If a 12 year old is put behind bars, how can he become a functional member of society upon his release? How will he create a positive lifestyle for himself? The real question is: How can he turn in any direction other than that of crime? He simple will not be able to. If a child is sent to a prison to stay in a cell for hours at a time, the only life he will know is the life he came from, not the life that could be his.

The goal of juvenile detention should be to rehabilitate and develop the individual. Appropriate educational skills need to be taught. Children need to be put in touch with their feeling through counseling. Juvenile offenders need to be exposed to role models from within their community and without. A sense of hope should be instilled so that the young offender is not resigned to the fate of a "this is all I will ever be anyways." More important than efforts to rehabilitate the offender would be programs to prevent the juvenile from committing crimes to begin with.

Keyshawn Johnson, a wide receiver for the NFL's New York Jets, recently said, "People hate to say it, but what you are around is what you'

Just as important, a one-size-fits-all approach does not fit the punishment to who the offender is or might become. Every teacher knows that kids develop at different speeds and that not all 14-year-olds are alike. Yet, automatic transfer policies assume that all 14-year-old car thieves are. Kids - even wayward kids - deserve better. Specialized courts for juvenile offenders deserve serious consideration as an alternative to the current trend of treating youth as miniature adults. Drug courts, gun courts, community-based treatment courts, domestic violence courts, and other alternatives to prison are proving effective for adult offenders. In these specialized courts, treatment and rehabilitation programs are individually matched to offender characteristics, and judges personally negotiate written treatment agreements with offenders and monitor their compliance. Immediate penalties and rewards are contingent on offender behavior, and the court relies heavily on such community-based services as drug treatment, treatment for domestic violence offenders, or gun education programs.

To me the juvenile justice system that took a wrong turn when high rates of violent crime during the late 1980s and early 1990s prompted state lawmakers throughout the country to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather than searching for innovative solutions, legislators simply looked to the adult system for answers.

What is wrong with handling youthful law violators in the same way as adult criminals? First, many juveniles are not yet set in their ways, and they may respond to less expensive sanctions that preserve their chances of becoming law-abiding citizens someday. Researchers have found repeatedly that aggressive, community-based interventions can reduce juvenile recidivism as much as prison for as little as one-third the cost. What's more, there is no evidence that simply locking up more juveniles reduces the overall level o

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