KIM WOODS

Respond to Peers: By Day 7, respond to at least two of your classmates’ initial posts. Your peer responses should be substantive and at least 100 words each. As your reply to your classmates, attempt to take the conversation further by examining their claims or arguments in more depth or responding to the posts that they reply to you with. Keep the discussion on target and try to analyze things in as much detail as you can. For instance, you might consider reflecting on why the legislation selected by one of your classmate’s is impacted differently than the one you selected.  100 WORDS • Trinity Woods  I am currently pursuing a major in Criminal Justice that will prepare me for my future profession of juvenile detention counselor.  This career provides counseling services to juvenile offenders and their families in a juvenile detention center or correctional facility. Juvenile detention counselors are typically employed by state and local government offices.  Federalism is a term that describes the U.S. system of dividing power and authority, derived from the people, between the national and state governments (Fine, T. S., & Levin-Waldman, O. M. (2016). Congress enacted the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act in 1974 (JJDPA)and was reauthorized most recently May 23, 2017.  This act is based on the idea that all juveniles and their families that are involved with the judicial system should be guarded by federal standards for care, while also upholding the interests of the community’s safety.  The JJDPA provides a nationwide juvenile justice planning and advisory system spanning all states, territories, and the District of Columbia, federal funding for delinquency prevention and improvements in state and local juvenile justice programs and practices; and the operation of a federal agency, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency PreventionLinks to an external site., which is dedicated to training, technical assistance, model programs, and research and evaluation, to support state and local efforts (“Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act | CJJ”, n.d.).  The most important part of the JJDPA in my opinion is the protection it gives juveniles from being held in a jail or prison if their crime is only considered a crime because of their age, this is called a status offense. Fine, T. S., & Levin-Waldman, O. M. (2016). American government (2nd ed.) [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/ Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act | CJJ. Juvjustice.org. Retrieved 5 September 2017, from http://www.juvjustice.org/federal-policy/juvenile-justice-and-delinquency-prevention-actLinks to an external site.     • Chad Brayshaw  100 WORDS I am a Correctional Officer working for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.  Being a sworn peace officer, the issue of gun control is very important to me.  And living in California, one of the more restrictive states in the country, can be very frustrating at times.  While it is difficult to definitively define Federalism, Fine’s and Levin-Waldman’s (2016) many interpretations can be summed up into a process in which the powers between the Federal Government and the individual States are either separated or shared between the two sovereignties.  And over the years those powers have fluctuated depending on personal opinion of the sitting Supreme Court Justices.  On the issue of Gun Control, the Gun Control Act of 1968 “Regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions” (ATF, 2016).  While at the time, this law infringed upon the actions of individual states, the Federal Government relied upon the supremacy clause of the constitution that stated that any state law that contradicted a federal law would be found unconstitutional in order to enforce the Act.  Beyond that, today the issue of Gun Control has not actually been about the Federal Government doing too much but that individual states (such as California) have felt that the Federal level has not done enough.  For example, in Heller vs. District of Columbia the District of Columbia was attempting a complete ban on handguns (de Leeuw, 2012). The Supreme Court had to step in and limit the power the District of Columbia was attempting to impose upon its citizens when it ruled that a complete ban on handguns, even within a person’s home, was unconstitutional and violated the 2nd Amendment (de Leeuw, 2012). Not only did the Supreme Court’s actions limit the districts power in this regarded it also expanded the Federal Governments power by limiting (in this instance) the restrictions that individual states can place upon its citizens.  Thus defining (although just) the lines of authority between individual states and the Federal Government on this specific issue.    Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (2016, September 22). Gun Control Act of 1968. Retrieved from https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/gun-control-act de Leeuw, M. B. (2012). The (new) New Judicial Federalism: State Constitutions and the Protection of the Individual right to Bear Arms. Fordham Urban Law Journal, (5), 1449-1502.  Fine, T. S., & Levin-Waldman, O. M. (2016). American government (2nd ed.) [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/