This week discussion was to identify an article related to juvenile rehabilitation. The assignment was to discuss whether the article conveyed equitable results for such rehabilitative efforts. If not, how can the article could have been improved? This is what I discussed about the article and would like to know if you agree or disagree, and provide a brief response on whether you agree or disagree.

The article I choose to use is called Rehabilitation Versus Incarceration of Juvenile Offenders: Public Preferences in Four Model. In short the article was an experiment to see if politicians were actually representing what citizens wanted in regards to incarceration versus rehabilitation of juveniles. The study was conducted in 2007 so it is a little outdated but I believe the results still hold true today. The article argued that citizens polled from 4 different states wanted more and longer incarceration time than rehabilitation when asked with no increase in taxes per year. On the other hand when asked about the tax increase per household per year for either incarceration or rehabilitation all the states polled voted they were willing to pay more for rehabilitation with the exception of Louisiana. The point of the article was to show depending on how a poll question is worded will give you different results. The rapid grow of more incarcerated juveniles in the 1990's and the more harsh laws states have put in place for juveniles is in part to this flaw in the polling system.

I feel the article did a good job in showing how the general public's opinion can be manufactured depending on how the poll questions are worded. Like I said earlier the article is from a study done in 2007 so I feel it needs to be updated and I think the study should have been expanded to more than just 4 states. Lastly the questions asked gave 1 follow up question and didn't ask how much each person was willing to pay for either decision they made on the previous question.

Please, provide reference(s) that you used to backup your thought regarding my discussion post.