NCJ Number
84934
Date Published
1982
Length
27 pages
Annotation
The interests served by the deinstitutionalization of status offenders are identified, and how these interests came to collaborate with one another under the general rubric of deinstitutionalization and their current standing are considered.
Abstract
Nineteenth-century child advocates focused on the rehabilitative potential of institutions and created a separate juvenile justice system to deal with the problems of youth. By the mid-20th century, juvenile crime rates were on the rise and the rehabilitative potential of institutional confinement, especially for lesser offenders, was under scrutiny. A new coalition was formed at the State level between legal advocacy groups concerned with the lack of procedural guarantees and the appropriate treatments that characterized the juvenile justice system, law and order advocates, and fiscal conservatives whose objective was cost savings through increased reliance on federally supported programs for youth. Arguments on behalf of deinstitutionalization focused on the essential injustice of incarcerating noncriminal youth and expressed the hope that such youth could be handled informally in their communities. The manner in which the principles of reform were to be applied was left relatively unspecified. Nor was there much agreement on the key theoretical and administrative issues or policy goals of deinstitutionalization. Consequently, the task of reformers has been complicated by imprecise and at times conflicting definitions of purpose as well as by obscurities inherent in the major concepts of deinstitutionalization. (Author summary modified)