents because our government is also to blame. Sometimes the government makes it hard for parents to make a better living for our kids.

Here in Louisiana we have the highest rate of incarcerated juveniles. Our government spends more money on incarcerating juveniles then it spends on educating them. In the Times Picayune there was just an article that showed how Louisiana after many years had just made an improvement on our test scores, but we are still lacking behind other states. Here in New Orleans our city is divided into two parishes Jefferson and Orleans. But when you look at the number it is not Jefferson Parish where the problem is, it is Orleans Parish.

In Orleans Parish the school system is mostly made up of African Americans children and teachers. When you enter into high school, some have an dream of becoming their class Valedictorian and others see it a way of staying out of trouble. What if you work and work and you thought that you had achieved your goal only to have it stripped away. This was the case of a High School student name Bridget Green.

Bridget had worked all four year of high school and was named Valedictorian of her class before the leap results came back. Once the school officials received the results Green had not passed the leap and her title was stripped away from her. Bridget had taken the exit exam and failed it six times, in an interview she said that she felt that the school system has failed her. I've never been to a public school and I've never had to take the leap or exit examination, but I do know some who have.

My boyfriend took the exit exam and failed it, he said that his school didn't prepare him for the leap test either. How can the government spend the tax payers money on incarcerating juveniles when we have children who go to school to learn, but they are not getting the proper education and when they get these standardize test they fail. Not everyone can afford to send their child to a private or catholic school, they have no choice but to send their children to a public school and hope for the best. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation taxpayers spend an average of one hundred-fifty seven dollars to keep our youth incarcerated in one of Louisiana four juvenile facilities.

In a year Louisiana will spend eighty-nine million dollars to incarcerate a youth and this is more than other general funds for youth. Of this eighty-nine million only seventeen percent of it will be spent on education and the other forty-six percent is spent on security for the facilities. Every time there is election, the candidates always talk of important education is. The candidates always talk about if they are elected how they will focus on education and once they are elected I guess they forget what they promised and the people who got them there. There is a new school Superintendent and he is the only person in my opinion who is actually making the effort to turn the Orleans Parish school system around and some don't like it. I think people get afraid when a change comes but sometimes you have to make a change in order to make things better.

Out of juveniles there are more African American males that are incarcerated then there are others. According George Bridges a professor at the University of Washington and author of a study that examined juvenile court cases found that black juveniles are serving a harsher penalty then white juveniles for the same crime. Mr. Bridges also mentioned that how black juveniles are look at differently compared to white juveniles. Black juvenile are being characterized by their character.

In 1999 Senators John Breaux and Mary Landrieu got a four million dollar grant to allow Louisiana to get programs to allow construction on facilities and to hire more law enforcement officers. I have found that in Louisiana juvenile prisons there are an average of five hundred youths that are getting injured a month, and most of these children can not speak up for themselves. Another fact is there most of the children in these facilities do not have legal representation. In a correction facility here in Louisiana named Tallulah there is an average of two youths that are taken to the infirmary with broken jaws, smashed, teeth, and cuts and bruises because of the violence that takes place in these facility. Another problem with these facilities is that these are suppose to learn from their mistakes but instead that part is not taking place, we have guards that are having sex with the youth and are giving them cigarettes and drugs and throwing the mentally ill children in the isolation cells. What does this say about your character as an adult, this is why some children have problem with authority, because we have those who are authority figure stooping down to the level of these youths.

In Tallulah we have children being let out on the street even after they have not been rehabilitated and this is the reason why our streets are being made less safe and as a result you have some going in out of prison and there were some that were on death row. What we need to do is close down this facility and maybe with this money we can take this and open up an alternative center to help these troubled teens. In order for something to take place, it take the citizens of Louisiana to voice there opinions, write letters to the senators, start petitions and let them know that you are not backing down until something is done about the problem. Once you have been in the system you know what it is that you need to do to get out. Instead of the authority figures teaching these teens, the teens are fooling them.

In conclusion as a society we need change. We need to except the changes that we may face. We need to work on helping our teens instead of always putting them down. In Louisiana our government in my opinion needs to get their priorities straight and help our youths instead of keeping them down. We as African Americans already know that the odds are against us we need to rise above the negativity. As parents we have to want better for our children especially our black children.

We have to teach our children what is right and wrong. When they are wrong don't uphold them, address the problem and let the child know that they have done something that is not right. Over all these teens have to have the determination to want better for themself.