Juvenile Crime Juvenile Justice

Juvenile Justice Policy regarding juvenile crime and justice has moved to the center of public attention and political debate in recent years. Increases in youth crime, stories of frustrated parents seeking help for their troubled children, and criticisms of juvenile justice programs have led to demands for change in the way young offenders are charged, punished, and treated (Howell, Krisberg, & Jones, 1995). Public concern about violent juvenile crime is also at an unprecedented high (Butterfield, 1996).

The increasingly violent nature of contemporary youth crime and the escalating number of young people involved with the juvenile justice system have challenged established beliefs guiding policy and practice with offenders. Traditionally, the juvenile court has striven to maintain a balance between rehabilitating and punishing offenders. The extent to which policy with young offenders has emphasized rehabilitation vs. punishment has changed intermittently over the past 30 years.

Influenced by principles of deinstitutionalization, practice in the 1970s and 1980s was based on an individual treatment model encouraging placement of offenders in nonsecure, community-based programs rather than incarceration institutions. Historically, youths have held this special status in the law, distinct from that of adults. The emergence of the current juvenile justice system in the United States, however, began with the rise in urbanization and industrialization in the late nineteenth century.

Believing that poor environment rather than willful behavior caused delinquency, these reformers pushed for a rehabilitative model of handling delinquent youths. The rehabilitative model removed the processing of youths from adult courts, in the belief that a separate court system could provide youths with greater protection. The system promoted individualized treatment of delinquents, attempting to rehabilitate them by correcting the mental and moral deficiencies in their characters.

However, in recent years, the trend in traditional juvenile justice systems has moved slowly toward the same outcome which is produced by adult justice systems. The juvenile is not rehabilitated, nor is he equipped morally to leave the criminal behavior behind. Increasing amounts of juveniles are being tried as adults because of the violent nature of their crimes. These teen criminals show all the moral hardness of an adult committing the same crime.

However, when the juvenile is placed in an adult facility, the chances of him or her ever leaving the live style of crime decrease significantly. As a response, the traditional juvenile justice system offers the same reply as the adult system, which includes more facilities, and stiffer penalties as an attempt to discourage juvenile offenders. This paper, however, will examine the failing effectiveness of such a response, and consider 3 alternative approaches which have begun to show positive changes in the lives of juvenile offenders.

Juvenile Facilities The deficiencies of juvenile correctional facilities are aggravated by the facilities' high costs and high recidivism rates. The national average annual cost in such a facility is $29,600 per resident. These costs vary from state to state, with the lowest costs in South Dakota at $17,600 per resident per year and the highest costs in Rhode Island at $78,800 per resident per year.(Allen- Hagan, 1991) Moreover, such high costs do not produce low recidivism rates.

For example, New York state spends over $70,000 annually per resident, but the state recidivism rate is between 75% and 86%.(Sheindlin, 1994) These congregate facilities are thus both ineffective and inefficient.(Roberts and Camasso, 1991) These traditional congregate facilities, however, are not the only available alternative. Rather then sending the juvenile offender to adult court, a number of programs and systems have taken alternative approaches to punishing and rehabilitating serious, violent juvenile offenders. These model reforms vary in philosophy, effectiveness, and cost, and often combine several treatment components with secure detention.

The elements of these alternative plans include academic education, behavior management training, community service, intensive supervision, individual and group counseling, mentoring. Some of these programs mix the treatment with an outdoor setting, thus transporting the offender into a completely different surrounding in order to serve as a catalyst for new behavioral and social training. (U.S. Dept of Justice, 1994) These components can be found in boot camps, restitution programs, wilderness programs, and several other unique and promising alternatives to congregate correctional facilities.

Boot Camp Boot camp programs mirror the structure and discipline of military training. In line with the get tough philosophy, such programs aim to teach internal discipline and prevent future offenses by providing an intensive, rigid training camp for juvenile offenders. Some believe that a stand alone boot camp experience actually may increase recidivism because offenders have difficulty maintaining discipline without intensive supervision. But the purpose of boot camps for juvenile offenders is to teach and internalize new personal habits and social abilities.

When the offender learns from experience that he or she can live a different life style, the desire for change becomes internalized, and personally meaningful. Boot camps have demonstrated a high degree of effectiveness when coupled with rigorous academic and other treatment programs. These programs also are significantly more cost effective than traditional congregate incarceration facilities. Restitution Restitution programs require offenders to compensate their victims. Restitution alone is not an appropriate sanction for the most serious, violent offenders, hut it often is a valuable component of treatment and punishment.

The purpose of restitution is to create a restorative justice system that attempts to mitigate the victims' loss and diminish societal costs of juvenile crime, while at the same time punishing the offender. Preliminary research indicates a slightly lower recidivism rate for juvenile offenders on probation who participate in restitution programs.(Butts and Snyder, 1992) Those who argue against restitution programs point out that restitution is limited by the nature of the crime, and that for some crimes -- especially violent ones -- restitution offers no appropriate compensation.

However, restitution goes beyond 'paying back' the victim and punishing the offender. Crime has a social and moral component, and by forcing the criminal to face his victim, socio-dynamic forces can come into the situation which, again, create the inner desire for change within the offender. His crime now has a face, and a life, and a name. The relational experience of the juvenile offender through the restitution system can make a lasting impression on him which incarceration cannot. Wilderness Challenges Wilderness programs are aimed primarily at rehabilitation.

Such programs place juveniles in small groups and then set a series of increasingly difficult physical challenges for them.(Roberts, 1998) The programs emphasize self-reliance, community participation, teamwork, and individual accomplishment. Wilderness programs vary greatly from state to state, but some currently focus on serious, violent, and chronic offenders. These programs are difficult to compare with other alternatives because of their variety.

If early reformers were correct, that environmental conditioning creates the criminal rather than willful behavior, then the wilderness challenges give the juvenile opportunity to exit his environment, and learn positive lessons of teamwork, and social dependence which will affect his perspective of his place in the world. Too often the urban setting is impersonal, and the juvenile finds crime as he identifies himself with other, older friends. In a desire to 'connect' within a place of impersonal urban surroundings, the juvenile is a victim of his surroundings.

The alternative programs listed.