Young Women and Community Service Orders (From ... And When She Was Bad? Working With Young Women in Juvenile Justice and Related Areas, P 65-71, 1996, Christine Alder and Margaret Baines, eds. -- See NCJ-165370)

• NCJ Number: 165378
• Author(s): G Althorp
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

This paper reports on the findings of a pilot project in South Australia designed to identify the relevant issues for young women with community service orders.

Abstract

The pilot program employed a part-time female worker to work 10 hours per week. The tasks of the worker were to make initial phone contact with the client, conduct a home visit, organize work/course with the client, network with agencies to develop work options, attend the first placement visit, and provide support for the work placement. The pilot program found that the young women were often complacent, embarrassed, lacked motivation, had low self-esteem, were isolated in the community, lacked support, and had little information about the resources available. The worker found they were difficult to engage and did not take the penalty seriously. They were not committed to community work. Gaining the support and interest of other agencies was an ongoing challenge that required many hours of negotiating and networking. Some problems with agencies were a lack of interest in providing services to juveniles, requests for a detailed offense history, lack of interest in employing "dishonest" girls, lack of interest due to previous failures in community service orders, and difficulty in providing tasks that suited the skill level of the young women. The successful functioning of community service orders requires more education of and commitment from participating agencies. Based on the findings of the pilot program, the author recommends that, where possible, community work should be relevant to the offense; for example, anger management or behavioral issues should be addressed in appropriately supervised programs. Further, to address the disadvantages experienced by women, they must have access to and be encouraged to undertake a greater variety of community work opportunities. To achieve this, a program must consider the development of single-sex work opportunities. Young women should not be placed in mixed groups with males, since this would require costly increased supervision to protect them from male harassment and exploitation. 1 table and 3 references