Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

The juvenile justice system was established over a century ago with “the goal of diverting youthful offenders from the destructive punishments of criminal courts and encouraging rehabilitation based on the individual juvenile’s needs” (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2001, p. 154). Although significant progress has been made in maintaining the goals set out when the juvenile justice system was established, there is still a lack of awareness about the dehumanization of juvenile offenders who have been incarcerated. Individual failures of juvenile offenders can occur for a variety of reasons, including a lack of support from their communities and the juvenile justice system as a whole. Throughout the years, there have been several reformations made to the juvenile justice system as there seems to have been a prime focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Reformations were made through a few court cases regarding sentences such as capital punishment and life imprisonment without parole. The cases that have brought reform to the juvenile justice system have also brought awareness to the immaturity and cognitive development of juvenile offenders. There are numerous risk and mitigating factors that children face as they grow up, which is exacerbated for those who are incarcerated. The fact that juveniles come out of incarceration with more problems than they did when they entered juvenile facilities is an indication of the need to focus on restorative justice rather than punishment.

Gen Z is very active on social media where there is a large amount of misinformation on human trafficking. This bears the question, does correct knowledge of human trafficking have a correlation with how Gen Z votes? This study looks into the correlation between Generation Z’s (Gen Z) voting patterns and their knowledge of human trafficking. The underlying thought is how media and social media play a role in what information Gen Z is taking to the voting booths. The results will show if both Republicans and Democrats or just one are affected by inadequate knowledge of human trafficking and if therefore, they are voting a specific way. A result emerged by surveying 30 people across the United States with ages ranging from 18-24, on where trafficking happens and to whom it happens to, alongside asking the participants different political questions to determine their voting patterns. The survey questions were written and analyzed quantitatively to use the data numerically as the results.