CJA/374
October, 28 2014
Diversion Programs
Diversion programs are usually misunderstood by society, and in some cases is believe that they do not work. However research conducted by different organizations has found that they in fact do reduce recidivism amongst juveniles diverted V. those that were not. Diversion as described refers to “the attempt to divert, or channel out, youthful offenders from the juvenile justice system" (Bynum and Thompson, 1996:430). In this paper it will be discuss what are the causes of juvenile criminal behavior, and what goals does the two different diversion programs have to combat those behaviors and rehabilitate juveniles. Also it will discuss what service do they provide and witch one is the most effective. First of all when talking about juvenile delinquency research has found that no single cause of behavior accounts for all delinquency, however that study is inconclusive since the study has not been confirmed 100%. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is sponsoring the research and is focusing in serious delinquency and drug abuse as those two have been found to be the leading causeways of juvenile criminal behavior. OJJDP has conducted causes and correlation studies designed to improve the understanding of violence and drug abuse, they have looked at how a youth develops within the context of family, school, peers and their respective community. One of the challenges is to determine the longitudinal investigation since some times this juvenile’s turn into what society determines as adulthood, and the investigation is no longer valid. The way they have conducted this searches is by sampling youths in a six to nine months period one example is: Denver youth includes 1,527 youths ages vary from seven to 15, and they all come from different backgrounds but pronominally from “high risk neighborhoods” The key participants for this programs as described above are juveniles