Community-Based Program Interventions for the Serious Juvenile Offender - Targeting, Strategies, and Issues

• NCJ Number: 82384
• Author(s): T L Armstrong; D M Altschuler
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 235 pages
• Grant Number(s): 79-JN-AX-0018 (S-1); 79-NI-AX-0010
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ); Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP); US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: University of Chicago
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Eleven community-based programs for serious juvenile offenders were visited to determine how these programs originated and developed, the philosophies underlying their programs, and the types of clients which they admitted.

Abstract

Possible programs for the study were identified by means of contacts with State youth planners or juvenile justice specialists, who were asked to suggest programs in their States which in their judgment offered promising, commendable, or innovative approaches to handling serious juvenile offenders. The programs included 5 residential programs with 4 to 40 clients each and 6 nonresidential programs serving 11 to 31 clients each. The programs were located in eight States. Information was gathered on the programs' origins, catchment areas, funding sources, sources of client referral, intake criteria and procedures, development of service plans, systems for monitoring client progress, disciplinary systems, the use of community resources, staffing, client exit from programs, and followup and aftercare. The clients in the programs tended to fall somewhere between the extremes of habitually violent juvenile offenders and youths habitually involved in status offenses or petty crimes. The residential programs were established before the nonresidential programs and were part of efforts to create an entire alternative system in their respective jurisdictions. Initial funding for all the residential programs came from outside funding. Ten of the 11 programs were developed as private, nonprofit efforts. The residential programs tended to serve mainly as community-based alternatives to incarceration and were designed exclusively for males. The residential programs emphasized either socialization or provision of a therapeutic milieu, while the nonresidential programs could also be differentiated by the degree of change sought and the range of characteristics targeted for attention. The programs used a wide range of incentives and sanctions. Activities related to reintegrating clients into their communities included both efforts to assure that clients would continue to receive needed services and followup to monitor and/or evaluate the progress of former clients. Smaller, nonprofit agencies have more flexibility in operating and administering these kinds of programs than do government bureaucracies, although the government must assist with funding, monitoring, and providing technical assistance. A discussion of the literature on serious juvenile offenders, tables, appendixes presenting program profiles and related information and 47 references are provided.