1. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Challenges and Opportunities in Juvenile Corrections

2. The Future of Juvenile Corrections:
A Growing Focus on Rehabilitation
• There has been a softening of punitive feelings toward juvenile
offenders and taxpayers have expressed an interest in paying
higher taxes to ensure that juveniles receive treatment and
rehabilitation rather than punishment
• This increasing interest in restorative justice may represent a
transition to a kinder and gentler juvenile justice system
• There is a growing consensus that youth should be treated in
the least restrictive environment consistent with public safety
• One emerging type of sentence is the blended juvenile/adult
sentence – attempts to blend the rehabilitation of the juvenile
justice system with the threat of adult sanctions if the youth
continues to break the law

3. Developing New Models of Institutional Management
• Many jurisdictions try to regulate behavior by rewarding
positive, desirable behavior through offering additional
privileges such as later bedtimes or being able to spend
more money at the commissary each week
• Self-governance approaches, such as positive peer
culture and guided group interaction, use the positive
influence of the youth in small group settings
• They attend frequent group meetings – supervised by
staff members – where the residents solve problems on
the unit and sometimes impose sanctions on group
members
• This approach helps to develop a youth’s problem-solving
and communication skills

4. Juvenile Assessment and Intervention System
• An approach to youth treatment based on an automated comprehensive risk
assessment that is combined with case planning and also includes a set of
strategies that best respond to the needs of four distinct groups of juveniles
Selective Intervention (SI)
• Juveniles tend to be positive, prosocial and lack significant behavioral
problems
• There may be a rapid decline in school attendance and achievement and a
marked shift in peer group from prosocial to delinquent
• Delinquent behavior in this group is in response to an external stressor or to
an internal, neurotic need
Environmental Structure (ES)
• Characterized by a lack of social and survival skills and poor impulse control
• Have difficulty understanding the others’ motives and are often used and
exploited
• Often experience social isolation and are eager to please and want to be liked
• They are susceptible to be positive and negative influences

5. Juvenile Assessment and Intervention System
Casework Control
• Characterized by general instability and chronic adjustment problems
• Home situations are likely to be chaotic, including residential (frequent family
relocation or multiple foster placements) and emotional instability, chemical
abuse, and inconsistent or exaggerated attempts at discipline by the parents,
as abuse is frequently noted
• These problems often result in hostility toward others
Limit Setting (LS)
• Motivated by power, money and excitement; engage in delinquency for thrills
• They find their role models among criminals and other delinquents whom they
perceive as successful, powerful or glamorous and often seek out association
with these individuals
• They see no real need to change their values or behaviors except to avoid
getting caught

6. Utilizing Evidence-Based Practices
• Implementing any type of intervention in juvenile corrections is
costly because staff must be trained in the new ways of
working with juveniles
• Most facilities are reluctant to implement new programs unless
research can demonstrate that the new approach is
substantially better than existing methods of working with youth
• Some interventions such as Scared Straight programs are fads
that are not effective at reducing crime
• Sound evidence-based research uses all of the studies that
have been published on a topic
• Cost-benefit analysis is used in recidivism research and it
compares the cost of the intervention against the economic
benefits

7. A Growing Focus on Reentry and Aftercare
• Community reentry is often difficult because juveniles go back
to the same neighborhoods and schools, dysfunctional family
relationships, neighborhood gangs, and negative peers
• Sometime, the youth’s experiences while incarcerated make it
more difficult to successfully return to the community
• Some youth spend so much time living in correctional
environments that they do not develop the skills to make
independent decisions for themselves and their interpersonal
skills decrease (called institutionalization)
• The longer youth are held in these facilities, the greater their
need for services
• Aftercare programs provide resources and support for the
youth while they are in the community
• Preparing residents for their return to the community is critically
important in reducing recidivism

8. Reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC)
• Populations in juvenile facilities generally have higher rates of
black residents
• Reasons for this overrepresentation include a disproportionate
involvement in crime, biased or discriminatory practices of the
criminal and juvenile justice systems and poverty
• Strategies that might reduce DMC:
• Comprehensive review of data and the identification of where juvenile
justice decision-making occurs
• Increasing the cultural competence of juvenile justice system decision-
makers
• Developing community-based detention alternatives
• Removing decision-making subjectivity
• Reducing barriers to family involvement in juvenile justice
• Legislating system-level change to reform juvenile justice systems
• There is no single solution to the problem of DMC

9. Acknowledging the Special Needs of Girls
in the Juvenile Justice System
• Recently, there has been development of gender responsive
programs and strategies that are structured differently than
programs for males
• These programs emphasize gender and cultural sensitivity and
provide interventions that acknowledge the physical, sexual and
emotional abuse and trauma experienced by most girls in juvenile
justice systems and also responsive to the different health needs
of young women
• Common themes in correctional programs that are successful in
reducing girls’ delinquency:
• Building skills in order to succeed in life, including: leadership and life
skills, self esteem enhancement, empowerment, mental health services,
recreation and education
• Building successful relationships, including: family involvement and
increasing communication and relationship building skills
• Attaching these girls to prosocial or supportive community networks

10. A Growing Focus on Health Care
and Health Promotion
• A youth’s placement incarceration may be the first time that they actually received
regular medical or dental care
• To comply with the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), residential placements
are required to meet the educational needs of youth that have learning difficulties
• Historically, the focus on health care in corrections has been diagnosing and
treating existing conditions
• What needs to be focused on is health promotion (which many juveniles neglect)–
activities include classroom instruction in reducing the risk of contracting a
communicable disease through unsafe sex or intravenous drug use, diet, exercise
and preventative dental care
• Foods in some facilities are typically high in fat and starch
• Residents found to be overweight or obese increased from 38% to 66% in three
months, attributed by overeating, inactivity and the side effects of taking
psychotropic medications
• If we cannot promote healthy lifestyles inside these facilities, it is unlikely that
these youth will have better habits once they return to the community

11. Staff Recruiting, Retention and Development
• It is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain staff members with high levels of
honesty, integrity, and who have the interpersonal skills to work with juvenile
populations
• They have to work unsocial shifts (holidays and nights) and must interact with
youth in crisis who can sometimes be rude, challenging and aggressive
• The salary and benefits for juvenile correctional officers are similar to officers
employed at adult facilities, but the expectations of juvenile correctional officers
tend to be higher so they are responsible for doing more duties for similar pay
• Hiring and training a new staff members is costly and many quit or are terminated
within the first year
• One significant goal is to recruit and retain minority officers
• It is difficult to recruit and retain physicians, nurses, teachers and psychologists to
work in juvenile correctional settings
• Staff training and development is a key factor in reducing misconduct, increasing
the effectiveness of the rehabilitative programs, and ensuring that all staff
members are aware of the organization’s mission and values

12. Delinquency Prevention
• Delinquency can be prevented by identifying risk factors in
individuals, families, schools and communities and reducing these
risks before youth engage in delinquency
• Home visits by nurses to at-risk families, classes with weekly home
visits by preschool teachers and family therapy for delinquent and at-
risk preadolescents are all effective at reducing delinquency
• Preschool intellectual enrichment and child skills training are effective
in preventing delinquency and later criminal offending
• These interventions led to fewer arrest, less illegitimate children,
lower levels of substance abuse and an increase in higher status jobs
• Dysfunctional families, poorly functioning schools, neighborhoods
with high levels of unemployment, female headed households, gang
involvement and poverty are all highly associate with delinquency
• General parent education and parent management are effective in
preventing delinquency or later criminal offending
• Delinquency can also occur at the school, neighborhood and
community levels with programs such as school and discipline
management and classroom or instructional management

13. Juvenile Corrections:
A Case for Cautious Optimism
• The operations of juvenile correctional facilities are inextricably linked with
attitudes toward juvenile crime and offenders
• During times when feeling toward juveniles are positive and rehabilitative,
legislators may be able to allocate more funding for educational and health
programs for youth in juvenile corrections or provide training for staff working
within juvenile justice systems
• Juvenile justice leaders should strive, whenever possible, to develop stronger
working partnerships with other government and non-profit agencies
• The impact of basing interventions on evidence-based research has become a
driving force in juvenile corrections, making it easy to be optimistic about the
future of juvenile corrections
• Youth held in residential placements today are apt to be treated more humanely
and with more respect than in previous eras
• This point in time represents the best hope for implementing broad-based
delinquency prevention programs
• The directions that juvenile corrections take will be shaped by external forces:
public opinion, legislative priorities and litigation