NCJ Number
111910
Date Published
1987
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This videotape surveys experimental and control juvenile correctional programs in New Jersey, Ohio, and California that are involved in a national evaluation conducted by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Abstract
New Jersey's juvenile correction system first sends all juvenile offenders to a classification center for 2 weeks. Interviews with center staff are followed by descriptions of programs at three facilities: St. Joe's, which provides intensive supervision and therapy for a small group of serious offenders; a camp/game bird farm that focuses on developing individual and group responsibility; and a secure facility for older youths that offers a structured school/work program. The State programs are contrasted with a private, experimental venture that moves all types of juvenile offenders through three phases: secure facility, a wilderness camp, and intensive supervision when the offender returns to the community. Corrections officials and inmates describe Ohio's training school system, emphasizing its highly structured environment, control tactics, and overcrowding problems. The experimental counterpart, New Life Youth Services, uses a camp setting that includes a commercial logging operation and emphasizes positive peer culture, a problem-oriented recordkeeping system and a peer-run monitoring system. California's extensive system of large training schools is compared to community programs often recommended to courts by the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives as options to incarceration. These programs address family dynamics and drug abuse on an individual basis and rely on peer involvement.