Juvenile Justice - Research Paper Example

This would involve merging punishment and welfare in contributing to the rehabilitative reformatory. Since Mrs. I does not want her son to go to jail for his crime, the question would be; ”should we punish,” or “should we treat the situation “ (Reader, 1996). Therefore the best approach to the case considering Mrs. I’s concerns would be to talk to the teen and understand why he had to commit the crime, introduce treating mechanisms, which would make the youth to pay for the crime such.

Such treatment would include recommending he should never touch a vehicle until he improves his behaviors, and threatening to take him to jail any time such a case is reported in the future. Such an approach as Markman (2007) notes would be in accordance to parens patriae doctrine in protecting, rehabilitating and healing process. There are three steps that have to be used to protect Mrs I’s teenager. The first step would be accountability. This would involve taking responsibility for one’s behavior, take the necessary action to repair any harm caused and be ready to change (NCJRS, 2000).

In this case, the teenager has to understand how his behavior affected others, accept, and acknowledge that the behavior involved a choice that could be made differently, and make changes to avoid such behavior in the future. The teenager has also to have support from his parents to ensure he realizes his mistakes and is ready to change for the better. This focuses on repairing the harm done by such a teenager, and not so much on punishment (Little 2010). The second stage would be competency development.

Competency would be explained as the capacity to do something well to be valued by others (Pranis, 1998). The juvenile offender has to have a chance to perform meaningful and important tasks in the community and contribute to the wellbeing of others. Such would involve learning to make meaningful choices, belong to a community, and contribute positively in developing decision making, reasoning and problem solving skills (NCJRS, 2000). The third step would involve community protection. In a balanced and restorative justice framework, youths with strong connections to their communities and care about people in their community are less likely to offend.

This would involve initiatives that would foster positive relationship with the family and the community at large (Pranis, 1998). To help the teen, it would be important to facilitate a cordial relationship between the youth, the family, and community, which would indicate the extent of reforming the teen has undergone. To ensure this is achieved, it would be important supervise the youth for sometime, where he has to report regularly on his day to day activities, use house arrests for some time to ensure he realizes his mistakes by denying the freedom he treasures, and ensure he is involved in some communal undertakings to understand how best to live in a community, which would in turn help in his reforming process by understanding his responsibilities, and having a sense of belonging (NCJRS, 2000).

As a judge, there would be several factors to consider. For example, prototypical of the current psychological discourse related to youth and the hormonal imbalance issue, criminologists view youths as subjects to a number