Corrections and Treatment CJS 240

There is a wide variety of correctional treatment for juveniles, just like there is for adults. The juvenile criminal system has community-based programs, institutionalization, and aftercare programs. The goal of these three is to rehabilitate juvenile offenders and make them law abiding citizens.

 The efforts of the community treatment are probation, treatment services, and restitution. Juvenile probation is a primary method of community treatment that the juvenile justice system uses to rehabilitate youths. The juvenile on probation stays in the community as long as he or she follows the given conditions of probation.

Community treatment rehabilitate youths that are not a danger to society and have a bigger chance of being rehabilitated. The positive ways of community treatment are the normal contact with other people; avoids imprisonment which helps to rehabilitate the offender, and saves money to taxpayers.

In most jurisdictions, probation allows the youth offender to stay in the community under court supervision. In other words, probation is a contract between the court and the juvenile offender.  Just like the adults, if the young offender violates the conditions of probation, the court can revoke the contract; if this occurs, the juvenile has a right to be legally represented.

Another community-based program is victim restitution. This can take several ways. For example, a juvenile has to reimburse the victim monetarily, to cover medical expenses, wage losses, or property damage. In other instances, the juvenile offender might provide services directly to the victim, or contribution to a community organization.

According to Siegel and Welsh (2005) “Most juvenile offenders are retained in public institutions, administrated by state agencies such as child and youth services, health and social services, corrections, or child welfare”. (pg. 350). In some states these institutions compromise adults and juveniles institutions, all in one place.

Most private institutions consist on small facilities, which hold less than thirty youths. Numerous private institutions focus on a specific issue. Almost all of these private institutions are safe, but only 20 percent.

Institutionalized juveniles are affected by several issues. Most juveniles are incarcerated because of drug offenses, property, or victimizing other people. Although all juveniles go to these facilities for the same reasons, there seems to be a disparity on how often offenders from different ethnic backgrounds, are incarcerated. According Siegel and Walsh ( 2005), “  Research has found that this overrepresentation is not a result of differentials in arrest rates, but often stems from disparity at early stages of case processing.57 Of equal importance, minorities are more likely to be confined in secure public facilities rather than in open, private facilities that might provide more costly and effective treatment,58 and among minority groups African-American youths are more likely to receive more punitive treatment—throughout the juvenile justice system—compared with others.”. (pg.353).

A further issue is the way the make offenders can manipulate staff members and take advantage of minority group offenders. The institution facilities for girls lack recreation and vocational programs, as well as fewer services. The juvenile system should pay attention to these behavioral patterns in boys, and a lack of services for girls. The institutions are supposed to rehabilitate and teach young offenders that damaging others is wrong, but once they are in these facilities they learn that mistreatment toward weaker juveniles is acceptable. Because girls arrive the institution facilities with low self-esteem and lack of vocational characteristics, the absence of programs to help change this issues, does not in fact rehabilitate the young female offenders; they return to society without knowing what they would like to do once they became adults.

Aftercare programs are the equivalent to parole in the adult criminal justice. Juvenile offenders are placed in aftercare programs to help them with the transition to community. Aftercare is a crucial phase in the juvenile justice system because not very many turn eighteen being in custody.

The IAP (Intensive Aftercare Program) focus on five standards:

·         Prepare the youth to responsibility and freedom

·         Helping youth to interact with the community

·         Working with the juvenile offender and the victims

·         Increasing new resources for support

·         Supervising juveniles interacting within their community.

Although the different community-based treatments have a positive and a negative side, many jurisdictions are reporting success when focusing on rehabilitation of juvenile offenders

References

·         (2005). Juvenile Delinquency: The Core (2nd ed.). : Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc.