NCJ Number
123080
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 51 Issue: 5 Dated: (August 1989) Pages: 106,108-110
Date Published
1989
Length
4 pages
Annotation
At all levels, governments are consistently spending more time, energy, and dollars on services for the troubled adult than for the equally troubled juvenile; this omission will result in increased costs for the management of those adults for whom intervention was lacking as a juvenile.
Abstract
In many cases, juvenile courts and associated services are undervalued and underfunded. A lack of programs, supervision, and facility resources causes existing resources to be overextended and misused. Services for adjudicated juveniles should be developed under the assumption that this is the system's last chance to prevent the juvenile from continuing into the adult criminal justice system; however, proactive interventions are considered less important than services provided adults. Juvenile corrections programs are often modeled on programs that are not designed to serve delinquent juveniles; they are notably bureaucratic, authoritarian, slow, and inflexible. In the area of training and education, line staff have not been trained to adjust to changes in juvenile justice agencies over the last decade. There is no national juvenile correctional training vehicle such as the National Academy. The juvenile justice system must receive higher priority if adult criminal careers are to be prevented.