NCJ Number
181361
Date Published
1998
Length
24 pages
Annotation
Large juvenile training schools and detention centers have become archaic and need replacement with smaller community-based treatment programs.
Abstract
The Department of Justice's October 1977 publication titled "Children in Custody" reported that 46,980 juveniles were living in public juvenile detention and correctional facilities. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency reports that more than 100,000 children ages 7-17 years are held in jails or jail-like places of detention every year. These training schools and detention centers are large. Few provide counseling, psychiatric, or health services. Children stay an average of 8.4 months in a training schools; most do not need either detention or a training school, where they live in close association with sophisticated juvenile delinquents. Strict discipline and even brutality prevail in these training schools. Recidivism rates are high for youths confined in these institutions. In addition, early commitment to a juvenile training school is a crucial forerunner to an adult criminal care. These institutions fail due to their conflicting objectives and their overpopulation. The main factors that prevents their reform or dismantling are the vested interests of professional and nonprofessional groups. It was easy in Massachusetts to deal with the traditional-conservative vocal opposition to deinstitutionalization. The League of Women Voters was an important source of support for the change. Little pressure for change came from youth, their relatives, and friends. The main resistance to change stemmed from staff, the legislature and professional groups. The Massachusetts experience revealed that institutional change requires clarity concerning issues of administration and policy, dedicated change agents, efforts to use nontraditional political avenues, and awareness that no significant change can occur through the regular administrative routine. Reference notes