Juvenile Delinquency
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Juvenile Delinquency
CRJ 308
Currie Gauvreau
October 18, 2010
What hasn’t worked? There are a couple of different tactics that were popular in the early 1990’s. The first tactic and the one that is still around today is just a scare tactic. While there are many others these are the most popular by far. What is “scared straight”? [2] This was a program that grew in popularity in the early 90’s in response to the increasing crime rates and the “get tough on crime” mentality that dominated the thinking at the time. It involved brining juvenile offenders with adult offenders. The youth would be incarcerated with the adults with supervision. Hardcore prisoners would scare the juveniles with blunt stories of prison life. Statistics show that this program had little effect on recidivism. The other tactic that was born out of the increasing crime rate in the country was that of treating juveniles as adults. People felt that since juveniles were not afraid of juvenile punishments they would keep committing crimes. If juveniles feared the punishment they would steer clear of trouble. There was no direct correlation between a harsher penalty and a decrease in recidivism. On the contrary the recidivism rate rose for juveniles that were placed in an adult system. There were some contributing factors that exacerbated this problem during this time. The first was that juvenile courts started giving increases jurisdiction to the adult criminal courts. It became easier for juveniles to be placed in the adult system. All these factors contributed to the incarceration of more and more juveniles in the adult system. [3]
So what does work? There are many programs out there that have promising results. While there are many to enumerate I will focus on what these programs have in common. The foundation for any program to work is education. While this is an obvious answer the key lies in how to implement the education. Teaching parents how to raise...
CRJ 308
Currie Gauvreau
October 18, 2010
What hasn’t worked? There are a couple of different tactics that were popular in the early 1990’s. The first tactic and the one that is still around today is just a scare tactic. While there are many others these are the most popular by far. What is “scared straight”? [2] This was a program that grew in popularity in the early 90’s in response to the increasing crime rates and the “get tough on crime” mentality that dominated the thinking at the time. It involved brining juvenile offenders with adult offenders. The youth would be incarcerated with the adults with supervision. Hardcore prisoners would scare the juveniles with blunt stories of prison life. Statistics show that this program had little effect on recidivism. The other tactic that was born out of the increasing crime rate in the country was that of treating juveniles as adults. People felt that since juveniles were not afraid of juvenile punishments they would keep committing crimes. If juveniles feared the punishment they would steer clear of trouble. There was no direct correlation between a harsher penalty and a decrease in recidivism. On the contrary the recidivism rate rose for juveniles that were placed in an adult system. There were some contributing factors that exacerbated this problem during this time. The first was that juvenile courts started giving increases jurisdiction to the adult criminal courts. It became easier for juveniles to be placed in the adult system. All these factors contributed to the incarceration of more and more juveniles in the adult system. [3]
So what does work? There are many programs out there that have promising results. While there are many to enumerate I will focus on what these programs have in common. The foundation for any program to work is education. While this is an obvious answer the key lies in how to implement the education. Teaching parents how to raise...