NCJ Number
91810
Date Published
1983
Length
44 pages
Annotation
An optimal juvenile justice system in Massachusetts would have a full range of alternative placements to handle youth, including a small number of secure placements and large numbers of local community-based services. Programs would variously emphasize addressing the factors contributing to a youth's delinquency.
Abstract
The battery of programs available should include afterschool tutoring programs, some alternative schools for the more educationally needy, some programs dealing with alcohol abuse, others for multiple drug abuse, vocational training programs, work programs in cooperation with the private sector to generate jobs for youth, counseling programs that focus on family interactions, and other programs that provide individual treatment. Planning for such a juvenile justice system must include dialogues with schools, families, neighborhood organizations and businesses, other community services, and the youth themselves. The program developer and policymaker should consider what kinds of linkages to the community and social climate will be most effective and then adjust goals and strategies to maximize progress within the give and take of community politics. A plan should be developed for those youth who must begin their correctional program in a closed custodial or therapeutic program to be sequenced into more open, advocacy-oriented programs that will establish enduring linkages to the community. Overall, it must be remembered that the problems of juvenile delinquency are unlikely to yield to anything short of community reorganization. Fifty-six footnotes are listed.