Juveniles confined in jails and prisons face serious threats to their health and well-being. Juveniles in adult facilities face a high risk of physical and sexual abuse from guards and other inmates, and this abuse may have devastating and long-term consequences for the victimized juvenile. Juveniles confined in adult facilities also have dramatically higher rates of suicide than do their counterparts housed in juvenile facilities. While confined in adult facilities, juveniles lack access to services critical to their continued development and are particularly vulnerable to criminal socialization. Juveniles face significantly higher rates of physical and sexual abuse in adult facilities than do adult inmates in the same facilities or juveniles housed in juvenile facilities. This abuse often begins immediately, within the first forty-eight hours of a juvenile’s entry into an adult …show more content…
Somewhere our justice system got off track we replaced medieval guillotines and rope for jail cells that don't aim to rehabilitate. Each year in the United States, children as young as 13 are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without any opportunity for release. Approximately 2,500 children have been sentenced to juvenile life without parole in the United States. Despite a global consensus that children cannot be held to the same standards of responsibility as adults are and recognition that children are entitled to special protection and treatment, the United States allows children to be treated and punished as adults. Lolita is a part of this statistic she is desperate, and will do anything to save her life. She claims that she doesn’t have the same mindset as she did when she was 17, frankly no one does. Each year people get older and they mature and I feel as an American we should allow our Juveniles a second chance at life. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2012 that juveniles convicted of murder cannot be subject to a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of