Are there treatment programs for juvenile delinquents?
Treatment Programs for Juvenile Delinquents Treatment Programs for Juvenile Delinquents Juvenile crime is often serious and may represent a significant proportion of the total criminal activity in a community.
How effective is treatment for juvenile offenders in community settings?
On the other hand, treatment in public facilities, custodial institutions, and the juvenile justice system was less effective than other alternatives, suggesting that treatment provided in community settings may be more effective.
What are effective adolescent treatment approaches for substance abuse?
Effective adolescent treatment approaches include multisystemic therapy, multidimensional family therapy, and functional family therapy. These interventions show promise in strengthening families and decreasing juvenile substance abuse and delinquent behavior.
Are juvenile rehabilitation programs effective?
Theoretically, rehabilitation is the focus of corrections programs for juveniles. In practice, however, as occurs with adult programs, juvenile rehabilitation programs may be poorly implemented. Strengthening implementation of existing rehabilitation and delinquency prevention programs could substantially reduce future criminality.
What are the most important advantages of community treatment for juvenile offenders?
Advocates of community treatment advance several arguments in support of its use. Compared with institutional placements, community programs are less costly, less disruptive to families, and have the potential to address the youths' delinquency in the natural contexts in which it is likely to occur.
What are the differences between community treatment and institutional treatment of juvenile offenders?
Community treatment refers to efforts to provide care, protection, and treatment for juveniles in need. Institutional treatment facilities restrict movement of residents through staff monitoring, locked exits, and interior fence controls.
What is the treatment of juveniles?
Treatment Approaches An examination of 200 studies published between 1950 and 1995 found that the most effective interventions for serious and violent juvenile offenders were interpersonal skills training, individual counseling, and behavioral programs (Lipsey and Wilson, 1998).
How does community involvement affect the juvenile justice system?
Communities play the primary role in preventing juvenile delinquency and the criminal victimization of juveniles. With Federal and State leadership and support, communities can successfully change local conditions to help youth become lawabiding, productive citizens.
Is community based treatment better than imprisonment?
Community-based alternatives to prison claim to be more effective in reducing recidivism than are traditional prisons, to be cheaper than prisons, and to reduce overcrowding in prisons and jails.
What is the best way to rehabilitate juvenile offenders?
The most effective interventions were interper- sonal skills training, individual coun- seling, and behavioral programs for noninstitutionalized offenders, and interpersonal skills training and community-based, family-type group homes for institutionalized offenders.
What might the rehabilitation of a juvenile offender involve?
The rehabilitative model focuses on the treatment of the offender with the assumption that interventions such as probation supervision, work readiness, training, cognitive skills training, and behavior therapy will change behavior and reduce the frequency of juvenile offenses ( Bradshaw & Roseborough , 2005).
What are the unique treatment needs of juveniles in the criminal justice system?
Virtually every juvenile offender should be screened for drug abuse and mental disorders, and receive an intervention: Treatment for those who are dependent on alcohol or drugs, or mentally ill. Drug abuse prevention for those who are not. HIV prevention or treatment as needed.
What are the advantages of small community-based secure facilities for violent juvenile offenders?
Systemwide Advantages Creating a new small, secure, community-based facility (or a small, secure regional facility in less populated areas) offers an opportunity to improve the entire continuum of services and sanctions for at- risk and delinquent youth in the community.
What are two main approaches for dealing with juvenile offenders?
Whereas the traditional juvenile justice model focuses attention on offender rehabilitation and the current get-tough changes focus on offense punishment, the restorative model focuses on balancing the needs of victims, offenders, and communities (Bazemore and Umbreit, 1995).
How do the police work with the community to solve the delinquency problems?
The Police are vigorously promoting extensive activities to prevent juvenile delinquency and to enhance sound development. The Police are the agency with whom delinquent youths first come into contact and have a responsibility to ease the public's anxieties and to ensure a society where people can lead secure lives.
What are comprehensive community based delinquency prevention programs?
The Community Prevention Grants Program provides communities with the critical ingredients for successful delinquency prevention: A theory-driven, research-based prevention framework. The tools, training, and technical assistance needed to bring a community together to build on that framework.
What is restorative justice?
Neither the adult criminal court nor the juvenile court appear to place primary emphasis on restoration, that is, repairing harm done to victims and providing offenders a way to regain full community status. The paradigm of restorative justice embraces these emphases. As outlined by Daniel Van Ness, restorative justice rests on three principles: 1 Justice requires that we work to heal victims, offenders and communities that have been injured by crime; 2 Victims, offenders and communities should have the opportunity for active involvement in the justice process as early and as fully as possible; 3 We must rethink the relative roles and responsibilities of the government and the community. In promoting justice, government is responsible for preserving a just order and the community for establishing peace (pp. 8–9).
What are restorative justice principles?
In the context of juvenile justice, restorative justice principles may be found in a variety of programs, such as victim-offender mediation, family group conferences, teen court (in which young people enact the roles of judge, attorneys, and jury to resolve cases), and some forms of restitution and community service.
Did the juvenile court always act in the child's best interest?
During the course of the twentieth century, however, as described elsewhere in this volume, the Supreme Court recognized that the juvenile court did not always act in the child's best interest, and, in a series of decisions, gradually instituted for children many of the same due process protections afforded to adults.
What is the challenge of juvenile justice?
significant challenge facing the juvenile justice system is the task of transitioning and reintegrating juveniles from youth corrections facilities back into the community. This challenge, in part, is related to determining whether the referred community programs are effective. This article summarizes the literature on the effectiveness of community programs for juveniles involved in the justice system, including defining characteristics of evidence-based programs and examining the relationship between youth characteristics and evidence-based practices. Model evidence-based programs are reviewed, providing a description of respective programs, treatment targets, and their outcomes. Limitations of evidence-based programs will be discussed and recommendations for the field will be summarized. Key words: Community programs, juvenile justice, evidence-based programs, delinquents, treatment.
What is evidence based in juvenile justice?
In the juvenile justice field, the term “evidence-based” is defined as a body of knowledge, also obtained through scientific method, on the impact of specific practices on targeted outcomes for youth and their families (Hoagwood, et. al, 2001). McDonald (2003) conceptualized that evidence-based programs consists of three characteristics (defined outcomes, measurable outcomes, and practical realities or the rate of recidivism).
What is mode deactivation therapy?
Mode Deactivation Therapy (MDT) was developed in response to the difficulty in treating youth with high levels of co-morbidity, which resulted in ongoing resistance to current treatments modalities as well as being considered treatment failures in both the outpatient and residential settings. Apsche, Bass & Murphy (2004) have demonstrated that MDT is effective in reducing aggression and suicidal ideations within this population. Through the synthesizing of an applied CBT methodology as well as Linehan’s work with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), MDT was developed for youth who displayed a reactive conduct disorder, personality disorders/ traits, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptomology. Apsche and his colleagues have demonstrated the effectiveness of MDT in reducing aggression, specifically with youth who display the aforementioned diagnostic traits (Apsche, et al., 2004; Apsche & Ward 2004). Apsche & Siv (2005) further emphasize the need for an efficacious methodology by positing the development of personality disorder traits/features as a coping mechanism by these youth. This methodology encapsulates the needs of these youth who present with a complicated neglect, multi-axial diagnoses, as well as often being the victims of sexual, physical, and/ or emotional abuse.
What is MTFC in foster care?
Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) is an intensive parent training in an effort to enhance parents/guardians with more effective methods of parenting the juvenile when they return home. MTFC places emphasis on utilizing behavioral management methods with juvenile offenders in order to elicit change (Chamberlin & Mihalic, 1998).
What is functional family therapy?
Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is a family-based intervention, which is delivered in a clinical setting. FFT consists of four different phases: Impression, Motivation, Behavior Change, and Generalization phase (Alexander, Pugh & Parsons, 2000). These phases include assessments of the family, specific interventions utilized throughout the treatment, and the goals of the therapist. FFT’s major goal is to enhance the family’s communication with each other despite much of the negativity that may be displayed. Other goals include enhancing parenting and problem-solving skills. FFT addresses delinquent behavior, substance abuse, and mental health disorders (Conduct disorder, Oppositional Defiant disorder, and Disruptive Behavior disorder).
What is multisystemic therapy?
Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is considered an intensive family and community based treatment for youth who display antisocial behaviors, which puts them at risk for out-of-home placements. MST has been applied to youth with a variety of clinical problems which consists of: 1) chronic and violent juvenile offenders, 2) substance-abusing juvenile offenders, 3) adolescent sexual offenders, 4) youth in psychiatric crises (homicidal, suicidal, and psychotic), and 5) maltreating families (Randal, Heneggeler, Pickrel & Brondino, 1999).In treating these particular populations, the ultimate goals of MST programs are to reduce the rates of antisocial behavior, enhance the youth’s functioning, and decrease the utilization of out-of-home placements (incarceration and residential treatment). MST’s focal point is on the juvenile’s surrounding environment (neighborhood, family, peers, school, etc.) and how it contributes to the juvenile’s well-being. Service delivery occurs within the home environment and the community. Cortes (2004) states that many authors believe in the effectiveness of home-based family therapy due to the fact that it reduces the attrition rate of families who may not trust the mental health field or may not possess transportation. Home-based services may also benefit the juvenile and his/her family since the family is more at ease. This helps the family in developing better relationships with the therapist, while maintaining some type of control. Home-based services provide more accessible services for low income families (Henggeler, Mihalic, Rone, Thomas & Timmons-Mitchell, 1998).
What are the factors that call for community based intervention programs?
Crowded facilities, exceptionally high recidivism rates, and the rising costs of incarcerating juveniles are among the factors calling for community-based intervention programs that are supported by the literature (Altschuler, 1998). Common practices include innovative, promising, and best practices.
Diversion
- Diversion, which can occur at any decision point in the system, refers to a decision that neither ignores the child nor moves the child along the formal processing route. The decision normally involves an agreement between the official involved in that decision point and the youth's family to pursue some informal remedial action. Thus, police may recommend to a youth's parents tha…
Pre-Adjudication
- In the not too distant past, children apprehended by police were held routinely in police lock-ups and county jails. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 ( JJDPA) resulted in dramatic changes—mandating the removal of juveniles from adult jails and police lock-ups, requiring a parallel system of juvenile detention centersfor those who needed to be held securel…
POST-ADJUDICATION
- Probation. From its origins in Massachusetts in the mid-1800s, juvenile probation services have spread to virtually every jurisdiction in the nation. Whereas volunteers initially supervised youths, probation services have now become professionalized, staffed by graduates with bachelors degrees in the social sciences, social work, or criminal justic...
Aftercare
- What happens to juvenile offenders upon release from an institutional placement? For some, especially those who have been held until the age of majority, the moment they walk out the door, they are no longer under direct correctional supervision. Many, however, continue under the jurisdiction of parole or aftercareservices. Juvenile aftercare may involve various combinations …
Issues and Trends
- Juvenile justice professionals and the general public continue to debate how best to address problems of juvenile delinquency. Tensions exist between those who favor a "get tough" or "lock 'em up" approach and those who favor using the least restrictive alternatives. Beginning in the late 1990s some have advocated the introduction of a radically different paradigm, restorative justic…
Conclusion
- The real challenge for the juvenile justice system is to strike a cost-effective balance among the various alternative approaches. While the political climate and public rhetoric often reduce the issue to an overly simplistic battle between "get tough" conservatives and "bleeding heart" liberals, the real question is what works best, for what kinds of youth, under what conditions. The best sy…
Bibliography
- Altschuler, David M., and Armstrong, Troy L. Intensive Aftercare for High-Risk Juveniles: A Community Care Model: Program Summary. Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1994. Austin, James, and Krisberg, Barry. "Wider, Stronger, and Different Nets: The Dialectics of Criminal Justice Reform." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency …