Discuss which types of community-based, youth-focused correctional programs are ineffective (and possibly harmful)? What are the characteristics of effective programs?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Through the
evaluation process, many commonly used interventions and juvenile court decisions for
youthful offenders have been found to be ineffective, or worse, harmful. These include
curfew laws (ineffective), boot camps and other disciplinary-focused programs
(ineffective and harmful), prison visitation programs (ineffective), Scared Straight and
other “shock therapy” programs (harmful), self-help or self-esteem programs
(ineffective), restrictive out-of-home mental health residential placements (ineffective
after leaving the facility), and large and overcrowded correctional facilities (harmful).
There are challenges when using evaluation to inform juvenile justice stakeholders.
Some of these include the following: addressing particular behaviors or offending
problems is often just the beginning of the work that needs to be accomplished to
address the young person’s problems; implementing rehabilitative programs within
punitively focused policies decreases their effectiveness; and expanding the use of
evidence-based programs to larger, system-wide scale has not been accomplished.
These being noted, though, there are effective programs that prevent and reduce
youthful offending outcomes. It is choosing and implementing them correctly that poses
difficulties to the juvenile justice system. Otherwise, it is well recognized that when
youthful offenders end their juvenile court supervision they tend to revert back to
previous offending or delinquent type behaviors if their skills, attitudes, or support
systems have not significantly changed.