Rehabilitation for Juvenile offenders
Rehabilitation for Juvenile Offenders
Introduction
Any given society spends a lot of money in processing crime cases of its offenders in terms of arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating among other issues. Prevention and intervention of delinquency helps the society to cut on spending in prisons thus reducing the burden of crime on society. Delinquency prevention and intervention also help in saving youths life which otherwise could have been wasted. This has necessitated the search and identification of programs that will help in reducing delinquency and anti-social behaviors thus promoting pro-social development.
The future argument on juvenile courts focuses on balancing between rehabilitating and punishing the youth. Though the political orientation has been on punitive approach, the court on the other hand is on rehabilitative approach. The court argues that there should be a different justice system between the juvenile and adult offenders. The rationale behind the argument is that those juveniles are immature and need more assistance to come out from a mistake. Moreover, unlike rehabilitative intervention, punishment is not effective in bringing desired change in anti-social behavior. In such a scenario where no changes are realized, then the youths become potentials for criminal careers (Lipsey, 1999, p. 3).
Rehabilitative program being presumed as an effective means of reducing offense rates then becomes pivotal on this context. Its effectiveness is mostly determined by behavioral changes induced by different programs among the offenders. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of rehabilitative intervention has not gone unchallenged. Some critics has concluded that some programs were promising but those programs did not show evidence of effectiveness consistency. Effective programs are believed to be those that prevent the juvenile from delinquent behaviors engagement and those that divert first-time offender from further engagement and encounter with the law. Some of these programs include community-based, school-based, and home-visiting programs among others.
Ways of Determining Effective Programs
Determining the impacts of rehabilitative intervention programs is difficult exercise because the behavior attempted to be changed by the program is often covert and the full realization of the impact is extended over a long period of time making it difficult to observe or measure the impacts. For a long period of time, delinquency prevention effort have been directed by causes of delinquent behavior such as juveniles home, rather than whether the efforts are achieving the desired impacts. Such guidance promoted programs that were not helpful for example, removal of urban children to more rural settings. In addition to these difficulties, we also have problems in design flaws and inconsistence evaluations and findings (Greenwood, 2008, p. 9). Inconsistence in evaluation is mostly attributed to the cost involved which many organization and state government are unable to meet. However, decision on what program works best should largely be based on evaluation design, impact size, number of replication and cost-effectiveness (Eckhardt, 2006, p. 5).
Effort has been put by researchers to tackle the problem of weak design and inconsistence evaluation for program effectiveness. One of the approaches used is the use of Blueprints model. In Blueprints approach, a program must show impacts on problem behavior in experimental design that is rigorous for it to be proven as effective. The approach also requires the program to show evidence that the impacts of a program will persist even when the youth is out of the program for it to be on the list of proven programs.
Meta-analysis is the other approach of determining whether a program is effective. Theoretically, effectiveness is well determined by meta-analysis especially if it tests for any impact of timing, hence giving more preference to recent evaluation. Once the program demonstrates achieving significant impacts in one evaluation and a replication, the next test is on whether others can achieve the same results. Average of what has been achieved by others is the best estimate of a new adopter to determine the impact size they expect to achieve and meta-analysis help in sorting this out (Lipsey, 1999, p. 14).
Cost-Benefit analysis is another approach of determining the effectiveness of a program. Program implementation incurs costs and the costs can be measured against the benefits accruing from the program. If the benefits outweigh the costs of implementation, then the program is believed to be effective in addressing a problem. If a program leads to decrease of crimes in the future, then it translate to a decrease in spending on courts in terms of investigations, arresting and other court processing and also corrections costs associated with crimes. While a comparison among alternative program is needed, a decision must be made on what benefits or saving must be considered.
Comparison must be on equal footing for all programs. The major challenge with cost-benefit analysis is the monetization of indirect benefits such as pain, happiness, suffering among others. This leads to a huge margin of error in comparing the cost of implementing a program and the benefits accruing from the program (Greenwood, 2008, p. 19).
In short, determining an effective program remains a challenge due to design flaws and comparison of findings. Nevertheless, a designing of a metric to pave way for implementation of programs that have been proven to be effective is necessary. A blueprint has been seen as the most promising of these methods and others hold a promise.
Rehabilitation Programs
To make a decision on what program to adopt on delinquency prevention and continuation entirely depends on the question of what works and how well does it work. This leads us to two categories of programs namely generic and brand name programs. Examples of generic programs are parent training, group therapy, and preschool among others. Brand name examples include functional family therapy and Multisystemic therapy. Identification of generic programs has been achieved through meta-analysis technique while brand name programs have satisfied criteria drawn by various review groups (Greenwood, 2008, p. 15).
According to research, school and community-based programs can be implemented before a residential placement is required due to public safety. This has led to emergence of proven cost-effective programs.
Prevention Programs
In prevention program, we have primary prevention and secondary prevention program. Primary prevention program aims at preventing smoking, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy among the entire youth population. On the other hand secondary programs target specific youth at high risk of a delinquency for example youths exposed to violence at home. A good example of a prevention program is home visitation among pregnant teens e.g. David Olds Nurse Home Visitation Program. The program provides childcare training and social skill development and they have been effective in reduction of child abuse and neglect among families in participant and also reduced rates for children and mother. The olds program now known as Nurse Family Partnership has succeeded and is now being implemented in many countries (Greenwood, 2008, p. 11).
For children that are older, preschool education has been used as an effective program to avert drug use, anti-social behavior, and other acts that can lead to crime. Though such programs differ in their goals, they have similar concepts like integrated curriculum, student participation in rule making and enforcement, involving teachers, community-members parents and student in problem solving and planning among other themes.
A good example is Bullying Prevention Program in Bergen which involved teachers and parents in developing rules on bullying. This program saw a reduction of bullying by 50 percent in treated school and a reduction in other forms of delinquency (Gerstein, 1983, p. 11).
Community-Based Interventions
Community-based programs can be designed to serve different issues such as serving youths on probation, and diverting youth out of a juvenile court among other purposes. Designing ranges from individual homes, school, teens centers, and private provider among others. Those that are most effective are those that put emphasis on family interactions for example education program for families which equip families with necessary information that help them cope with post-release adjustment of juvenile offenders (Gerstein, 1983, p. 6). This is so because they consider adults in the family to be in the best position to oversee and train the child thus providing the adult with the necessary skills to achieve expected changes.
Functional Family Therapy (FFT) and Multisystem Therapy (MST) are effective family based interventions. FFT which targets on youths aged eleven to eighteen and who are experiencing delinquency, violence or drug abuse alters family interactions seeking to improve family functional unit by improving problem-solving skills, enhancement of emotional connections, and empowering the ability of the parent to provide guidance to their children (Gerstein, 1983, p. 7).
MST on the other hand assists parents to deal effectively with their youths behavior problems. It also focuses on effective parenting barriers and assist members to build social support network. Apart from working with the parents, MST also involves other family members, teachers and other adult in overseeing the youth. This means it can be provided either at home, school, or other community locations (Greenwood, 2008, p. 18).
Institutional Programs
Juvenile court acts as a screening agent to serve the purpose of sanction and services. As evidenced by juvenile cases disposition, the court prefer informal disposition than formal disposition on the understanding that community-based program are effective than institutional settings. Despite of this, where community placement is unavailable or home setting inappropriate in regard to public safety, the courts place juvenile in a secure custody and in a group setting. A program which takes youths away from home are characterized by three strategies which includes focusing on risks factors that can be changed, tailoring individual clients needs, and interventions on higher-risk youth.
Programs that are effective in an institution setting are Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), aggression replacement training and family integrated transition (FIT). CBT focuses on skills development to attain its goals. It uses various methods to learn clients goals for their lives and improves on skills that will facilitate the attainment of clients goals (Day, 2008, p. 16).
Aggression replacement training focuses on changing risk factors that can be changed. It has three components which include anger control, behavioral skills, and moral reasoning. In anger management program, youths are taught on what ignites anger and on ways of controlling their reaction. The justification of this program is based on the thought that anger arouses aggression and that such offending can be decreased through teaching individual juvenile on effective ways of anger control (Day, 2008, p. 2). This program eventually addresses other criminogenic needs like drug abuse, hostility, and anti-social personality among others. In behavioral skills youths are taught pro-social skills and in moral reasoning youths are subjected to a cognitive conflict and they work it out in a group discussion.
FIT focuses on addressing risk factors that are changeable and transition from residential placement back to the community. It employs CBT, MST, relapse prevention, and motivational enhancement therapy. It is used to assist youth with mental health or who were depending on chemical to fit back into the community following a residential placement (Greenwood, 2008, p. 21).
Youth who do not have serious threat to themselves and others have an alternative program apart from group homes known as Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC). In this program community families are chosen and given special training on behavior management. The families are then allowed to take one youth at a time and have pre-service training and supervision (Day, 2008, p. 17). At least one parent is expected to remain with the child at home and this additional responsibility makes the program more expensive.
Implementation of a New Program
Implementation of new programs for prevention and intervention of juvenile delinquency and reduction of recidivism should be based on adopting an evidence-based approach. This will prevent youths live from being wasted, save taxpayer money, and protect community from crime. According to Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP), evidence-based programs save five to ten times their cost of implementation (Greenwood, 2008, p. 18).
Identification of effective programs requires the adopter to check on gaps present in the service and quality of existing program. Service and quality gaps indicate lack of suitable treatment options and lack of adequate evidence-base programming respectively. Once the confirmation on the gaps is done, the adopter can use Blueprints or meta-analysis techniques for identification of effective program.
If the adopter chooses to implement Blueprints approach, they should ensure that the program model chosen will serve the client need and also that the agency is capable of providing the service. In addition, they should have a good understanding of the model description and if need be, they should consult with the developer of the model. After selection of program model, the next step is to make arrangement for training. This is mostly done in collaboration with model developer who in most cases has established organizations to provide training. The right staff should then be hired and monitoring and feedback systems be put in place. The final step is the implementation of quality assurance mechanism (Greenwood, 2008, p. 23).
Those who opt for meta-analysis model, the key thing are identification of program to be assessed followed by identification of key element of comparison. Determination of average impact size produced by each program in previous evaluation follows. If the impact size is small due to lack of evidence-based elements, then consideration of adding those elements are inevitable to raise the expected effectiveness. Risk assessment instruments should be adopted to compare effectiveness of alternative program (Lipsey, 1999, p. 14).
Conclusion
There has bee evidence confirmation of overwhelming support of treatment and rehabilitation over confinement and punishment for juvenile offenders. This has put researchers on their toe in identification and development of programs that are effective in delinquency prevention and intervention and promotion of pro-social development in the past years. They have (researchers) helped in replication of program by providing training and technical assistance to others.
There is adequate evidence that show that these programs are cost-effective with saving of five to ten times of their implementation cost. These programs particularly evidence-based program should be made known to agencies so that they can be fully implemented to curb delinquency rates ensure community safety, and reduce government spending on court processes.
Reform policies towards evidence-based practices should be designed and implemented and government should give local communities financial support to invest in successful prevention programs. In addition, practitioner should be well trained and monitored for delivery of adequate services to reap the benefit of reduced delinquency and lower system costs.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment