Prevention and diversion Flashcards
(12 cards)
Prevention
-What is prevention?
-A proactive approach to reduce risk of
delinquency and increasing resiliency
-Why is it important?
-Incarceration produces poor results
-Processing youth through the JJS is
costly
-Early intervention provides a better
opportunity for change (prevent
juvenile offending, likely prevent adult
offending)
Types of prevention ***
-Primary prevention = preventing illegal acts among the juvenile population as a whole
-Secondary prevention = identifying juveniles at high risk for delinquency and intervening in their lives
-Tertiary prevention = attempts to prevent further illegal acts among juvenile offenders
Approaches to prevention*
1930s:
-Chicago Area Project was created
-No evidence it was working
1960s:
Recommended establishing alternatives to the JJS
-Formal sanctioning as last resort
1970s:
-“The highest attention must be given to preventing delinquency, minimizing
involvement of young offenders in the juvenile and criminal system and
reintegrating them into the community”
Role of social institutions in prevention
-Institutions should provide opportunities for acceptable, responsible, and gratifying roles for young people
Effective prevention programs have focused on:
-Gender-specific issues
-Academics
-Job training
-Conflict resolution
Diversion
-Can include pre-juvenile justice and post-juvenile justice activities
-Types:
-Secondary diversion - suspend/terminate processing of juveniles in favor of release or
referral to services
-Pure diversion - Referral to programs prior to entering the JJS
Diversion positives and negatives
Positives:
-Lower recidivism rates
-Reduced costs
-Fewer out-of-home placements
Negatives:
-Net widening – increasing the number
of youth who have contact with the JJS
-Potential to be discriminatory –
inconsistent patterns in the decision
making of whether to refer a youth to
diversion or not
-Territorial jealously – agency
personnel might feel that attempts to
coordinate efforts are really attempts
to invade their “territory” of expertise
-Get-tough philosophy – these policies
have shifted funding away from
diversion efforts
School programs
-Regional Safe Schools program– allows expelled/suspended youth to transfer to an alternative learning environment
*They found: Decrease in behavior
incidents, over half graduated, 77%
earned academic credits
-Georgia program– focused on students who drop out and offer night school
-These programs are addressing and interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline
- Big Brothers Big Sisters
* Adult mentoring program for youth
-Bigs in Blue – for at-risk youth to
be mentored by police officers
* Youth with mentors less likely to
initiate drug/alcohol use, or be truant
-Truancy courts – often involve counseling
Federal programs
-implemented to improve educational &
occupational opportunities
-Indirectly effects delinquency
-Programs
-Head Start & Follow Through
* Help kids keep pace in preschool
-High/Scope Perry Preschool
-Occupational programs
-Juvenile Mentoring Program
Other programs
-Teen courts: keep first time offenders away from being processed in the JJS
-Drug courts
-Mental health courts
Criticisms of prevention programs
-One of two strategies and their criticism:
-1. Reform society:
- Costly
- Mismanagement may occur
- Red tape from government in
implementing programs
- It takes a long time to show results
- Difficult to attribute results to a
specific program
-2. Individual treatment
- May not address all factors (e.g.,
school, peers)
- Recreational programs have little
evidence behind them
- May unintentionally label youth
Conclusion
-Combat delinquency and child abuse by preventing them from occurring in the first place
-Three ways to do this:
-1. Changing juvenile behavior
-2. Changing the rules governing that
behavior
-3. Changing societal conditions leading
to that behavior
