Juvenile Detention Facility - Essay Example

Juvenile Detention Facility Review James River Regional Juvenile Detention Center The James River Regional Juvenile Detention Center is located in Powhatan County, Virginia. It serves Powhatan County as well as nearby Henrico and Goochland counties. The facilities can house up to 60 youths with most of the beds being allocated to Henrico County offenders. The primary purpose of this facility is to detain youths, both male and female who are awaiting court dates for committing criminal offences; under certain circumstances detainees can remain in the facility for up to 6 months following their respective convictions.

The detainees are predominantly criminal offenders, but children requiring supervision and traffic violators occasionally serve time at James River. As it is with most detention centers, the focus at James River is on providing detainees with the programs and services to ease the transition back in to their communities and to foster a crime free future. In order to ensure the best possible results, there is close supervision from all three counties and they have implemented educational, religious and recreational programs as well as psychological screening.

The cornerstone of the rehabilitation effort at the James River Detention Center is the educational program. The program is composed of individual and group learning classes, personally tailored to address the individual needs of the detainee. Individual Education Programs (IEP), are used to simulate the curriculum of the respective detainee's home school. This is important because an efficient transition back into the school system aids in the overall rehabilitation process. While it is difficult to properly gauge the effectiveness of this center's success, they certainly appear to have the right idea with regards to their educational programs.

Conversely, it seems that James River Regional Juvenile Detention Center has some proverbial "red flags." For instance, three counties currently have administrative voices in the operations, which presents a potential problem. As previously mentioned, most of the beds, 52 in fact, are allocated to youth from Henrico County. This means that there are only 8 remaining beds for the remaining pair of counties. While it may not in actuality be a problem, there is always the chance that the majority partner would attempt to operate with little respect for the concerns of the minority counties.

Like I mentioned, this may not be a problem, but anytime multiple jurisdictions are involved, there is the potential for politics and agendas being a disruption.Another problem, and possible area in need of change is the spectrum of offenders that James River deals with. Grouping major criminal offenders with youth in need of supervision and traffic violators seems unnecessary. While this does appear to be unjust, it is difficult to recommend a remedy for it. This is an age-old question that tends to boil down to being a fiscal issue rather a humanitarian one.

Lastly, it seems like the overall training of the staff has been hindered by fiscal concerns. Only recently has the staff at James River Regional Juvenile Detention Center been encouraged to update their training with specific attention being paid to capitalizing on technological advances. This is not acceptable, regular training and re-certification is necessary in order to best serve the citizens of the state of Virginia. While James River Regional Juvenile Detention Center is doing its best to rehabilitate detainees, ultimately success requires fiscal responsibility.

It appears that the various programs in operation at the center are useful and in theory the certainly should work. The condition of this facility is indicative of the problems that plague America's jail system and was an excellent case study.Referenceshttp://www.co.henrico.va.us/finance/budget/p277.pdf#search='James%20River%20Regional%20Juvenile%20Detention%20Center'http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/research/documents/detentiontraining/detentiontraining.pdf#search='James%20River%20Regional%20Juvenile%20Detention%20Center'http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/Instruction/ExceptionalEd/juvdet.html