Juvenile Justice System in California Essay Example for Free

Juvenile Justice System in California Essay Does the Time Fit the Crime? This is a call to action, how much do we actually know about the California Juvenile Justice system? Have we given up on today’s youth? There are more than 2,500 juvenile offender’s states wide that have been sentenced to life in prison or life without parole. They are sent to adult court in which they were convicted for their crimes. This is costing California tax payers 2. 5 million dollars a year to house each offender, and approximately 252,000 a year per youth in the CYA (Krinsky, Pierce, Woodford,p1;Kita,p1). How does this affect their psychological development? Of the different races which is most effected? Is it teaching them to be better individuals or better criminals? What effects does it have on the youth’s family? Is justice being served? As of today there are 300 youth juveniles incarcerated in the state of California that have been given life or life without parole. Does race, social, and environmental factors play a role in the sentencing phase? Does the time fit the crime? Is it appropriate for juveniles to be sentenced as adults? The Juvenile Justice Court System was designed and dedicated to the adjudication of crimes committed by juvenile youth offenders. To be over seen by the Los Angeles Superior Court Division of Juvenile Courts (Shouselaw). Their sole purpose and goal is the rehabilitation of youth offenders. In 1943 the state of California opened CYA as a reform school; but today it functions similar to the adult prisons today (Kita, p1). Youth that are prosecuted in adult court are moved out of CYA at 18 and sent to adult prison to serve the reminder of their time (Kita, p1). Fewer juvenile offenders are being committed to CYA, and more are being sent directly to adult prison. â€Å" Despite declines in juvenile confinement over the last decade, California still has the 10th highest rate of juvenile incarceration in the nation (271 per 100,000) and the fifth highest White-Black racial disparity: Black children are incarcerated at 8. 5 times the rate of White children† (Children Defense Fund). â€Å" There are many factors and statistics used in the arguments for and against juvenile sentences of life without parole (LWOP), however the statistics involving he much higher percentage, of blacks serving life sentences than whites are very rarely mentioned† (Bell,p. 2). This is further data that supports the argument that black youth has the highest ratio of incarceration. The legislature is considering bill SB399 which would allow a second chance opportunity, this shows that the state of California Juvenile System is in need of reform and structuring. Without SB399 there isn’t any way to revisit these sentences. (Krinsky, Pierce, Woodford, p. 2). What immediate changes need to take place today to reduce the number of youths, being incarceration? According to the group Reforming the Juvenile Justice System, the United States is the only country in the world that sentences young people to life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed when they were teenagers (RJJS). In California approximately 300 youth have been given this sentence – a sentence to die in prison for mistakes they made during adolescence. According to â€Å"Human Rights Watch estimates, a majority of these young people (59 percent) were first time offenders, and almost half (45 percent) were convicted of murder but were not the ones who actually committed the murder† (RJJS). What can we do as a society and community to help carve the problem within our communities to ensure our youth are being treated fairly in the juvenile system? There are several problems and issues that the juvenile justice systems face today. Allegations of mistreatment, abuse, excessive force, 23 hour confinement in their cells, locking juveniles in cages at school, not providing adequate medical and mental health services, and perpetuation of gang related violence among the youth offenders. (Shouselaw,p.? ). We as a society have to raise the question? How have these problems and issues gone unaddressed for so long? Who do we hold accountable for these allegations? Therefore, asking how this effects their psychological development and how much of it impacts their social interactions and behavior. Youth advocates have argued that juvenile youth offenders’ brains are not mature enough to fully understand the seriousness of their crimes they’ve been accused of. The organization CDFCA has stated that: â€Å"Adolescent brain development research has helped us understand the ways that youth are fundamentally different from adults. With the prefrontal lobe of the brain still developing throughout the teenage years, adolescents have more difficulty processing information, making logical in-the-moment decisions, weighing long-term consequences, and avoiding peer pressure. Given this research in adolescent brain development, policymakers and even the Supreme Court have recognized that youth are less culpable than adults for their actions and more likely to be rehabilitated. The Children’s Defense Fund – CA believes strongly that policies around incarceration and sentencing should reflect these developmental differences, and that youth should be kept out of the adult criminal justice system and given the opportunity for rehabilitation† (RJJS,p. 1). Subsequently, providing the evidence of how broken the juvenile system truly is, Richard A. Mendel wrote, We now have overwhelming evidence showing that wholesale incarceration of juvenile offenders is a counterproductive public policy† (Mendel, p. 1) Stating that the current juvenile justice system. Which relies heavily on mass incarceration of teen offenders, is badly broken? The violence and abuse within youth facilities is bad enough, but these institutions also fail to rehabilitate the youth within them. (Mendel, p. 1) Adding reinforcement that something must be done immediately to save our youth; leaving us to wonder how these effects will ultimately shape their lives for the better or the worst. There is a sense of hopelessness and despair that illuminates over these juveniles. Are the sentences handed down in these cases justified? Has justice being served in these cases? Supports of juvenile reform has provided data and research that back their claims that black youth are being sentence to much long terms than any of other race. The Human Rights Watch organization conducted research in California and found that there is discrimination when sentencing black youth offenders: † The states application of the law is also unjust. Eighty-five percent of youth sentenced to life without parole are people of color, with 75 percent of all cases in California being African American or Hispanic youth. African American youth are sentenced to life without parole at a rate that is 18. 3 times the rate for whites. Hispanic youth in California are sentenced to life without parole at a rate that is five times the rate of white youth in the state California has the worst record in the country for racially disproportionate sentencing. In California, African American youth are sentenced to life without parole at rates that suggest unequal treatment before sentencing courts. This unequal treatment by sentencing courts cannot be explained only by white and African American youths differential involvement in crime† (HRWO,p. 1). In addition to discrimination they also found that â€Å"In California alone, more than half of the youth sentenced are first time offenders with no previous criminal record. The Human Rights Watch survey of these inmates also found that many had not actually committed the murder and that their adult codefendants actually received a lesser sentence† (HRWO,p1). Therefore, pointing out that these youth offenders did not have adequate representation. The organization Human Rights Watch wrote: â€Å"Poor legal representation often compromises a just outcome in juvenile life without parole cases. Sending Approximately 227 youth have been sentenced to die in Californias prisons. They have not been sentenced to death: the death penalty was found unconstitutional for juveniles by the United States Supreme Court in 2005. Instead, these young people have been sentenced to prison for the rest of their lives, with no opportunity for parole and no chance for release. Forty-five percent of youth reported that they were held legally responsible for a murder committed by someone else. In California, the vast majority of those 17 years old and younger sentenced to life without the possibility of parole was convicted of murder. Showing that nationally 59 percent of youth sentenced to life without paroles are first-time offenders, without single juvenile court adjudication on their records† (HRWO, p1-3. ). Furthermore, this research support their claims that race, social, and environment factors play a major role in sentencing. Providing addition evidence that black and Latino juveniles are treated unfairly and justice is not being served. In conclusion, the California Juvenile Justice System is in dire need of reform. In January of this year Govern Jerry Brown, proposed is plan to end the juvenile justice division by March 2015(sfgate. com). Thus answering the questions posed there are a great deal, of problems and issues that must be addressed immediately. Like the mass incarceration of youth juveniles and mishandling of sentencing in these cases. And the harsh unfair life sentences or life without parole, which will have long term effects on their psychological development, which will impact their social and behavior interactions. This will limit their chance of ever being release. And give them an opportunity to start over with a clean slide. Furthermore, leaven a profound impact on the lives of their families. Shedding light on a decade of unfair inappropriate actions on behave of the courts. In which justice was not served in any of the cases.

The Bayesian Theory of Confirmation, Idealizations and Approximations in Science :: Scientific Papers

The Bayesian Theory of Confirmation, Idealizations and Approximations in Science ABSTRACT: My focus in this paper is on how the basic Bayesian model can be amended to reflect the role of idealizations and approximations in the confirmation or disconfirmation of any hypothesis. I suggest the following as a plausible way of incorporating idealizations and approximations into the Bayesian condition for incremental confirmation: Theory T is confirmed by observation P relative to background knowledge where I is the conjunction of idealizations and approximations used in deriving the prediction PT from T, PD expresses the discrepancy between the prediction PT and the actual observation P, and stands for logical entailment. This formulation has the virtue of explicitly taking into account the essential use made of idealizations and approximations as well as the fact that theoretically based predictions that utilize such assumptions will not, in general, exactly fit the data. A non-probabilistic analogue of the confirmation condition above that I offer avoids the 'old evidence problem, which has been a headache for classical Bayesianism. Idealizations and approximations like point-masses, perfectly elastic springs, parallel conductors crossing at infinity, assumptions of linearity, of "negligible" masses, of perfectly spherical shapes, are commonplace in science. Use of such simplifying assumptions as catalysts in the process of deriving testable predictions from theories complicates our picture of confirmation and disconfirmation. Underlying the difficulties is the fact that idealizing and approximating assumptions are already known to be false statements, and yet they are often indispensable when testing theories for truth. This aspect of theory testing has been long neglected or misunderstood by philosophers. In standard hypothetico-deductive, bootstrapping and Bayesian accounts of confirmation, idealizations and approximations are simply ignored. My focus in this paper is on how the basic Bayesian model can be amended to reflect the role of idealizations and approximations in the confirmation or disconfirmation o f an hypothesis. I suggest the following as a plausible way of incorporating idealizations and approximations into the Bayesian condition for incremental confirmation: Theory T is confirmed by observation P relative to background knowledge where I is the conjunction of idealizations and approximations used in deriving the prediction PT from T, PD expresses the discrepancy between the prediction PT and the actual observation P, and stands for logical entailment. This formulation has the virtue of explicitly taking into account the essential use made of idealizations and approximations as well as the fact that theoretically based predictions that utilize such assumptions will not, in general, exactly fit the data.

Drug Addiction and Service Training Program Essay

The National Service Training Program (NSTP) Law, RA 9163, also known as â€Å"An Act Establishing the National Service Training Program for tertiary level students, has three program components; Reserve Officer’s Training Corps [ROTC], Civic Welfare Training Service [CWTS], and Literacy Training Service [LTS] – aiming to enhance civic consciousness and defense preparedness in the youth and developing the ethics of service and patriotism. Under the NSTP-MAPUA Office, which supervises the implementations of CWTS and ROTC, governed by R.A. 9163 of 2001, are MAPUA-CWTS and MAPUA-ROTC Offices. These two independent offices provide students a grading system, and different activities that endows students with theoretical and practical knowledge and experiences that are needed for community services. After finishing LTS/CWTS, graduates become part of National Service Reserved Corps; after finishing ROTC, graduates will be a part of Citizen Armed Forces. A human is a rational being, born free but are responsible for his own action, has his own identity for who he is, intrinsically a social being, and sexual in nature with uniqueness of expression – these are the characteristics of a person. Values are integrated in a person’s physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, social economic and political aspects. By understanding the character and the definition of a person, maximizing these characteristics are crucial to be able to create a positive result in realizing his competence and ability. There are many opportunities that await each person, but blind enough to notice it. A person himself is best qualified in changing and directing his life for he’s always been given an alternative whether to do or not to do an act, and is accompanied by responsibility. Understanding Filipino values are very important in realizing how Filipinos behave and act, for these values serve as a basis on which every individual’s s trength in facing the challenges of life should be directed. The positive side of the Filipino values should be put in use and disregard the negative ones to be able to bring out the best in the Filipino society in general and the individual in particular. Each Filipino I blessed inherently by a set of values – value of respect for life, concern for the family and the future generations, value of truth, of justice, of equality, of promotion of the common good, and of concern for the environment. These values are in need to be awakened in order to serve as a vehicle and reinforcement towards our goal of realizing social change and progress. A group is defined as a collection of individuals with different personalities acting and interacting with one another in the process of living. Within a group, a leader or a set of leaders is/are appointed; the one who guides his members and possess certain qualities on effective leadership. John C. Maxwell‟s book entitled â€Å"21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader† helps people recogn ize, develop and refine the personal characteristics needed to be a truly effective leader that people would want to follow. For every group, decisions are made. There are different kinds of decision-making, for instance, having only one person to decide or having a majority vote. Difficulties are also encountered but there are some conflict resolutions and styles used to solve the problem. National security is the protection to preserve the nation’s physical integrity and territory. National security has an objective of defending the territorial integrity of the state and the freedom to determine one’s own government while, human security aims the safety and survival of people, shorthand for the same is freedom from fear of physical violence. It responds to ordinary people’s needs in dealing with sources of threats. Disaster is a phenomenon brought about by either natural or man-made hazards that causes great damage and suffering – for instance, in life and property. The community, composed of its people in a state or country, takes extra-ordinary measures on how to survive when everything we take for granted is gone, when structures we depend on have failed. Disaster preparedness is an activity which complies with the preventive measures, ensuring that the community is in a state of readiness to contain the effects of a forecasted disastrous event in order to minimize loss of life, injury, and damage to property. Disaster management is a planned step taken to minimize the effects of a disaster. DRUG – any substance that brings physical, psychological, emotional and behavioral changes when used. There are many consequences when people use drugs; their behavior changes leading them to do bad things to others and their selves, and all sorts of health problems. Every classification of drug abusers – from experimenters, occasional, regular users to drug dependent people, corresponds to certain counter measures, depending on the degree of drug abuse. The Republic Act 9165, known as the Comprehensive Drugs Act of 2002, is the one that deals on cases which involve the use of drugs.

Definition and Examples of Motifs in Writing

A motif is a recurring theme,  verbal pattern, or narrative unit in a single text or a number of different texts. Etymology:  From the Latin, move Examples and Observations Lana A. WhitedThe theme of abandonment and the motif of dual or multiple parents pervade the Harry Potter books.Scott ElledgeStuarts defeat, his frustrations in this attempt to seize perfect beauty and truth, gives meaning to his quest for Margalo, the motif on which the book ends.Stith ThompsonA mother as such is not a motif. A cruel mother becomes one because she is at least thought to be unusual. The ordinary processes of life are not motifs. To say that John dressed and walked to town is not to give a single motif worth remembering; but to say that the hero put on his cap of invisibility, mounted his magic carpet, and went to the land east of the sun and west of the moon is to include at least four motifs--the cap, the carpet, the magic air journey, and the marvelous land.William Freedman[A motif] is generally symbolic--that is, it can be seen to carry a meaning beyond the literal one immediately apparent; it represents on the verbal level something characteristic of the structur e of the work, the events, the characters, the emotional effects, or the moral or cognitive content. It is presented both as an object of description and, more often, as part of the narrators imagery and descriptive vocabulary. And it indispensably requires a certain minimum frequency of recurrence and improbability in order both to make itself at least subconsciously felt and to indicate its purposiveness. Finally, the motif achieves its power by an appropriate regulation of that frequency and improbability, by its appearance in significant contexts, by the degree to which the individual instances work together toward a common end or ends and, when it is symbolic, by its appropriateness to the symbolic purpose or purposes it serves.Linda G. AdamsonLouise Rosenblatt presents two approaches to literature in The Reader, the Text, The Poem [1978]. Literature read for pleasure is aesthetic literature while literature read for information is efferent literature. Although one generally re ads nonfiction for information, one must consider popular nonfiction to be aesthetic literature because both its form and content offer pleasure to the reader. In aesthetic literature, the term theme refers to the authors main purpose for writing the story, and most aesthetic literature contains several themes. Thus the term motif rather than theme best describes the different concepts that may swim below the surface of popular nonfiction.Gerard PrinceA motif should not be confused with a theme, which constitutes a more abstract and more general semantic unit manifested by or reconstructed from a set of motifs: if glasses are a motif in Princess Brambilla, vision is a theme in that work. A motif should also be distinguished from a topos, which is a specific complex of motifs that frequently appears in (literary) texts (the wise fool, the aged child, the locus amoenus, etc.).Yoshiko OkuyamaThe term motif is distinguishable in semiotics from the more common, interchangeable used word, theme.  A general rule is that a theme is rather abstract or broad whereas  a motif is  concrete. A theme may include a statement, a point of view, or an idea, while  a motif is  a detail, a specific point, which is repeated for the symbolic meaning the text intends to generate.Robert AtkinsonAn archetype  is a major element of our common human experience. A motif is a minor element, or smaller part, of our common experience. Both recur often in our lives and are also predictable, because they are the essence of the human experience. Pronunciation: mo-TEEF