The goal of the juvenile court system is to rehabilitate adolescents so they have the opportunity to become responsible citizens when they are adults. Based on your own life experiences and what you now know about the juvenile court system, do you think that rehabilitation or punishment is the best approach for handling juvenile offenders? Use three examples to defend your answer.

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

The three examples to defend my answer would be the following.

1) It is true that the goal of the juvenile court system is to rehabilitate adolescents so they have the opportunity to become responsible citizens when they are adults. However, not always rehabilitation or punishment is the best approach for handling juvenile offenders. Why? Because oftentimes these approaches only focus on the consequences, on the solutions. And this approach is limited.

2) To improve the quality of the response, the government has to go to the origins of the problems. Yes, what is the situation that is generating criminal conduct. Is it poverty? Is it the gang's influence in the neighborhood? Is it family violence? Is it a lack of education? There would be many reasons.

So it is of the utmost importance to understand the origin, the real cause of the problem because if not, the solution would still be incomplete.

3) Once the real cause of the problem has been identified, the government or other social groups could create better solutions that are not limited to punishment or rehabilitation. What I propose is to create better social programs that grant education for most American families, allow the opportunity for better jobs, attend the problem of child abuse in the families so children do not grow with traumas, and better athletic or sports programs to invite youngsters to practice sports instead of joining gangs.