Can you imagine at the age of 13 or 14 being sentenced to life in prison? Not being able to live your life or see the outside world for the rest of your life. “On any given day, nearly 60,000 youth under age 18 are incarcerated in juvenile jails and prisons in the United States (ACLU)”. Most young adolescents are kept in solitary confinement, which means they are locked up for up to 22-23 hours a day. The juvenile system was built to help reconstruct these young adults and help them get the second chance they deserve.

We are sending these young kids not only to juvenile systems but we are also sending them to adult prisons. These young adults are experiencing the adult prison system and it is giving them emotional trauma. We are causing these, basically children, to see and deal with things they shouldn’t be dealing with at a young age. If they get the chance to get out they are only going to know the criminal behavior.

Within the system for juvenile’s we need to have more things to help them actually live a better life outside of the system. We need to give them the best education they can get, or give them counseling that they must go to. There’s research that shows that youth do better when they are able to stay in the community and stay with their families. We are looking at just keeping these children in jail because they committed a crime but we don’t realize it’s affecting them.

I believe that these children shouldn’t be put in such bad places at a young age. They are seeing and hearing things that shouldn’t be seen or heard at such a young age. We are punishing these children, yes for bad crimes, but not in the way we should. They should be able to be kids and learn like normal kids. We are treating them like they are grown adults but they haven’t even experienced real life yet.

Children should not be put in these types of situations. They should be able to live with family and grown up. Now, if this was your child, what would you do? Would you want them locked up and thrown in prison for a long time, or would you want them to learn from their decisions and get punished the correct way? As always, like, comment, share, and subscribe!