Troubled Teens Resources

Can violent juvenile offenders be rehabilitated? If there were enough schools for troubled teens, military teen boot camps and rehabs - not to mention funding - could you actually extract the killer from the teen who murdered a family, or the juvenile rapist who slit the throat of their victim?

That debate is ongoing, with one side insisting that violent juveniles can be rehabilitated, the other side stating that returning these youths to society, at any time, would place innocent people at risk.

The comments following the article excerpted below paint a clear portrait of how deeply divisive the issue of violent teens is.

“According to a new report produced by the Equal Justice Initiative (a non-profit group dedicated to helping prisoners denied fair treatment by the system), American prisons are home to 73 inmates locked up for life for crimes they committed when they were 13 or 14. Bump that age limit up three years and we have 2,225 prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger.

These crimes aren’t minor — and the nature of our violent culture is an entirely different story — but some of the children confess under duress or, worse yet, are developmentally disabled. They languish in lockdown, without hope.

But are they proof that these children can’t be rehabilitated, that they can’t benefit from help and that they are beyond redemption?”
(source)