It is crucial that the juvenile justice system functions separately for the adult system since the goal of this is to redirect a person who can still be shaped and incentivized to a better behavior without adding the terrible burden that coexistence with adult prisoners would represent. hardly reformable.
Youth institutions have as fundamental functions the rehabilitation and reintegration of young people, trying to subtract all the components of punishment and severe treatment that is given to adult prisoners.
This changes the institutional management of youth programs, as work plans must be highly motivating, focused on their personal needs, with intensive participation of community leaders (parents, friends, environment and even the victims of their crimes themselves). try to restore what is broken instead of dividing it even more).
The difference with young people who are in institutions for adults is that they will be surrounded by adult referents, in many cases irreformable that will contribute to open the gap that already exists with society and will be involved in spirals of violence from which it will be more difficult to escape.
Yes, there is an important difference in the terminology used for juvenile or adult cases. These differences try to put the young person in the situation of being protected by the state, understanding that in the past he was unprotected by his immediate surroundings. We try to make the young person aware that he will be accompanied throughout the process and that the state is now the responsible figure to contain and redirect him.
The differences are based on the possibility of being on time to mold the youthful behavior, of assigning him new, more positive social roles, of finding a channel for his frustrations and extracting him from the environment that led him to violence to invite him to embrace new positions with new companions and the possibility of earning a promising future.
The similarity of young people and adults before the law is that both have the same rights and duties with society, only that in young people they are being molded and adults must be fully understood. Equality is also before the state and the protection that it must provide them, seeing their special needs in each case different.
I understand the importance of treating juvenile delinquents differently from adults as long as they are not denied the protection of the state and that it can take care of their particular needs, trying at all times to reinsert them and recover them as future consistent and lucid adults of his role in the world.
