Mental Health Issues In The Juvenile Justice System

In the past, juvenile offenders were held to the same standards and sanctions as adult offenders. The history of juvenile offenders can be set back to the middle ages era. There were many different methods on how the law dealt with juvenile offenders within this time period that are consider unethical today. In this time, state decided to just let the parents deal with this delinquency behavior. In a primitive age of children law, there were no real methods on how to adjudicate juvenile offenders. Nevertheless, youths in adult prisons and facilities were not being adequately address for their needs. It was not until the 19th century that path the way of using juvenile detention center facilities. With that being said, Juvenile justice system …show more content…
Within this center there juvenile delinquent that are held for court hearings, placed in a long-term care facilities or be located into rehabilitation programs. There are over 2 million children, youth, and young adults that has had an interaction within a detention facility. Juvenile delinquency refers to children committing crimes that result in legal intervention (Vincent, 2011). However, every year many young adolescents that are diagnosed with mental health issues are committed into the juvenile justice system with no proper assistant. Detention facilities are responsible for protecting both the welfare of the youth and public safety; therefore it’s their duty to make sure these facilities are adequate with appropriate tools for those with mental health …show more content…
“70% of children in juvenile detention facilities suffer from one or more mental health issues” (Mental Health Screening in Juvenile Detention Facilities, 2012). Moreover, there are some cases where parents hand over their mentally ill child or adolescent to the system to acquire assistance to their children. What they don’t realize is that detention centers are not adequately equipped to manage youth with mental health needs. “With approximately 70,000 children across the country spending time in residential detention facilities each year, mental health disorders present a serious challenge to successful rehabilitation” ((Mental Health Screening in Juvenile Detention Facilities, 2012). Since there is improper training of correctional personnel, in detention facilities, it becomes hard to identify youth’s behavior that are exhibiting these conducts. This creates issues for these youths because they are not getting the necessary interventions that is needed for