Running head: JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM SHOULD FOCUS ON 1

Juvenile Justice System Should Focus on Rehabilitation

University of Phoenix
 Juvenile Justice System Should Focus on Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation over Punishment, why one is better or more effective than the other, in

order to answer this questions one must understand what each means. Punishment is a

consequence of doing something that is unacceptable, it is meant to be unpleasant, the problem

with punishment is it does nothing to address the social or mental processes that maybe

contributing to delinquency, nor does it address why an individual commits the unacceptable

act(assosiated content, n.d.).

The juvenile justice system should focus on rehabilitation because while punishment may

be unpleasant we need to focus on mental health assessment and services for youth

(modelsforchange, n.d.). Most youth who are only punished reoffend because the reason for the

initial offence was never addressed. Youth Outreach Services (YOS) focuses on mental health

assessment and services for youths because upon identifying mental, emotional or ongoing

problems caused by trauma the youth can receive follow-up testing or immediate assistance. The

identifying of these problems can help family members understand and also better help the

juvenile. In the last two years 95% of the juveniles that went to the rehabilitation program and

screening of YOS avoided re-arrest (modelsforchange, n.d.). If we do not focus on rehabilitation

we are depriving both society and the offenders of their full potential (the league of young

voters, n.d.).

Law enforcement and rehabilitation meet in programs such as DARE where police

officers go to schools and help educate the youth on the dangers of drug use and gang

involvement. While police officers are there to protect and keep the peace they are not always

trained to be able to communicate with the youth on a level that the youth can respond too.
Sometimes the police and used to scare teens straight and let them know that if the follow the

path of drugs, gangs and violence they will be taken to prison.

Juvenile rehabilitation and the court process, the independent juvenile court is a

specialized court for children, designed to promote rehabilitation of youth. Many serious

decisions are made before the juvenile trial begins, such as whether to detain youths or release

them to the community, whether to waive them to the adult court or keep them in the juvenile

justice system, as well as the decision to treat them in the community or send them to a secure

treatment center. When making disposition decisions, juvenile court judges can select programs

that will improve life skills and help youths form an affirmative bond with society (, 2005). The

Juvenile Justice System also uses deferent terms than the Adult Criminal Justice System, some of

the differences are respondent for juveniles versus defendant for adults, Delinquent Act/Offense

for juveniles versus crime for adults, adjudication hearing versus trial, found delinquent versus

convicted/found guilty, disposition versus sentencing, detention versus jail, and juvenile

rehabilitation authority versus prison (Clallam County Courts-Juvenile Court, n.d.).

Probation and Juvenile Rehabilitation, probation is a direct court order where the

offender is ordered to remain under community supervision, emphasizing treatment without the

need incarceration. Probation is the principal form of community treatment used by the juvenile

justice system, the juvenile who is on probation is retained in the community under the

supervision of an officer of the court. While on probation a set of rules and conditions must be

met for the offender to remain in the community. Juveniles on probation can be placed in a wide

variety of community-based treatment programs providing services that ranging from group

counseling to drug treatment. Community treatment is based on the principal idea that the
juvenile offender is not a danger to the community and will have a better chance of being

rehabilitated while in the community. It also provides offenders with the chance to be supervised

by trained personnel who can help them rebuild forms of suitable behavior in a community

setting.

There are several types of facilities in juvenile corrections, such as reception centers that

screen juveniles in order to assign them to an appropriate facility, there are also specialized

facilities that can provided specific types of care, such as drug treatment, training schools or

reformatories for youths that are in need of a long-term secure setting, ranch or forestry camps

also provide long-term residential care, as does boot camps, which seek to rehabilitate youth

through the use of rough physical training. Choosing the proper facility can be a very difficult

decision. Many believe that the most effective secure-corrections programs provided

individualized services for a small number of partakers and offer creative approaches to treating

the offender. Institutionalizing young offenders can do more harm than good because it exposes

the juveniles to prisonlike conditions and to more experienced delinquents without the assistance

of constructive treatment programs.

Community treatment refers to efforts to provide care, protection, and treatment for

juveniles in need. Community treatment covers efforts to keep offenders in the community and

spare them the disgrace of incarceration. The main purpose is to provide a nonrestrictive or home

setting, employing educational, vocational, counseling, and employment services. The most

widely used community treatment method is probation while on probation behavior is monitored

by probation officers. When rules are broken, youths can have their probation revoked.

Effective intervention plays a vital role in any plan intended to reduce the rates of

juvenile delinquency. Those employed in the juvenile justice system use intervention as a key
module of dispositional sanctions imposed in juvenile cases. This is mainly true for the treatment

of serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders/serious offenders who have the probability for

long and destructive criminal careers and who without effective interventions, are more likely to

recidivate while at the age for peak offending. The most effective intervention programs for

noninstitutionalized offenders concentrated on, individual counseling, reality therapy counseling,

and juvenile sexual offenders were treated with multisystemic therapy. Interpersonal skills that

use drama and the production of videos, a ten day course focusing on a personal or community

commitment and behavior programs focusing on behavior therapy, are the most successful.

Reoffending effect sizes for the various treatment types were most reliably positive for

interpersonal skills interventions and teaching family homes (Office of Justice Programs, 2000).

The opposition to rehabilitation is that we must advocate justice and equality under the

law regardless of age. Deterrence is believed to be the best approach to punishment, because the

belief is that if the offender is incarcerated the ability to commit more crimes is erased. Crimes

such as rape of other juveniles, aggravated assault on elderly and helpless victims, and murders

are being committed by perpetrators as young as 13. Juvenile offender under with long criminal

records which result in small if any punishments can develop a false sense of operating above the

law, with the defiant attitude that the law and its representatives couldn't touch them. Methvin

(1997) confirms that failure to punish juvenile offenders’ severely upon the act of their first is a

primary factor in determining whether a youth would become a habitual offender. Those who are

in favor of punishment versus rehabilitation believe it is the failure of the system by not

adequately and consistently punishing offenders which lies at the heart of the constant rise in

juvenile crime, the inclination to re-offend, with offenders progressing from non-violent crimes

to violent ones.
 These views are not as valid as rehabilitation because crime prevention programs work

and are more cost effective. Crime prevention programs can prevent approximately 250 crimes

per $1 million versus investing the same amount in prisons only preventing 60 crimes. Both

California and Florida spend more on corrections then on higher education, incarceration of a

juvenile for one year is cost $35,000 - $64,000, per year while the annual tuition of attending

Harvard is under $30,000 per student. Local, state and federal budget to maintain the prison

population in 1990 was $24.9 billion this has grown to $144 (American Civil Liberties Union,

1996).

The advantages to rehabilitation is that better rehabilitation and re-entry care can reduce

time spent incarcerated and allows for better adjustment to the outside world and reduce cost.

Without rehabilitation we are producing more and repeat offenders while depriving society and

offenders of their full potential. With proper rehabilitation former offenders and the community

benefit. We need to encourage rehabilitation rather than continue to put more money into a

broken and failed prison system (the league of young voters, n.d.). Juvenile courts were designed

to be flexible, informal and to rehabilitate, with the surge in crimes of the 1990’s and the need

for a quick fix to the problem incarceration became the solution. Incarceration brings the non-

violent offender in contact with violent and adult criminals at a influential time in their life,

providing them with training to becoming a more dangerous criminal. This solution did not stop

the crime wave but made more troubled juveniles and career criminals. The public now also feel

that incarcerating youths without rehabilitation is the same as giving up on our children and

when given the choice the public would rather put the money into rehabilitation rather than

incarceration. The current juvenile justice system is failing. Rapists and murderers are hardly

punished and allowed back into the community to repeat their crimes on the unsuspecting. This
creates an atmosphere of violence and leads to loss of hope in children. Life needs to seen as

holding promise and that the ability for success is attainable in order to give juveniles a goal that

can be achieved. The law alone cannot deter, nor rehabilitation successfully.
 References

(2005). JUVENILE COURT P R O C E S S : P R E T R I A L , T R I A L , AND

SENTENCING. In Juvenile Delinquency: The Core (pp. 306-336). Retrieved from

cjs240_week5_reading

American Civil Liberties Union. (1996). www.aclu.org/print/racial-justice/aclu-fact-sheet-

juvenile-justice-syst

Clallam County Courts-Juvenile Court. (n.d.).

http://www.clallam.net/courts/html/court_juvenile.htm

Office of Justice Programs. (2000). http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/181201.pdf

assosiated content. (n.d.).

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2028780/rehabilitation_and_the_juvenile_justi

ce_pg5.html?cat=17

modelsforchange. (n.d.). www.modelforchange.net/newsroom/167

the league of young voters. (n.d.). http://theleague.com/issues/juvenile-justice