NCJ Number
203816
Journal
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2004 Pages: 88-97
Date Published
January 2004
Length
10 pages
Annotation
After summarizing current research on the effectiveness of young offender re-entry and reintegration programming, this article recommends strategies for improving assessments of such programming and services.
Abstract
A 5-year study of the resiliency of adolescents who re-entered their communities from correctional institutions (Todis et al., 2001) found that resilient individuals were currently employed or going to school or both, had not been rearrested since leaving the facility, were not institutionalized for emotional or substance-abuse problems, and were reportedly satisfied with their current situation. The development-psychology literature has identified the importance of an individual's sense of self and its relationship to obtaining employment and sustaining productive and intimate relationships with others. These factors have been largely neglected in the literature on youth re-entry. This may be due to the fact that normal human development theorizing has rarely been applied to the experiences of ethnically diverse groups and low-resource citizens, who largely compose inmate populations. Under the rubric of punishing and incapacitating "bad" people, little attention is given to the developmental deficits that have contributed to their criminal behavior, particularly the association of such deficits with the factors of race/ethnicity, class, and gender. After discussing the need to base re-entry and reintegration models in developmental theory that considers race/ethnicity and identity formation. This article uses the example of Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST). This theory describes relationships between the quality of a physical and social environment, such as a re-entry program, and individual factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and immigration status. The authors suggest that a developmental framework such as PVEST integrates selfhood development with cultural traditions and an acknowledgement of environmental forces. It helps program researchers and developers identify strategies for generating improved developmental stage-specific outcomes, including the creation of healthy coping behaviors and identities. 29 references