Restorative Justice Paradigm in Reforming Juvenile Justice - Case Study Example

In spite of their distinct professional directive, the similarity among assigning social service systems is an incompetent focus that highlights the categorization of risks and needs and the provision of mental health services designed to remedy apparent dysfunctions and inadequacies. Youth development as a mental health model surfaced in the 1960s and 1970s and was restored as a policy alternative to this inadequacy focus (Martin 2005). Whilst majority of youth services concentrated on attempts to ‘remedy’ vulnerable and deviant youth by means of therapeutic and rehabilitative interventions, supporters of youth development asserted that mitigating problems, even though it is possible, was not sufficient (Martin 2005).

Instead, they claimed, youth policy should be concentrated widely on the objective of guaranteeing that all juveniles have opportunities to realize normal adulthood. As mental health service programmes founded on ‘medical’ or ‘deficit’ framework theories have prevailed in the youth policy setting, most individuals become normal adults as they acquire experience in the family (Grisso, Vincent & Seagrave 2005) in dependable bureaucratic roles at work, and through major community groups.

As emphasized by Berns (2006): Children grow up in communities, not programs. Development is most strongly influenced by those with the most intensive, long-term contact with children and youth-family, informal networks, community organizations, churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and schools (p. 236). As young people do not mature in programmes, mental health service and treatment programmes are usually insignificant to the larger setting wherein maturation transpires (Butterfoss 2007).