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This is a news blog for my Undergraduate Criminology class at Ewha University in Seoul, South Korea for Spring 2010.
Suh Young Yun
ReplyDeleteI focused on watching how life is like in prison and what the kids who are in prison or have went through the prison system had to say. While watching the videos, I really came to believe that prisons are not the solutions for these kids. Most of the kids who were incarcerated didn’t seem like they were inherently bad. In fact, they looked rather nice. They were just ordinary kids who happened to make a mistake that would bar them from living a proper life. What these kids in prison said were that the guards guarding them 24/7 were just too much for them to take. They couldn’t trust anyone and couldn’t do anything on their own. They said they wanted to go back doing good and added an advice: “don’t come here because it’s not the life you want to live”. Another man who had served 19 years in prison since he was 18 said sometimes he wished he wouldn’t wake up because there was nothing else to do, everyday was monotonous and felt like he was running in circles.
Viewing the video clips of how life was in prison, it didn’t really seem like the prison was putting efforts to solve the problem at the core (in contrast to the juvenile facilities that we saw in class). The prison guards had solemn faces, never smiled, carried guns around and had no interaction with the kids. How could juveniles learn to change their behaviors if they didn’t have any interaction with people? How would they know what is right and what is wrong by simple sitting in the prison cell? And most importantly, the prison did not solve the core problem of the juveniles- the reason for committing the crime. Their emotions, their thoughts were entirely ignored in the prisons; they were treated like robots.
In fact, in some cases, juveniles were becoming the victims of the system. Rape occurred within the prison, kids acquired broken ear drums and shattered jaws while incarcerated. Guards were cursing at them as well. Also, just like in one of the myths stated in our book, many of those teens who were incarcerated were Blacks. However, the situation inside the prison seldom gets public scrutiny.
What is needed for these kids is true care- the feeling that they are loved, cared, and looked out for; the feeling that they can get help and can rely on someone; the feeling that they are just like any other kid elsewhere and that they too can change. What these kids need are counseling, group interaction, and education- programs that would help them open up and reveal their feelings, thoughts, and memories. Through open discussions and counseling sessions, they can learn to cope with their emotions, try to contain their behavior and change them, and slowly become a productive and healthy member of society. What they need is love and care, not reprehension.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PuaVGtx4lk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjn59b7veGE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQJL6gx6_VE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWfA22XZnms&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Bp5cIKmHM&feature=related
1. Ye Eun Cho
ReplyDelete2. This video is about the environment of Philippines juvenile prison. In Philippines, there are no seperate jails for children. There are 10 kids stacked up in one cell, and in the video the reporter mentions that there are in their cells like farm animals. Philippines have promised to improve the environment, however nothing have been changed. In the juvenile video we watched in class, I realized how important it was to have children in the right environment to root out their core problems. I do not think juvenile crimes should be frowned upon, but we should pay far more attention to it. Not only Philippines, but in Korea there are no decent facilities to help children and teenagers who committed crime. In somewhat conservative society like Korea, we should improve our facilities to help children and do not ignore them as if nothing is wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oded9fEbvaA&feature=related
ReplyDeleteYoon Young Kang
ReplyDelete“Juveniles Torture Young Disabled Woman. Weak Laws”
Usually juvenile offenders are sympathized and their crimes are also seen as the result of social injustices such as poverty, discrimination, violent environment, etc. It is especially true if the offenses are related to burglary, drugs and light physical assaults. Most of the Youtube videos mention about the problems of incarcerating and trying juveniles in adult prison and court.
However, in this video, which shows a horrible crime against an 18-year-old disabled girl (torturing her for 6 hours) by two teenagers, a boy friend and a girl friend who had a two-month-old child, the reporter and the two guests are furious about the crime and the fact that these two violators are not tried in the adult court from the beginning. They claim that this was the most horrible incident they had ever heard of. With such emotional responses, they would have intensified the public anger and probably the public demand for the legislation of strict regulations for juvenile offenders.
What caught my eyes were the following elements:
1) The reporter mentioned about putting up the photos of the offenders if they are tried in adult court. In Korea, the pictures of offenders who are already caught are not shown by the news, except for a few recent cases. In cases of juvenile crime, the names and other personal information are completely hidden by the media. In fact, most of the juvenile crimes are not taken to the court at all and most of them are released without any charges for the “possibility of change” and “their bright future.” Although the reporter and the two guests complained about the expectation of lenient punishment and their trial in the juvenile court, I think Korea is much worse in dealing with serious juvenile crimes since Korea protects the offenders’ human rights too much – even more than the victims’.
2) The reporter and two guests agreed that the offenders showed no remorse, would never be changed and thus, should receive harsh punishment. This reminded me of the Milyang gang rape case of 2004 (to me, a much more brutal case that would have caused much more serious physical and psychological damages to the victim), in which the offenders showed no remorse at all, the families of the offenders threatened the victim and the alcoholic father of the victim agreed upon the “blood money.” In that case, the most of the offenders were not even tried and the ones who were tried were sent to the juvenile court, receiving basically no punishment. I wished the court sentenced much harsher punishment that would completely isolate them until it satisfied the angry public and the victim.
3) The reporter and the guests did not blame the offenders for having babies as teenagers. If it were a Korean case, the offenders would have been seriously blamed and it would be seen as an important factor that foreshadows this crime in the video, which shows the offenders’ delinquency, irresponsibility and inappropriate behavior. However, surprisingly, they only worried about the custody of the child.
Back to the US juvenile justice system; it would be mostly unfair to treat juveniles as adult offenders. However, it would be only true in case of the crimes that do not cause serious damages to other people - "wrongdoings," yet not "evil enough" to raise the public cries for harsh punishment.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the US juvenile justice is not fair because "light offenders" (burglary, drugs, etc.) are treated as adult offenders and "serious offenders" are treated as juvenile offenders. This is a problem since the former crimes are most likely to have been caused by the "irresistible" social factors such as poverty, hunger and violent surroundings and thus, there is room for change while the latter crimes mostly caused by individuals themselves (they are not pushed to commit these crimes) and the crimes are not related to the issue of life or death. Moreover, it is not proportionate to treat the serious offenders as juveniles. I think light punishment would accelerate the second conviction rate and encourage other delinquent teens to commit cruel offenses.
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Two teenagers, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, broke into a house to steal a car. Although they failed in this, they did something much worse. After realizing that the only adult in the house left, they broke into the house, found an 18-year-old disabled girl and tortured her for the next 6 hours. They shaved her head with a baseball bat, beat her with baseball bat, doused her with water and made her walk barefoot in the snow. Despite her please that she had just had brain surgery, they repeatedly hit her over the head. These teenagers showed no remorse.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrlfbyNpAU8