Introduction
A seventh-grade middle school student in Albuquerque was clowning around in a class by creating loud burps. This 13-year-old was transported to a juvenile detention facility and later suspended for the remainder of the academic year after his teacher reported him to a school-based police officer. The boy was accused of interfering with education by threatening or encouraging others to hinder the school’s legitimate mission or operations. However, according to the graduated sanctions system, the situation should have been handled differently without using such inadequately harsh practices.
Handling the Situation Correctly
The graduated sanctions system involves different levels of sanctions applied to misdemeanor students. These include immediate sanctions for minor misdemeanors, intermediate sanctions for law violations, and secure sanctions for repeated law violations and violent behavior (Krinsberg, 2004). The example presented in the case study calls for immediate sanction, as the student did not commit any law violations.
Youths who have committed relatively minor offenses or have just come to the attention of the juvenile court are targeted for immediate sanctions. These interventions let young people know that misbehavior has evident repercussions. These programs successfully stop young people from developing bad conduct into law violations (Krinsberg, 2004). Thus, the situation in the case study should have been solved with immediate sanctions from the graduated sanctions system.
Negative Outcomes of the Wrong Intervention
However, the way the situation was handled was unnecessarily harsh on the student, which is evidence of the inflexibility of the juvenile justice system. Many incidents of teenage misconduct are ignored or unresolved by the current juvenile justice system, frequently as a result of perceived constraints on available custodial resources (Krinsberg, 2004). The juvenile court will impose stringent penalties, like extended stays at secure training facilities. Following their release, young people must reenter the real world and face various decisions that can lead them back to criminal behavior (Krinsberg, 2004). Thus, the outcome of the decision made in the case study is that the student has faced an unnecessarily harsh sentence, which may lead to recidivism in the future.
Conclusion
Thus, the verdict on the child in Albuquerque was too cruel and inadequate for the situation. The current juvenile justice system lacks flexibility, so the student faced a significant sanction for a minor offense. Instead, a more humane outcome could have been achieved with the proper utilization of immediate sanctions, informing and counseling the student of their accountability for their actions.
References
Krisberg, B. A. (2004). Juvenile Justice: Redeeming Our Children (1st ed.). Sage.