Juvenile Residential Therapy

A difficult challenge to the juvenile justice system and child welfare system is working with adolescents with comorbid difficulties, causing these adolescents to becoming at risk for incarceration and involvement with the juvenile and adult justice system. The juvenile justice system appears to be having a challenging time in determining how to respond and treat adolescents with mental health and substance use. "Many

This assignment states that the current juvenile system focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishing the juveniles. With that in mind, the assumption is that all juveniles can be rehabilitated. The question posed to me is my view on why or why not all juveniles can be rehabilitated? The Webster dictionary defines juvenile’s delinquency as, “A violation of the law or some type of antisocial behavior by a child or young person, and rehabilitation is, “To restore someone to good condition or health.

I advocate for a revision of the juvenile justice system that truly promotes social justice. The ideal detention facility I propose for delinquent juveniles more so resembles the practices and concepts the Missouri Division of Youth Services provides. This system does not bar children in cells. It does not force them to wear dehumanizing uniforms, they are provided with sufficient and well-trained mental health professionals. They are provided with anger management programs. It is devoted to “offer a demanding, carefully crafted, multilayered treatment experience, designed to challenge troubled teens and to help them

Terry, VanderWaal, McBride, and Holly, discussed the impact of substance abuse within the juvenile justice system. They discussed treatment programs and services that are currently available. Improved substance abuse interventions have the potential to reduce recidivism amongst juveniles. Funding is needed to improve substance abuse treatment centers. Funding for program development requiring collaborative applications may provide valuable incentives for the development of successful juvenile justice collaborations. (Terry, VanderWaal, McBride, & Holly, 2000). Tsui discusses the shortcomings of utilizing detention as the primary method of dealing with the juvenile justice system. Tsui focused on the city of Chicago, and examined the present state of the juvenile justice system by identifying possible barriers and solutions to integrating restorative justice practices in a system primarily focused on detention. (Tsui, 2014).

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Office of Prevention and Victim Services provides voluntary youth crime prevention programs through the state of Florida. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice mission is to increase public safety by reducing juvenile delinquency through operative prevention, intervention and treatment services that builds up families for a turn around of a brighter future of a troubled youth. The main functions of these programs as will be indicated in this paper are designed to reduce juvenile crime and protect public safety. These programs that will be stated main focused is to help those high-risk juveniles and those who display problem behaviors such as ungovernability, truancy, running away from home and other pre-delinquent behaviors. The state of Florida addresses these problems by contracting this delinquency programs prevention services and awarding grants to this local providers throughout the state of Florida.

The number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system is one of the most pressing problems facing law enforcement and corrections today (Cuellar, McReynolds, & Wasserman, 2006). The Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health estimated that about 20% of children and adolescents in the general population have mental disorders with some degree of at least mild functional impairment (USPH, 1999). Subsequent research has found much higher rates of serious mental health problems among youth in the juvenile justice system. Among youth who have been arrested, one study found that 31% of youth had received services from the mental health system (Rosenblatt, Rosenblatt, & Biggs, 2000). Two studies of youth in juvenile detention found that between 60% and 68% met the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder (Teplin, Abram, McClelland, Dulcan, & Mericle, 2002; Wasserman, Ko, & McReynolds, 2004). Once youth with emotional disturbances enter the justice system, repeated arrests are common through the remainder of childhood and into adulthood. Recidivism rates for individuals with a serious mental illness are nearly double those in the general population (Baillargeon, Binswanger, Penn, Williams, & Murray, 2009; Constantine, Petrila, Andel, Givens, Becker et al., 2010). In an analysis of juvenile trajectories, youth with emotional disturbances in their late adolescent years were more likely to fall into the high arrest trajectory class and much

Legacy Treatment Services is a nonprofit organization which employs over 700 employees and offers programs to 13 counties throughout New Jersey (Legacy Treatment Services, 2016). It should be noted that there are 21 counties in the state of NJ, which are served by different organizations, like Oaks Integrated Care. This organizations mission is to support and change behavioral health and social service outcomes. Legacy Treatment Services is the product of a mergence between The Drenk Center and The Children’s Home. This paper will focus primarily on the Adolescent Residential Services Division which provides housing, schooling, therapy, psychiatric services, and life skills training to children who reside

In order to properly address mandatory incarceration for chronic juvenile offender’s criminal activities, it is important to begin with psychological assessments and evaluations. Half of our youths have experienced some type of psychological trauma such as depression, PTSD, personality disorders, anxiety, anger issues, or dissociation, just to name a few (Moroz, K. 2009). In order to determine mandatory incarceration, all of these factors must be considered. I will agree with most of our society that is , if they are a danger to society and serious of the crime, they need to be put into detention, where they cannot cause harm but where they can received the right intervention program and mental health treatment for them, it’s the law. The juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate not punish young offenders. Punishment is not the answer in solving their delinquent behavioral patterns.

The need of diversion programs in juvenile correctional settings is on an increase. Two conflicting impulses dominate the desire to decrease the number of reoffending juveniles. The first is a compassionate approach that concentrates on treating the youth whereas the second approach uses punishment to protect their focus, which is community safety (Artello, Hayes, Muschert, & Spencer, 2015). It is important to note that not all individuals are impacted in the same way therefore many approaches aimed towards assisting the youth within the justice system exist. Due to the Progressive Era Reform, the state has the ability and responsibility to protect the welfare of children leading to treatment that hopefully divert them from continuously

Rehabilitation is not “the easy way out” to escape legal punishment, but is rather a key crime prevention strategy, the aim of which is to sway young offenders from their criminal paths. In many cases, rehabilitative techniques are more effective than prison sentences. For instance, David Clayton Thomas, who received a prison sentence at age 15 in Canada, provides a description of the prison, calling it “a predatory, upside-down society where the strong rule, the weak are victimized and the inmate code is all that matters.” Thomas says, “Break the code and you could get killed.” These are not the conditions in which our youth should be expected to restore their moral values! It has also been proven that rates of depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, and substance abuse- all of which rehabilitation counsellors work with in our young offenders- are higher among youth in custody than among those in the general population. Participation in a rehabilitative program is not a lenient sentence; it is a healing process that is often difficult, but at the end of which the goals of the offender and his/her mentors are hopefully

The state-funded facilities California lack in areas such as educational resources. California spends 5.7 billion dollars each year incarcerating youth alone. With each child requiring an average cost of about 200 dollars a day just for basic survival needs, the state is not making the cut for spending money towards educational purposes. In a recent field trip of mine with my school, we visited a rehabilitation center that goes by the name of Homeboy. During this visit, they gave our class a tour and to our surprise these ex-cons everybody was working together and diligently. This facility is however privately owned. State ran programs are virtually nonexistent. This is a major contribution as to why the incarcerated youth become repeat offenders. Now we can dive into this further and ask the question of how the youth is treated while still

The Lookout Mountain Youth Correctional Facility is run by the Colorado Department of Human Services, Division of Youth Corrections and serves male juvenile offenders in a secure treatment program. Their mission is “to be a model of excellence providing treatment for youth in a safe, secure and healthy environment.” They are firm believers that all people have dignity and worth and they “strive to create opportunities for positive growth and change.” 70-75% of youth placed in the facility suffer from mental health issues outside of a simple disorder causing misbehavior. These disorders range from post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders. In addition to mental health disorders, many

Currently to deal with juvenile offenders involved in the youth crime, there are two options available. The first option that prevails to a larger extent is known to us as incarceration while the second option that is slowly gaining trends is known to us as rehabilitation programs. This paper focuses on thorough analysis of both these options and the impact that they have on the offenders as well as the society as a whole. The paper also assesses the viability of these options in order to determine which of these will prove to be more effective and beneficial.

To address this issue, mental health professionals and policy makers have justifiably argued for the promotion of childhood programs that may prevent the development of violent behavior (Borduin, 1995). Traditionally, the juvenile justice system has emphasized the goals of treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders, while attempting to protect them from punishment, vengeance, and stigmatization (Tate, 1995).Violent juvenile offenders have posed a challenge to this rehabilitative ideal because of mounting public pressure to ensure protection of society. Juveniles who are perceived as risky or persistent in their criminal activity are increasingly transferred to the adult criminal justice system, where they may receive much severer penalties (Tate, 1995). Over the past decade, several treatments, including multisystemic therapy (MST) , functional family therapy and multidimensional treatment foster care, have been identified as promising or effective practices with juvenile offenders by the U. S. Surgeon General , the Blue- prints for Violence Prevention and re- viewers (Mitchell, 2006).

Reginald Clemons conducted this research for is doctoral dissertation. He draws on this large amount of research to immediately make the assertion that juvenile delinquency destroys communities in the United States via criminal behavior as a whole. Juveniles learn a response to societal rules based on their parents own response. Clemons asserts that recidivist juveniles who repeatedly appear in juvenile court may eventually engage in adult criminal behavior. Clemons touches on the Rational Choice Theory and the Neoclassical School of Positivism and notes several initiatives in the State of California to stop juvenile crime. He also states the identification of juvenile delinquents most at risk of continued offending and the factors contributing to their repeat offender is crucial in reducing their offender behavior. Clemons sets out to determine the importance of a number of treatment programs to reducing juvenile recidivism. Secondarily, he attempts to identify and describe the components of juvenile treatment programs that most contribute to a reduction in recidivism. Lastly, he explains his desire to identify and determine which juvenile treatment programs were perceived to be most effective. The three of these purposes are judged by Deputy Probation officers in Los Angeles and Riverside Counties. Clemons identifies four research questions: 1. What is the perceived importance of having a variety of alternative juvenile referral treatment programs to the rate of