User:Kari.Harper/Incarceration in the United States

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Original Text

Through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, the United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world, a reflection of the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. This has been a source of controversy for a number of reasons, including the overcrowding and violence in youth detention facilities, the prosecution of youths as adults and the long term consequences of incarceration on the individual's chances for success in adulthood. In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Committee criticized the United States for about ten judicial abuses, including the mistreatment of juvenile inmates. A UN report published in 2015 criticized the US for being the only nation in the world to sentence juveniles to life imprisonment without parole.

According to federal data from 2011, around 40% of the nation's juvenile inmates are housed in private facilities.

The incarceration of youths has been linked to the effects of family and neighborhood influences. One study found that the "behaviors of family members and neighborhood peers appear to substantially affect the behavior and outcomes of disadvantaged youths".

Nearly 53,000 youth were incarcerated in 2015. 4,656 of those were held in adult facilities, while the rest were in juvenile facilities. Of those in juvenile facilities, 69% are 16 or older, while over 500 are 12 or younger. As arrest and crime rates are not equal across demographic groups, neither is prison population. The Prison Policy Initiative broke down those numbers, finding that, relative to their share of the U.S. population, "black and American Indian youth are over represented in juvenile facilities while white youth are under represented.", Black youth comprise 14% of the national youth population, but "43% of boys and 34% of girls in juvenile facilities are Black. And even excluding youth held in Indian country facilities, American Indians make up 3% of girls and 1.5% of boys in juvenile facilities, despite comprising less than 1% of all youth nationally.".

'''Here, I would make edits on where I could expand on highlighting some of the neighborhood influence in paragraph 3, such as increased policing. Edit would look like:'''

In addition to behavioral impacts from the home and their neighborhoods, treatment within schools and school policies increases the incarceration of youth, one such treatment being the "zero tolerance policies". Zero tolerance policies are viewed as controversial because it is up to the school to create standards for policing.

NOTE: Zero tolerance policies are brought up later in a "Students" section, but it still bears importance to discuss in youth.

My Edit Plan, Continued


 * As I continue researching and editing, I want to add in a subsection for Adultification. This subsection or highlight would occur in the "Students" section. Even on the Youth Incarceration Wikipedia page, there isn't any mention of the subject. Adultification pertains to the treatment of Black girls as adults in comparison to their white peers. This contributes to the prison population as a whole. While girls are already a smaller population in the prison population, Black girls are overrepresented due to adultification.
 * The order of the sections needs to be changed here; the students and youth section should be one after the other to clearly demonstrate a continued line of thought
 * There is a specific image in the "Caretakers" subsection of "Impact" that I want to remove
 * it is an image of an elderly Black woman holding a Black baby and that greatly stereotypes and positions Black families as dysfunctional.
 * this also reinforces the types of labor that women of color are forced into, not taking in account that poorer white women and individuals are impacted by/forced into as well
 * I think I will either just delete the image as a whole or use a more diverse image with multiple types of families impacted by the carceral system.

Edit Plan as of 03/30

 * UPDATE: I think I want to just edit the order when it talks about youth. And add in not a subsection, but a few more sentences. My concern is that I get too "emotional" or biased in the writing.
 * Adultification pertains to the treatment of Black girls as adults in comparison to their white peers . Adultification starts in infancy and is built on implicit biases that increase throughout childhood. This bias contributes to the increased detainment of Black female children.
 * UPDATE: I will just delete the picture, this doesn't make any sense to keep or replace. I think the subtext of the image is important and could even just be added into the text.
 * ORIGINAL: Though the effects on caregivers of these children vary based on factors such as the relationship to the prisoner and his or her support system, it is well known that it is a financial and emotional burden to take care of a child. In addition to taking care of their nuclear family, caregivers are now responsible for another individual who requires attention and resources to flourish. Depending on the relationship to the caregiver, the transition to a new household may not be easy for the child. The rationale behind targeting caregivers for intervention policies is to ensure the new environment for the children is healthy and productive. The federal government funds states to provide counseling to caretaking family members to alleviate some of the associated emotional burden. A more comprehensive program from Washington (state) employs "kinship navigators" to address caretakers' needs with initiatives such as parental classes and connections to legal services
 * ADDITION: It is commonly observed that older women, often grandmothers, to become the caretaker of a child with an incarcerated parent.
 * UPDATE: Add works cited/references to further reading?