Juvenile Probation Programs - Assignment Example

? Juvenile Probation Programs First Juvenile correctional facilities are an essential building block in the evolution of the US Correctional Services, as they usually represent the first interaction that youth have with the criminal justice system. The success or failure of these systems determine not only whether the youth that do time in these facilities will find their way back into the criminal justice system as adult offenders or whether their reformation will ensure that they learn their lessons and do not find themselves on the wrong end of the law in future. Over the past few years, numerous juvenile programs have been implemented in many parts of the country with the major aim of coming up with programs that reduce recidivism, impart useful crime-avoidance knowledge and ensure that youthful offenders make a turn for the better after their initial interaction with the system. Introduction This paper looks at a couple of these juvenile programs in depth. Specifically aimed at providing teen offenders with an opportunity to not only change their lives after the completion of their initial custodial or other sentence but also equips them with the ability to ensure that they do not again end up in correctional facilities as adults. These programs have been set up in different ways depending on the types and frequency of crimes that the youths in the particular location are prone to but have applicability in wider settings and can be adapted for use in other areas with minimal changes to ensure successful implementation. The suitability of these programs in new locations and whether or not they are going to fail or succeed depends a great deal in utilizing the lessons learned in the initial implementations and using these to adequately tailor responses that more immediately suit local requirements. 1. The first program is the Community Restitution and Apprenticeship Focused Training (Project CRAFT). Since 1994, Project CRAFT has served more than 2,000 high-risk youth at 15 sites in ten states (Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas). Project CRAFT currently operates at nine sites in four states, including Florida, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Mississippi. The program is designed to offer treatment, prerelease and aftercare services for juvenile offenders between the ages of 16 and 21. The project can be implemented as either a residential Juvenile correctional program or as a community based one for post-correctional facility aftercare or for youth under daycare treatment supervision. CRAFT involves ten different components including outreach and recruitment which orients program partners – parents, participants and offender advocates as well as community meetings. Assessment and screening also include prospective employers of youth who then pursue the youth progress through training programs and trade-related academics. Youth that require substance abuse treatment are also enrolled in these programs as required. Finally the program has a community transition and follow-up component which includes job placement, job development as well as other aftercare services (NCWD/Youth, 2013). The other program is the Tampa, Florida headquartered AMIkids program which operates 50 sites across several states – Florida, New Mexico, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Louisiana. This day attendance and residential program comprises academics, treatment, experiential education and behavior modification. The AMIKids program has eight components: education grade improvements challenge and team building experiences, cognitive-behavioral therapy, a strong strength-based case management, positive behavior modification, home and family partnership, individual and group problem-solving and social skills development, and community service. The AMIKids program approach is based on evidence-based theoretical perspectives and treatment interventions found in empirical research literature to effectively reduce juvenile delinquency (AMIKids, n.d.). 2. Project CRAFT aims at improving educational levels as well as imparting vocational skills in youth aimed at reducing their recidivism rates while at the same time providing the local home building industry with trained entry level workers. The program includes hands on training and academic instruction in its apprenticeship concept. They utilize an industry-validated Pre-Apprenticeship Certificate Training (PACT), literacy, numeracy and employability skills curricula. The program is integrated to include disabled participants, with a special emphasis on special education needs. Project CRAFT has reported very good success in reduction of the recidivism rates with their participants reporting a first year recidivism rate of 26% (compared to 50% and above for youths who do not participate in programs). In addition to this the Project CRAFT grandaunts improved over time, with the recidivism rates improving through years two and three after their completion of the programs. By providing youths with opportunities to advance themselves in employment and improve their lives and livelihood Project CRAFT therefore provides a more holistic and sustained impact on the lives of the young offenders. Project CRAFT has an average placement rate of 88% and their participants have contributed more than 55,000 hours of community service (Ex-Offenders Benefit From Job Training Program, 2011). The AIMKids program starts with an assessment of each kid’s requirements from which they are enrolled in whatever is the most appropriate treatment program for them. The treatments include: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in individual or group settings to address anger, mental health, behavioral, and substance abuse treatment needs. Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to address substance abuse treatment needs. Aggression Replacement and Anger Management Training group sessions are given to address anger and skills deficits as well as moral reasoning while skill streaming group sessions to address social skills deficits. Finally Motivational Interviewing is incorporated in rapport building and moving youth in the direction of positive change. The goals of the program are to establish and learn what the skills deficit areas are in order to tailor a program that is aimed at ensuring high completion rates, reduce recidivism and improve literacy and numeracy (AMIKids, n.d.). The program has been able to reduce recidivism to 23% for youth in the day attendance programs and 28% for youth in the residential programs. There was also a marked improvement in their academic grades for Math, English and Social Studies. 3. The AIMKids program had significantly lower recidivism rates overall in their treatment outcomes while the Project CRAFT trainees though their recidivism rates were not as high, also had job placement opportunities with an average of 88% receiving job placement and keeping the jobs at least at the end of the first year of the aftercare program. It is difficult to say which program is better than the other since they set out to achieve different outcomes and in each case they were able to achieve their goals. The most significant finding is the fact that the day attendance program at AMIKids resulted in a much lower recidivism rate than all the others, with the main reason for this being the fact that the youths remained in their community while they were in training and were therefore more able to fully implement the program’s objectives in their lives in a more practical and more immediate way. The residential programs in many cases offer an “insulated” atmosphere that may be good for the youths while they are in the program but the minute they leave these units then they are in touch with the real world and the circumstances which brought them into incarceration in the first place are at play in their everyday life and they find it difficult to make the adjustment and find it easy to fall back into crime (AMIKids, n.d.). A combination of these two programs to include the treatment and education parts of the AIMKids program and combine that with the practical job training and apprenticeship portion of the Project CRAFT program, together with its job placement and employment opportunities would result in much more holistic development and maturation of the program. This would ensure that the graduates of the programs not only have the psychological and emotional coping tools for living in the communities that they live but that they also have a better education and a job and the opportunity to better themselves and not have to fall back to the criminal and substance abuse habits (AMIKids, n.d.). 4. There is still a lot that is yet to be done to improve the impact of the juvenile aftercare programs that are in place in many states and to more adequately meet the needs of the youths that find themselves incarcerated at such a young age. The day attendance programs also give the local community including the parents, crime victims and local industry and the criminal justice system employees a bigger say in what happens with the program and also means that they can play a bigger role and be more involved participants in the entire program, which improves the final outcome. A lot of times the youths fall into bad habits and substance abuse problems due to situations and conditions in the communities they live in and unless the programs address these underlying issues the treatment and reformation efforts have limited impact since the youths go back into that same environment and if they lack the necessary coping skills it is easy for them to fall back to crime and substance abuse. This is because the youths do not live in isolation but live in a society which contributes to their resorting to criminal acts especially in the fewer well- off living situations that many of the minority communities live in (Lewan, 2007). A greater participation in the program design and implementation by the communities in which these youths live in would also go a long way in improving their success and ensuring not only successful completion of the programs but also decreased recidivism rates. A lot of times the programs are designed and looked at from the eyes of the law enforcement or criminal justice system without enough input from communities, families and those that live with the youthful offenders’ day in day out (Vies, 2003). Conclusion In conclusion it is clear that on the whole the juvenile programs have worked and been successful in the small pockets of populations that they have been implemented. There is now a need to gather the lessons learned in all these different and disparate programs and try and come up with more formalized and more standard programs that will have a greater national impact while at the same time retaining the ability to adapt them to local situations and give the local community a say in how the programs are run. Programs that have a more holistic look at the requirements of the youth are more likely to succeed than those with a narrower focus. References AMIKids. (N.d.). AMIkids Personal Growth Model. Retrieved June 29, 2013, from http://www.amikids.org/our-services/amikids-personal-growth-model Ex-Offenders Benefit From Job Training Program. (2011, June 23). Wypr.org. Retrieved June 29, 2013, from http://www.wypr.org/news/ex-offenders-benefit-job-training-program Lewan, T. (2007, December 30). How 1 county reduced teen recidivism -- without building new detention centers. SouthCoastToday.com. Retrieved June 29, 2013, from http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071230/NEWS/712300307/1018/OPINION NCWD/Youth. (2013). Project Craft. Retrieved June 29, 2013, from http://www.ncwd-youth.info/node/349 Vies, S. G. (2003, September). Promising Aftercare Programs. Retrieved June 29, 2013, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/201800/page4.html Read More