CHAPTER ELEVEN

INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILES

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1.      To understand how judicial transfers to adult criminal courts have influenced the juvenile justice system, both philosophically and procedurally.

2.      To appreciate the unique features of institutions for juveniles as well as understand how rehabilitation programs operate in this type of environment.

3.      To examine the various issues and controversies involved with juvenile boot camps.

4.      To obtain a general as well as critical understanding of various types of wilderness programs for juvenile offenders.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

·         Today, adjudicated juveniles can be held in various types of facilities including training schools, detention centers, reception/diagnostic centers, shelters, ranches forestry camps or farms, and halfway houses or group homes.

·         There are two general custodial levels: secure and nonsecure.

·         The number of youth under 18 in prison is growing due to the increased use of waiver to criminal court.

Juvenile Transfers to Adult Court

·         There are generally three types of transfer provisions: (a) judicial waiver, (b) concurrent jurisdiction, and (c) statutory exclusion.

·         In 23 states, there is no minimum age for juveniles to be transferred to criminal court.

·         Juveniles can also be transferred as adults in the federal system if they meet certain criteria.

·         Generally, for every 1,000 formally handled delinquency cases, eight were transferred to criminal court.

·         Studies on the use of waivers in South Carolina and Utah revealed that a substantial number of transfers involved juveniles with no prior adjudications.

Issues Related to Waivers

·         Does the waiver concept meet its intended goal? The decision whether to have a juvenile remain in juvenile court or be transferred to adult court reflects a choice between the conflicting goals of rehabilitation and retribution.

·         Research has revealed that the waiver process may no be meeting its intended goal of retribution and incapacitation.

·         Transfers may be more of a symbolic status transformation from “redeemable youth” to “unsalvageable adult.”

·         Politicalization of juvenile crime? The transfers of juveniles to adult courts is one illustration of the punitive, “get tough” philosophy that has influenced various aspects of the juvenile justice system.

·         Merlo, Benekos, and Cook argued that rather than relying on the “get tough” philosophy, alternative strategies needed to address the problem of juvenile delinquency include prevention of child abuse and youth employment opportunities.

·         Disparity in administrating waivers? Some contend that the waiver proceedings are neither consistent nor equitable.

·         For instance, African-American males are waived at a comparably higher rate than white males.

·         Clement’s study revealed that the waiver process in Richmond, Virginia, is primarily an African-American male experience.

·         Another example of inconsistency and inequity in the waiver proceedings stems from the likelihood of incarceration and incarceration lengths of offenders retained in the juvenile system and offenders waived into the adult system.

Rehabilitation in Training School

·         Institutions, or training schools, which hou7se thousands of juveniles have become considerably more humane over the years.

·         Training schools are sued only for juveniles.

·         The largest number of institutional employees work in custodial activities; usually a small group of workers are designated as treatment personnel.

·         All states have at least one facility for the treatment of youngsters within an institutional setting; some facilities are operated by private agencies and the state contracts with them to provide custody and services.

·         There is considerable variation in the proportion of youths who are incarcerated in different states; the average custody rate for juveniles in 1997 was 368 for every 100,000.

Conditions in Juvenile Institutions

·         A number of studies have been conducted on the conditions in juvenile institutions, and in most cases this research has revealed many negative aspects of life in the typical large training school.

·         These negative aspects include custodial staff and treatment workers at cross-purposes with one another, a code of resident conduct frequently inhibits relations between juvenil4es and staff, and the victimization of residents is a common occurrence.

·         The custody programs were characterized by a lack of communication between staff and inmates, and an emphasis in the youth subculture on fighting.

·         In the treatment programs, the staff encouraged youths to inform them of fighting or threats of physical aggression; there was usually an elaborate system of rewards and punishment consisting of granting or taking away of various privileges.

·         In addition to contending with the general atmosphere, staff and youths in institutions must often contend with a lack of resources and trained personnel.

·         The failure of juvenile institutions to provide adequate programs is particularly serious in institutions for girls; many programs reinforce stereotypes of what is considered appropriate roles for females.

·         Chesney-Lind and Sheldon maintain that there are still indications that there is gender bias in the juvenile justice system. Many girls are coming into the system; in many instances, these female offenders are placed in highly restrictive programs with a paucity of educational and treatment opportunities.

·         Minority group males and females are also disproportionately affected by an inadequacies of institutional programs.

·         In 1991, OJJDP established the Disproportionate Minority Confinement (DMC) initiative to assist states to comply with the JJDP Act’s requirement of addressing the problem of disproportionate number of minorities incarcerated in juvenile facilities.

·         Based on five pilot studies, there were four consistent and interrelated domains related to the disproportionate number of minorities in confinement: (a) the juvenile justice system, (b) the educational system, (c) the family, and (d) socioeconomic conditions.

Effectiveness of Treatment in Institutions

·         Early research provided us with some understanding of the effectiveness of treatment in institutions.

·         From their study, McCord and Sanchez found that until the  age of twenty-four, the youths in the treatment-oriented program had much lower crime rates than those in the punitive program; however, as the youths matured past age twenty-four, there was less difference.

·         Not only did the availability of a sound treatment program affect the success of institutionalization, but also the careful matching of youths with institutional treatment had an influence.

·         Rousch has advocated the use of skills-based programs in juvenile detention and corrections; he argued that the use of skills-based programming makes sense for various reasons.

·         Our knowledge of conditions in juvenile institutions and the results of research lead to the conclusion that the use of institutions on a large scale is not justified if the goal is to treat and rehabilitate the offender.

The Future of Institutions

·         According to some experts, the best that can be expected of institutions is that they successfully implement programs which are valuable adjuncts to treatment such as vocational and educational training and prerelease planning.

Boot Camps for Juveniles

·         The historical foundation for boot camps can be traced to World War II; the British realized there was an extensive loss of lives when ships were sunk during combat. As a result of this, they developed a training program that focused on survival skills.

·         During the early 1960s this type of programming was implemented to treat juvenile delinquents. This Colorado-based program was called Outward Bound or Wilderness Training.

·         Boot camps are a military version of Outward Bound as well as a variation of shock probation.

·         Shock probation is when an offender is incarcerated for a brief period of time then resentenced to a term of probation.

·         The first contemporary boot camp for adults originated in Georgia in 1983; boot camps for young adult offenders continued to grow in the 1980s and in the 1990s spread to juvenile offenders.

Definition of Boot Camps

·         The precise definition of a boot camp is difficult to devise since program structure and goals vary from one jurisdiction to another.

·         MacKenzie and Souryal identified some features common among the various boot camps.

·         Six essential components of juvenile boot camp programs include (a) education, job training, and placement, (b) community service, (c) substance abuse counseling and treatment, (d) health and mental health care, (e) continuous, individualized case management, and (f) intensive aftercare services.

Goals of Juvenile Boot Camps

·         Parent, who has studied boot camps for a number of years, identified five often-cited goals for adult boot camps: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, punishment, and cost control. Of these, rehabilitation and cost control are the most noted goals among practitioners as well as policymakers.

·         Generally, there are two boot camp models: treatment and population reduction.

Selection of Youth

·         Juvenile boot camps are cost effective for youth who would otherwise be confined in a facility; however, placing youth in boot camps who would alternately be placed on probation is more costly.

·         Atschuler argued that most juvenile boot camps are being utilized as an alternative to probation rather than an alternative to confinement.

·         The increase in the number of confined youth also results in the high percentage of minority youth who are confined in boot camps.

Three Juvenile Boot Camp Demonstration Sites

·         In 1992, three boot camp demonstration sites were developed in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of juvenile boot camps. These demonstration sites were located in Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; and Mobile, Alabama.

·         There were significant indicators of progress from the initial test to the three month follow up tests in Cleveland and Mobile.

·         The rates of recidivism for the experimental and control group at each site revealed the following: Cleveland and Denver had higher recidivism rates in the experimental group compared to the control group; in Mobile, 28 percent of the youth in the experimental group and 31 percent of the youth in the control group reoffended.

·         While this information is based on interim data, at this time there is not a compelling demonstration that boot camps reduce recidivism.

·         For all three demonstration sites, the program cost for offenders in the boot camps was less then most of the alternative sanctions available for youthful offenders.

Evaluations of Boot Camp Programs

·         Salerno argued that while boot camps continue to be a fast-growing alternative sanction for both adult and juvenile offenders, these programs are doomed to fail; he maintained that they need to be phased out immediately.

·         Morash and Rucker argued that boot camps can produce negative outcomes.

·         MacKenzie noted that the military atmosphere alone does not indicate a direct influence on reducing recidivism; instead, boot camps may be more effective when used in combination with rehabilitation programs.

Wilderness Programs

·         Current wilderness programs developed from two separate foundations: the Outward Bound model originating in Wales during World War II, and forestry camps for juvenile offenders.

·         The first forestry camps for juvenile offenders developed in the 1930s in the Forestry Department in Los Angeles County.

·         Roberts noted that juvenile offenders generally have two problems in common: they have poor decision making skills; and they have no memory of a major, successful, socially acceptable experience.

·         Wilderness programs address these common problems by emphasizing various physically challenging outdoor activities.

·         Currently, there are many variations based on wilderness programs.

·         The effectiveness of wilderness programs is still unclear; some researchers have found that wilderness programs are at least as effective as training schools, and in some instances, significantly more effective.

·         Winterdyk and Griffiths’ study revealed that evaluations of wilderness programs used various methodologies which raises doubt as to whether the effects can be attributed to participating in wilderness programs or other independent factors.