Sociology Research Proposal

The Juvenile Justice System and Children in Foster Care

Introduction

In the United States, many children cannot live together with their parents due to one reason or the other (Cutuli et al. 2016). Such children are usually cared for under the foster care program or out-of-home care initiative. Foster care children may include those children that live with relatives or foster parents in different settings such as supervised independent living, emergency shelters, group homes, or residential care facilities (Goodkind et al., 2013). Only those who are still below the age of 18 are put under foster care. On the other hand, the American Juvenile justice system handles minors found to have committed criminal activities (Bishop & Johnson, 2010)

Subsequently, juvenile offenders refer to those children that have committed a crime while still below the age of 18 years (Leone & Weinberg, 2010). This study seeks to evaluate if children under foster care are prone to the juvenile justice system than those taken care of by their parents. According to the Children's bureau 2014, the United States foster care program provides services to over 0.4 million children living out of home daily (Cutuli et al., 2016). As a result, children that do not stay with their parents are more vulnerable in life, thus higher chances of negative life experiences. Due to this, the U.S (Braverman et al. 2011). Department of Health and Human Services has revealed that many children under foster care undergo severe maltreatment that leads to juvenile delinquency with most children under foster care, thus, resulting in the juvenile justice system due to arrest (Leve et al. 2012)

Consequently, it is believed that most of the juvenile offenders come from the children under the foster care program and partly from underprivileged families. However, it is an opinion that any research has not been approved (Flores et al., 2018). Besides, according to the office of Juvenile justice, increased delinquency and the juvenile justice system result from some social changes like economic status, change of residential places by moving populations, and change of social climate factors like healthcare accessibility. Therefore, this study will evaluate juvenile family backgrounds primarily associated with Juvenile offenders and the juvenile justice system (Bishop & Johnson, 2010). The study will also seek to establish the Juvenile'sJuvenile's community of residence contributes to the juvenile justice system (Goodkind et al., 2013).

Moreover, most youth offenders in the United States come from foster care programs because most of them learn from poor schools with minimal recreational facilities (Braverman et al., 2011). Therefore, various respective agencies, including the public and the government, must give attention to their voices, experiences, and opinions (Leone & Weinberg, 2010). Furthermore, most of the communities that seem to propagate delinquency and the juvenile justice system lack adequate resources to support youth adequately (Bishop & Johnson, 2010). Again, most of the foster care centers have not received sufficient support from the government. Accordingly, it is worth noting that in 2012, the Columbia district reported that 22% of her population was in poverty while 34% of the poor people were children (Cutuli et al., 2016). Moreover, absurdly, 54% of the poor children population was in foster care programs across the district. These worrying statistics directly support why most researchers claim that most juvenile justice system is contributed mainly by the children under foster care (Leve et al. 2012)

Nonetheless, there has been a trend in juvenile justice system cases, and America has responded adequately to the changes. For instance, within the last decade, more juvenile delinquency cases escalated, pushing policymakers to review the criteria of punishing the...

Conclusion

After an intensive review of various relevant literature, it came out that there are many inadequacies in America's juvenile foster care and juvenile detention centers. Notably, the juvenile justice system and juvenile foster systems struggle to find a balance between upholding the children's rights and maintaining the public's safety by providing rehabilitation services (Bartollas, 2010). However, from the latest statistics, there seem to be of punishment than rehabilitation services (Leone & Weinberg, 2010)

Moreover, other than failure to provide rehabilitation, incarceration has inflicted adverse effects on the juveniles. For instance, some researchers have found that juvenile detention is directly proportionate to juvenile delinquency cases. Nonetheless, while these juvenile foster centers' problems are well known, they have received very minimal attention compared to other juvenile justice systems (Goodkind et al., 2013)

Otherwise, based on the literature review, lack of education, low self-esteem, and maltreatment among the juvenile foster systems are among the highly rated contributors to the juvenile justice system in the United States. Equally, juvenile foster experiencing stressful lives tend to develop defiance as a protective mechanism resulting in the juvenile justice system. Also, lack of parental care for the out-of-home juveniles is sometimes exposed to punitive punishment promoting juvenile delinquency (Bartollas, 2010). Subsequently, following the high child foster involvement in the juvenile justice system, this proposal has necessary implications for social workers and researchers in juvenile justice and juvenile foster systems (Perry et al., 2012). It provides an overview of the importance of coordination and communication between the juvenile justice and juvenile foster systems. Besides, in the juvenile justice system, usually, there is no focus on what took place prior; therefore, creating awareness of juvenile foster systems engagement and its impacts is…