Residential Placement In Juvenile Delinquency

The pressure from the populace has led to increasing emphasis on punishment rather than rehabilitation. The U.S. has more youths in detention centers than another nations. This may allude to the reason of why the U.S also has the most adults in incarceration as well. Are we creating these minces to society by setting them on a trajectory to juvenile delinquency? According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 2013 Residential Placement Census, on average there is an estimated 54,000 being detained in the U.S (Justice, n.d.). Furthermore, based on the latest Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement indicates that approximately 2,524 juveniles were being detained in juvenile justice facility because they were in violation of status offenses, such being truant, running away, or violating curfew (Justice, n.d.). Additionally, when incorporating juvenile offenders in residential placement due to a technical violation, a violation of a valid court order, the number rises to nearly 11,840, which equates to over 21 percent of youths in custody that may not be there for criminal behavior (Justice, n.d.).
Three of the problems with placing juveniles in a residential facility are proximity to
serious offenders, disruption to lifestyle and overcrowding conditions. In the case of proximity, non-serious are housed with serious offenders. According to social learning theory, deviant is learned through one’s interaction with others. For example, juveniles who main reason for being in a detention center is because he or she runaway will now be introduce to serious deviant behavior like property crimes and crimes against person through contact with other juvenile who hold deviant behavior in a higher regard. Secondly, even though various juvenile detention centers have some type of educational program, being confined to prison can obviously disrupt school and make it harder to get a job later on. According to Florida State University’s Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program, “approximately 79 percent of juvenile in residential programs that were age 16 or older and significantly behind academically did not return to school upon release” (Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, 2010). (Place a finding that link recidivism and dropouts). Juvenile residential facilities appear to be creating criminals, not stopping them. Lastly, as with adult prisons, overcrowding exist in many juvenile residential facilities. Depending on the extent of the overcrowding some offenders in juvenile facilities may not be awarded the opportunity to participate in programming designed to further their educational development or treatment programs to reduce recidivism. Furthermore, these conditions can create dangerous situations in terms of facility management and the juveniles under their charge.
There is a wide range of different proposals for dealing with the problem of juvenile delinquency.
As mention before, the U.S. has more youths in residential facilities than any other country in the world, still some say we should invoke tougher policies or run juvenile courts more like adults courts. However, these types of measures only tend to exacerbate the condition, hence the overcrowding. It may seem intuitive to lockup juvenile delinquents. However, it turns out that these juvenile residential facilities make excellent training ground for youths who contemplating a life of crime. The most reasonably approach would be to attack the underlying causes of delinquency, such as poverty, unemployment, discrimination and the dysfunctionality of
family.