But their success rates seem low. This new Centre is a significant improvement on the work camp and is based on a rehabilitative and restorative rather than punitive approach. Rehabilitation assists crime prevention by assisting to reduce the commission of further offences. Recommendation Legislation in all jurisdictions should state that the aim of detention is rehabilitation of young offenders.
The legislative provisions should reflect rehabilitative principles set out below. The Attorney-General through SCAG should encourage all States and Territories that have not already done so to ensure that rehabilitation is incorporated into the relevant legislation as the primary aim of detention. This legislation should be implemented in future decision making about juvenile detention centres.
The percentage of criminal delinquency cases that result in detention has remained fairly stable over the past 10 years, and the percentage of status delinquency cases that result in detention has dropped. However, because the overall number of criminal delinquency cases coming to the court has increased, the number of cases that result in secure detention has increased, even though the percentage of cases detained has remained steady.
Research consistently shows that juveniles who have been in detention are more likely to be formally processed and receive more punitive sanctions at disposition than those not placed in detention, after controlling for demographic and legal factors, such as current offense and history of past offenses Frazier and Bishop, ; Frazier and Cochran, a; McCarthy and Smith, Researchers have been unable to determine the variables that affect the initial decision to detain a juvenile, however.
For example, Frazier and Bishop , in an analysis of initial detention decisions, could explain less than 10 percent of variance in the decisions.
Therefore, there may be unidentified factors related to the initial decision to detain that affect the impact of detention on eventual court dispositions.
It is important to remember that the court statistics do not refer to the number of juveniles detained, but only to the number of cases in the course of a year, one juvenile may be detained in several cases.
Based on one-day censuses of detention centers, it appears that the rate of detention of juveniles increased by 68 percent from the mids to the mids Wordes and Jones, The average length of detention in the mids was 15 days Wordes and Jones, Of all juvenile cases resulting in detention in , 26 percent were for person offenses, 38 percent were for property offenses, 21 percent were for public order offenses, 12 percent for drug law violations, and 3 percent.
For comparison purposes, about 37 percent of the adult felony cases in the 75 most populous counties in the United States result in pretrial detention Hart and Reaves, Misdemeanor cases do not usually result in detention. Males are detained at a rate six times higher than females, and blacks are detained at eight times the rate of whites Wordes and Jones, The two generally accepted uses of preadjudication detention are to ensure that a juvenile will show up for his or her hearing and to prevent reoffending prior to adjudication.
However, detention is also used as punishment, protection, and as a place to keep juveniles when more appropriate placements are unavailable Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Intake workers and juvenile judges have a great deal of discretion in deciding whether to place a juvenile in detention.
Several studies found evidence that detention rates varied in direct proportion to the availability of detention facilities Kramer and Steffensmeier, ; Lerman, ; Pawlak, Anecdotal evidence suggests that whether a juvenile in crisis is kept in detention or sent to a mental health facility may depend on whether the juvenile's family has health insurance to cover private psychological or psychiatric treatment. The result of the use of detention for such diverse reasons is that a juvenile who has run away from an abusive home may be placed in detention alongside a juvenile awaiting trial for violent crimes.
Detention can be quite disruptive to children's and adolescents' lives. It separates them from their families, friends, and support systems, and it interrupts their schooling. Although some detention centers have many services in place to assess and treat physical and mental health problems and behavioral problems and to provide educational services, the scope and quality of services varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
In addition, many detention centers have become overcrowded, jeopardizing their ability to provide services. Nearly 70 percent of children in public detention centers are in facilities operating above their designed capacity Smith, Overcrowded conditions have been found to be associated with increased altercations between juveniles and staff and increased injuries to juveniles Wordes and Jones, Even under the best of circumstances, providing services to an ever-changing, heterogeneous group of young people can be difficult.
The average length of stay in juvenile detention centers is 15 days, but many youngsters may be there for only a few days, while some are there for much longer periods Parent et al. For marginal students, even a few days of school missed because of detention may increase their educational difficulties. The negative effects of being in detention and the overcrowded conditions in many detention centers have led to investigations of alternatives to detention.
Table summarizes the evaluations of alternatives to detention programs discussed in this section. A study in North Carolina Land et al. The programs varied from site to site, but all were characterized. Land and colleagues found the programs to provide less restrictive options to secure detention in a cost-effective manner without compromising public safety.
Over three-quarters of the cases served by the alternative programs successfully avoided secure detention. The vast majority 80 to 90 percent of the cases that failed in the alternative program and were sent to secure detention were for technical program violations, not for new offenses. Less than 5 percent of all alternative placement admissions committed new offenses while in the program. The Annie E. Five urban jurisdictions—Cook County, Illinois Chicago ; Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; Multnomah County, Oregon Portland ; New York City; and Sacramento County, California —were awarded grants to establish programs to eliminate the inappropriate or unnecessary use of detention, reduce the number of delinquents who fail to appear for court or who commit a new offense, develop alternatives to secure detention rather than adding new detention beds, and to improve conditions and alleviate overcrowding in secure detention facilities.
The final evaluation of the programs in Chicago, Portland, and Sacramento, by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, was due in Preliminary indications from the evaluation are that the programs achieved significant reductions in admissions to detention and alleviated overcrowding without increasing failure-to-appear rates or pretrial crime rates Rust, After adjudicatory hearings, cases in juvenile court are scheduled for disposition hearings, in which the sanction is determined.
Juveniles may be put on probation, placed in a correctional institution or other out-of-home placement, sent to treatment or other programs, or given some other sanction, such as paying restitution or performing community service. The most common disposition is probation; over half of the cases adjudicated delinquent were placed on probation in ; 28 percent of those adjudicated delinquent in were sent to out-of-home placement.
Males were more likely than females to be placed 29 and 22 percent of adjudicated delinquency cases involving males and females, respectively and females were more likely to be put on probation 53 and 59 percent for males and females, respectively.
A higher proportion of cases involving blacks and other races results in out-of-home placement than do cases. Alternative to secure detention to allow juveniles to remain at home, with relatives, or other approved placement. Extensive and proactive contact between counselor, youth, and youth 's family; professional analytic or therapeutic services available. ATD programs successful in avoiding secure detention; Rate of post-program recidivism for successful ATD program completers ranged from Intensive probation supervision for youths charged with serious offenses: individual and family counseling, school follow-up, group activities, and substance abuse.
Over half of juveniles adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court are put on probation, as are one-fifth of those nonadjudicated found not guilty. One-third of the cases that do not receive formal juvenile court processing are also placed on probation at intake Stahl et al. In , , criminal delinquent cases and 58, status offense delinquent cases resulted in probation. These figures do not include juveniles who were under the supervision of probation departments after serving time in a residential facility.
National figures for the latter group are not collected. Probation is essentially surveillance designed to prevent reoffending, with the threat of punishment and to detect reoffending if it should occur.
Surveillance alone may be insufficient to prevent reoffending. Research with adults has found that the most successful probation programs combine both treatment and surveillance Petersilia, The early founders of juvenile courts saw probation as one of the most significant components of the juvenile court system Schlossman, Probation provided the opportunity to rehabilitate juveniles in their homes rather than incarcerating them.
Probation officers could get. No difference in recidivism between experimental group in Contra Costa County or control group; Experimental group in Richmond had more youths arrested for violent offenses but a lower number of youths rearrested for any offenses in general. As with other ideals of the juvenile court, the reality of probation did not always live up to its expectations, either at the beginning of the juvenile courts years ago or today. Nevertheless, probation has remained the overwhelming dispositional choice for adjudicated offenders of juvenile courts since statistics were first kept in Torbet, There is a great deal of variety in the responsibilities and structure of probation departments from state to state and even within states.
In general, juvenile probation departments have three basic functions: intake screening of cases referred to juvenile court, presentence investigations, and court-ordered supervision of juveniles. This section deals only with court-ordered supervision of juveniles who were given probation as their primary disposition. The use of probation officers to supervise juveniles following incarceration is covered in the section on after care; it is not always easy to separate the two conditions, however.
The same parole officers may oversee juveniles whose primary sanction was probation probationers and juveniles who have been released from incarceration parolees. Conditions of probation may be similar for both groups of juveniles. Both probationers and parolees may attend the same treatment programs while serving their probation. Intensive supervision, as its name implies, involves more intense scrutiny and monitoring than traditional probation. Interest in intensive supervision probation has waxed and waned since the s.
Spurred by both increasing overcrowding in correctional facilities and the get-tough approach, intensive supervision programs grew in popularity in the late s Armstrong, Studies of intensive supervision for adult offenders have not found increased monitoring alone to reduce recidivism. In fact, increased monitoring may detect more cases of technical probation violations than regular probation MacKenzie, , leading to higher rates of measured reoffending if technical violations are included in recidivism measures.
A study by Land and colleagues , examined an intensive supervision program for status delinquency cases. Status offenders were randomly assigned to regular probation or to intensive supervision. In addition to frequent visits with the juvenile and his or her family from the counselor as often as daily at first, then at least weekly thereafter, compared with visits once every 90 days for regular probation , juveniles and their families in intensive supervision were directed to community programs to assist them.
Based on individualized assessments and program plans, juveniles in the intensive supervision program were given behavioral objectives to be met and were regularly assessed on their progress. A year after treatment end, juveniles in intensive supervision had significantly fewer criminal delinquency referrals than did those in regular probation.
There was no difference between the groups in status offense referrals. As the program matured and became routinized, it appeared to become less effective. Status offenders who entered the program after it had been in existence for 1. Land et al. Intensive supervision coupled with treatment and well-supported staff appears to have the potential to keep status offenders who have not already been involved in criminal delinquency from committing criminal delinquent acts.
Most of the intensive supervision probation programs instituted beginning in the late s and throughout the s have been targeted not at status offenders, but at high-risk juveniles for whom community safety demands more intense supervision than can be provided under routine probation Armstrong, These intensive supervision programs vary greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Some include short-term residential placements with intensive community-based services; others rely on frequent contact between the probation officer and the.
The definition of frequent also varies from daily to weekly, but it is always more frequent than traditional probation. Several studies have evaluated intensive supervision of probationers. The in-home programs cost only one-third the expense of incarceration in training schools. The evaluators concluded that intensive in-home programs were cost-effective and posed no increased danger to the community. A three-year follow-up of juvenile offenders randomly assigned to regular probation or intensive probation in Contra Costa County, California, found little difference in recidivism measured by rearrest, court appearances, incarceration, and self-reported offending between the two groups Fagan and Reinarman, Although the intensive program was designed to include more therapeutic programs than regular probation, in practice, the major difference was the number of contacts between probation officers and juveniles—weekly for intensive supervision and monthly for regular probation.
The program was originally intended for serious and violent offenders, but many nonviolent, less serious offenders ended up in the program. The authors concluded that regular probation suffices for most juvenile offenders and that intensive supervision should be reserved for serious and violent offenders who have failed under regular probation conditions. A number of researchers e. Defining which juveniles are high risk and therefore warrant intensive supervision, however, is a complicated and difficult task.
Relying solely on the seriousness of the current offense is inadequate, as that alone is a poor predictor of future offending see, for example, Wolfgang et al. Judicial judgments of dangerousness have been shown to be quite poor at accurately predicting which offenders are dangerous Fagan and Guggenheim, Demonstrating the success or failure of intensive supervision programs may ride on their ability to identify the appropriate group of juveniles to serve.
Studies that evaluate intensive supervision programs for parolees or for a combination of probationers and parolees are discussed in the section below on after care. Deprivation of liberty through incarceration is usually thought to be the most severe sanction that can be meted out by the justice system.
The type of offenses for which juveniles are detained include not only violent offenses but also property and drug offenses.
The Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement CJRP , conducted on October 29, , found that nearly 93, youngsters under age 18 were held in public or private detention, correctional, and shelter facilities Gallagher, The CJRP, which collects individual data on each person under age 21 held in residential facilities, replaced the Children in Custody census, which collected aggregate data on persons under age 21 in each facility biennially from through Differences in methodology between the two censuses make direct comparisons of the numbers of juveniles in custody over time problematic.
It appears that the numbers of juveniles in custody has grown steadily since see Figure It is impossible to determine, however, how much of the increase from to is real and how much is an artifact of the change in method of data collection. Nevertheless, the United States has a high rate of juveniles in custody— per , juveniles Snyder and Sickmund, —a rate that is higher than the adult incarceration rate in most other countries Mauer, It is easy to forget that most children who are incarcerated will be out on the streets in a few years or months.
What they learn through the juvenile justice system is likely to influence their behavior later. Their access to appropriate education and vocational training and to mental health services may make all the difference between successful reintegration into society and reoffending. Conditions in juvenile facilities vary greatly, from those in which appropriate educational and other services are provided and staff are well trained to those in which many juveniles spend much of their time in cells with nothing to do, and where facilities are unsafe and unsanitary, services are lacking, and staff are poorly trained and may even be abusive.
Research has found that some adult offenders prefer incarceration to intensive supervision probation, indicating that at least some offenders find intensive supervision more punitive Crouch, ; Petersilia and Deschenes, Source: Data for to from Smith ; data for and from Snyder and Sickmund Meals are so meager that many boys lose weight.
Clothing is so scarce that boys fight over shirts and shoes. Almost all of the teachers are uncertified, instruction amounts to as little as an hour a day, and until recently there were no books. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in June that boys in the Central Arkansas Observation and Assessment Center seldom saw daylight, were given clean clothing only every other week, and were subjected to the unsanitary condition of raw sewage backing up into shower drains whenever toilets were flushed Coalition for Juvenile Justice, In contrast, some facilities provide a wide range of programs in well-kept settings.
The Giddings State Training School in Texas has modern educational facilities that are wired for the Internet and offers high school equivalency classes and vocational training. The facility has intensive treatment for drug abusers, sexual offenders, and capital offenders. The facilities are tended by the residents and are clean and well kept Coali-. Education is now stressed over punishment there.
In fact, Ferris is the only education program in a juvenile secure care facility in the Mid-Atlantic region to receive accreditation Coalition for Juvenile Justice, Even in well-kept settings, however, some misbehaving youth are punished through isolation or deprivation of privileges. The panel could find no studies of the impact of these punishments on the behavior of juveniles either during incarceration or upon release.
The only national study of conditions of confinement in juvenile correctional facilities Parent et al. Crowded conditions are widespread in juvenile training and reform schools.
In , 68 percent of juveniles in public facilities and 15 percent in private facilities were in facilities that housed more juveniles than they had been designed to house Smith, Overcrowded conditions are not only unpleasant, but also may be dangerous—both staff and juveniles have higher rates of injury in overcrowded facilities Parent et al.
Injury rates were also higher for both juveniles and staff in facilities in which living units were locked 24 hours a day, regardless of the percentage of youth incarcerated for violent crimes, than in less secure facilities. The study found that large dormitory sleeping arrangements were accompanied by high rates of juvenile-on-juvenile injuries. Single sleeping rooms were related to suicidal behavior, with the rate of suicide attempts increasing as the percentage of juveniles in single rooms increased Parent et al.
Apparently, rooms housing two or three juveniles are preferable to either single rooms or large dormitories. Parent and colleagues also found serious deficiencies in health care for incarcerated juveniles. Health care screenings, which national standards say should occur within one hour of admissions, and appraisals, which should occur within seven days of admission, are often not completed in a timely manner. Timely screenings are important to identify injuries and acute health problems that may require immediate attention.
Timely health appraisals are important to identify health care needs that require treatment during confinement and to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. In addition, the Parent et al. This was a particular problem in detention centers, where one-third of juveniles were screened by untrained staff. Members of the study panel visited the Giddings School and can corroborate the praise of the facility by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice.
How to handle very disruptive and violent youth, who end up in isolated lock-up, however, remains a problem for this facility. Parent et al. They found that, in the early s, 65 percent of juveniles in public facilities were in institutions with current court orders or consent decrees related to programming deficiencies.
They could not determine which areas of programming were specified in the orders and decrees, however. Nevertheless, this finding points to widespread inadequacies in services available to juveniles held in residential facilities. Many children and adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system have fared poorly in school and have significant educational needs.
Although not as well studied as the mental health needs of these youngsters discussed in the next section , many have not attended school recently and many perform below grade level. In addition, for most incarcerated juveniles, correctional education services are their last exposure to formal education Dedel, In site visits made during their study, Parent et al.
A Massachusetts state court decision Green v. Johnson, F. The Parent et al. The American Correctional Association standards recommend that educational programs in juvenile facilities use state-certified teachers, have a maximum student-to-teacher ratio of , and assess the educational status of juveniles to develop individualized educational plans.
Only 55 percent of training school residents and 29 percent of ranch, camp, or farm residents are in facilities that meet all the recommended educational standards. Adjudicated delinquents who do not require strict confinement in a training school may be sent to a ranch, camp, or farm run by the state or local government or by private organizations for long-term residential placement. Dedel reports that 75 percent of students in custody advanced less than a full grade level per year while in custody.
A number of studies of incarcerated juveniles have found the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, diagnosed from structured interviews or clinical assessments, to be three to five times higher than in the general population of young people Chiles et al. Conduct disorder was present in over 80 percent of incarcerated youth Davis et al. This finding is not surprising because the criteria for a diagnosis of conduct disorder includes delinquent and criminal behavior, such as truancy, arson, theft, breaking and entering, and assault.
Other psychiatric disorders found among detained and incarcerated young people included depressive disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD , and psychotic disorders. Studies also report many times more personality disorders, especially borderline personality disorder, among incarcerated youth than among the general population of young people.
At least half of juvenile detainees also report substance abuse Davis et al. A study of randomly selected incarcerated boys and girls in Ohio found that girls displayed significantly more mental health problems other than conduct disorder than boys—84 percent of girls had a mental health disorder compared with 27 percent of boys.
Studies of adult incarcerated women suggest that psychiatric disorders are also much more prevalent in adult incarcerated women than in either adult incarcerated men or the general population Jordan et al. Juvenile offenders have been found to have a high rate of drug and alcohol use. In , the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program found illegal substances in the urine of 40 to over 60 percent depending on the city of male juvenile arrestees National Institute of Justice, An analysis of the National Youth Survey found a strong correlation between serious substance use and serious delinquent behavior Johnson et al.
Drug and alcohol use often coexist with other mental health problems McBride et al. Young people with substance abuse or mental health disorders in juvenile correctional facilities have little chance of receiving either an adequate assessment or appropriate treatment. In some cases, these new laws saddled children with the most severe sentences—death and life without the possibility of parole.
Many of the new state laws also exposed youth to the dangers and potential abuses attributed to incarceration with adult offenders—much like they had experienced before the creation of the original juvenile court more than a century earlier.
Since the s, juvenile crime rates have steadily decreased, yet the harsh penalties of the s remain in many state laws. With this shift, key distinctive and rehabilitative approaches of the juvenile justice system have been lost to the more severe consequences attendant to criminal justice system involvement.
With few exceptions, in most states delinquency is defined as the commission of a criminal act by a child who was under the age of 18 at the time; most states also allow youth to remain under the supervision of the juvenile court until age In lieu of prison, juvenile court judges draw from a range of legal options to meet both the safety needs of the public and the treatment needs of the youth, although youth may be confined in juvenile correctional facilities that too often resemble adult prisons and jails, routinely imposing correctional practices such as solitary confinement, strip searches, and the use of chemical or mechanical restraints.
Youth are entitled educational programming while incarcerated. Special Education and the Juvenile Justice System. Spring Issue of Journal of Juvenile Justice. The Impact of Gangs on Communities. The Northwestern Juvenile Project: Overview. Trauma-informed Care and Outcomes Among Youth. Women and Girls in the Corrections System. Gender-Specific Programming. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: National Report. Promote Your Youth Program.
Report: Juvenile Court Statistics. Report: Juveniles in Residential Placement, Resource: Beyond the Box Resource Guide. Resource: Building a School Responder Model.
Resource: Child Labor Trafficking. Resource: Drug Courts. Resource: Statistical Briefing Book. Resource: Tribal Access to Justice Innovation. The Effects of Adolescent Development on Policing. Tribal Crime Data Collection Activities, National Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center. National Reentry Resource Center. Grants A Resource from Department of Justice.
National Institute of Corrections. Performance Measures Resources. Problem-Oriented Guides for Police. Resource: Re-Entry Education Toolkit. Risk and Protective Factors Data Tool.
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