NCJ Number
129828
Date Published
1991
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This paper addresses the influence of the administrative environment on decisions to place juvenile offenders in alternative community-based correctional settings.
Abstract
The first section discusses the current scholarly concern with developing valid placement instruments designed to determine service needs and risk to the community. These approaches focus on attributes of individual offenders that predict their future criminality and their capacity to benefit from various treatment methods. The second section argues that the focus on individual-level criteria for placements must be balanced with greater scholarly attention to contextual factors that constrain or modify practitioners' ability to make placement decisions based on such criteria. Six dimensions of the administrative environment are identified as important to understanding the context of placement decisions. These are placement opportunities, the system decision point, system load, triggering events, the role of the decisionmaker, and other population-specific criteria. The remainder of the paper presents a case study of aftercare placement decisions for juvenile parolees in the Arizona Department of Corrections. This empirical study uses statistical data on over 300 juvenile placements and extensive field data collected through interviews, site visits, and documentary analysis in the State's juvenile purchase-of-care system. The study describes the administrative context for placement decisions in the Arizona system and identifies general implications for making targeted juvenile placement decisions. A final section presents recommendations for additional research and policy development. 2 figures, 3 tables, and 18 references