NCJ Number
212212
Date Published
April 2001
Length
54 pages
Annotation
This report presents effective practice with young people in secure facilities from both a research and current practice perspective.
Abstract
It is now an accepted tenet of work, with both adult and juvenile offenders, that programs of intervention should be designed, delivered, and evaluated in accordance with the successful features highlighted by the research. This report attempts to identify what steps the Youth Justice Board needs to take to increase the adoption of effective practice in work with juveniles in custody, to prevent them from reoffending. The report describes what work is currently being undertaken with juveniles serving custodial sentences and compares this with known effective practice from the research literature. Interviews were carried out with each secure establishment: the Local Authority Secure Units (LASUs), the Young Offender Institutions (YOIs), and the Secure Training Centers (STCs). To identify what is known to be effective practice, a broad range of literature on working with juveniles and adults in custody and in the community was reviewed. The review of the literature found that research specifically on juveniles in custody lags behind both that for adults and for juveniles in the community. However, the evidence suggests that the broad principles of effective practice with offenders would appear to apply regardless of age and setting. A number of issues emerged to form a basis for recommendations, such as the need to increase knowledge about existing effective practice, the need to build on the strengths of current practice, and the need to improve continuity between custody and community. Recommendations presented to the Youth Justice Board were in the areas of how to increase the knowledge base and how to develop a strategy to increase the integration of effective practice. Appendixes A-D