Crime Causation and Diversion - Research Paper Example

In general, these programs try to alleviate crime and recidivism, alter the juvenile offender’s attitudes and behaviors, target reduction of cost in the juvenile justice system and provide protection of a juvenile’s criminal record (Delta County, 2012). Major goals, objectives and beliefs Cognitive-behavioral programming aims to ensure that the young adults under this program should be able to learn important life skills, problem solving, conflict resolution, critical thinking and reasoning skills (Denver District Attorney’s Office, 2012).

In other words, this program is generally all about life skills training in which it seeks to give the best opportunity for juveniles to learn the most essential things in life rather than committing crimes and other related unlawful activities. Community service on the other hand usually exposes the clients or youths to activities such as graffiti removal, trash pick-up, providing help to food banks, homeless shelters and community events upon request (Denver District Attorney’s Office, 2012). . For example, graffiti removal, a simple activity from a straightforward unlawful act, will substantially help the clients understand the value of being responsible for certain things in life.

In other words, community service is believed to substantially divert the youth’s attention to things that would make them become responsible citizen with a high sense of purpose in life. How do these programs work Cognitive-behavioral programming would substantially help reduce crime because young people would basically learn to maximize their potential which in the long run would make them productive individuals in the society. Juveniles are known to be potentially able to commit crimes because the bottom line is that they might have different perceptions about the world which can make them become likely to pose certain dangers (Champion, 2010).

This can be basically illustrated on their actual behaviors which at some point would result to vandalism, theft, and other bloody or heinous crimes such as rape, murder, robbery and the list goes on. In other words, young people can become so serious and even pose a significant potential threat to the society because the crimes they committed could speak about how their minds could become so violent and harmful at some point. Thus, cognitive-behavioral programming would actually make sense because this program substantially diverts the cognitive capability of young adults to things that would help them develop their skills, reasoning and mental ability instead of giving focus on things that could lead them to creating detestable matters under the law.

Community service on the other hand, as a community program for juveniles to divert their attention to productive things, ensures that juveniles should become more responsible citizen