Copyright Ed Young, PhD 8/20021 ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF ‘STARS AND STRIPES’ 1 MISSION Suppose the mission of your juvenile correctional institution was to

Copyright Ed Young, PhD 8/2002 1

ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF ‘STARS AND STRIPES’

1 MISSION Suppose the mission of your juvenile correctional

institution was to make the communities of your city safer. Suppose the only thing you have to work with to accomplish that mission is a large group of delinquent youths who are incarcerated in your institution for a limited period of time. How would you accomplish that mission? What kind of environment and program would you propose to accomplish that mission? What kind of an institutional environment and program would you confront these delinquents with in order to make sure they were able to adjust in a positive, socially responsible way to the home communities that they are to return to?

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2 POPULATION

What kinds of youth are entrusted to the care and reform efforts of the institution? How challenging is this task for the institution? Consider the following. Youth adjudicated to a juvenile correctional institution have usually been arrested and taken before a juvenile judge many times before being incarcerated. These youths have typically committed frequent acts of violence and other serious illegal acts and have been unresponsive to all of the methods of control the community and school authorities have at their disposal. Incarceration is a last resort when all of these other measures have been exhausted. With a history such this, what might you suppose these youths would be like when they arrive at the correctional institution?


3 PROFILE

Typically, their problems have been developing for many years. Many, but not all, of these youths are from impoverished homes and broken families. Most are disadvantaged in ways that cause others to view them as being of low status. Consequently they may be defined as socially outcast and avoided by the majority of youths. They may have physical features that deviate from the norm for their age and which leave them vulnerable to exclusion and ridicule. Being physically unattractive to the opposite sex is highly stressful. They may be untutored in proper behavior and lack may social skills which contributes to their being outcast. They may be lacking in the mental aptitudes required to get by in school. Many have emotional problems such as feelings of inferiority, shame, jealousy, fear, despair, rage, or alienation. This mental and emotional stress and turmoil, also, prevents them from being able to concentrate and sit still long enough to study. Most have combinations of these problems. These conditions make just being in school a miserable experience


4 BEHAVIOR PATTERNSIt is the way these downcast youths handle their condition that

eventually results in their incarceration. Those youths who poignantly feel their impoverished status may find that the only pleasure they can afford is to take delight in stealing from the more advantaged, destroying their possessions, or destroying school property. A disadvantaged youth might take delight in ridiculing, intimidating, and even physically attacking the more advantaged youths. A youth who is unattractive to and unpopular with the opposite sex and are rebuffed by them may resort to intimidating the opposite sex, engaging in extremely inappropriate sexual activities, coercing the opposite sex into having sex, or even raping them. Youths who feel like outcasts, who feel isolated, who feel like they have no respect and no role or place in school may form or join a gang. The gang members, then, give each other status by adopting a set of values in opposition to the school and community. Skipping school and failing courses becomes a mark of status with the gang. Flouting the law may give them even higher status. Their need to bond with others and to feel a sense of belonging and to gain respect is strongly fulfilled by the gang members. As a consequence, they will often do whatever the gang asks of them to keep this bond with the gang.


5 ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT

These youths may delight in flaunting their deviance and outsider status in the faces of the insider, conformist, adults and youths. As time goes on, this ostracism makes them increasingly entrenched in this culture of defiance, intimidation, and destruction so that the negative cycle concludes with their having to be incarcerated. For these youths, however, incarceration, while unpleasant, is more like winning an award for the highest achievement. The institution is charged with reforming these very same youths. Imagine taking these youths, with these extremely negative characteristics, and returning them to the community with positive characteristics.


6 ADOLESCENT TRANSITION TOWARD FREEDOM OF CHOICE, MOBILITY, AND

ABSENCE OF SUPERVISION

One might ask what kinds of homes these youths grow up in? The home is the first place where they learn to interact with adult authorities. What typically happens in the interaction between these youths, as they enter their teenage years, and their parents or adult caretakers? As teenagers, all youths are caught in the middle of being a child and an adult. Movement into adulthood means they are no longer confined to the immediate supervision of adults. Parents, or other types of guardians taking the place of biological parents, of delinquents typically perceive their children as lacking the knowledge or responsibility necessary to make choices for themselves or to be given permission to roam free on their own.


7 PARENT-TEEN RELATIONSHIP

As the teenager moves rapidly into this period exploring the wider world and assuming the trappings of adults, adult guardians become increasingly fearful and controlling. They restrict these growing demands for permission and try to make decisions for the teenager. When their teenager breaks their rules, they may restrict them from associating with peers and even lock them in their rooms. The teenager, then, argues, shows disrespect, disregards parental advice, and more blatantly defies their rules. The parents respond by being increasingly controlling, critical, screaming and cursing, and more severely punitive. The teenager meets the increased, repressive parental response by rebelling, screaming, cursing, attacking, stealing from, and destroying property of the parents. As this vicious cycle plunges downward, the parents may resort to beating the teenager and throwing them out of the house. At this point, the parents are totally alienated from the teenager and the teenager’s alienation is all consuming and vicious.


8 RELATIONS WITH AUTHORITIES

This is the pattern of interacting with adults that the teenager is learning. This pattern becomes the model for interactions with teachers and eventually with authorities of the justice system. By the time the youth reaches the juvenile correctional institution, this pattern of perceiving and interacting with adults, particularly authorities, is deeply entrenched. It is patterns like these that the staff of the institution must deal with.


9 INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Stars and Stripes is an institutional program that was designed to meet this challenge. Stars and Stripes is a program that provides a natural environment that strives to simulate the home, community, and public school situations. This naturalistic environment is structured so residents are faced with the situations similar to those they faced at home. Here, they have to make choices like those outside of the institution and to deal with those same kinds of consequences. Within this kind of structure youths are encouraged to learn to use their own judgment in an increasingly more responsible manner. The purpose of creating this kind of structure is to increase the possibility of youths transferring what they learn in the institution back to the post-release home community and school.


10 CORRECTIONAL APPROACH

In Stars and Stripes every youth has a clearly defined, valued, productive role and receives recognition. The rule of the institution’s society is inclusiveness with mutual facilitation. The purpose of parenting efforts by the staff is to assist the youth in the goal of learning to use and value their own judgment. Conflict, antagonism, and destructiveness are dealt with by using a problem solving and coaching approach rather than blaming and punishing. The staff attribute the cause of a youth’s negative behavior to be in the structure of the youth’s world rather than inside the youth, or innately a part of his personality. Here, the youth is provided the emotional and interpersonal conditions within which he can both address the problems in the structure and his own role as a part of that structure. The youth is given the opportunity to explore his part in creating the problem and formulate his goal for personal change without being blamed, punished, or labeling him in any negative way.


11 POSITIVE EMPHASIS

Every youth is provided conditions within which he can genuinely understand all of the other youths, especially those he might consider different or alien. Every youth is given the opportunity to bond with every other youth, with his group as a whole, with the staff, and with the institution. Every role in Stars and Stripes is designed to incorporate a set of positive behaviors and exists within a larger system of roles. The roles within this larger system are structured so that the youth progresses through graduated phases from neophyte to a fully mature, socially responsible role before graduating back into the home community. Do you think that such a program would help you accomplish your mission?


12 STRUCTURE OF DORMS

12 STRUCTURE OF DORMS All institutional processes, from beginning to end, are restructured to conform to the spirit of Stars and Stripes. The Intake process is restructured. Dorm populations are not based on a level system. Incoming youths are assigned randomly to a dorm. Each dorm contains a heterogeneous group of youths who have attained the various ranks of stripes up to star. Once assigned to a dorm, the youth remains there as he progresses through his stripes to the star. This leads to a strong identification with his dorm and dorm mates.


13 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

When a new resident enters the institution’s school, he is given diagnostic tests in reading and mathematics on the computer. The tests are designed to find the student’s grade level rather than to give him a grade. There is no passing or failing. After the diagnosis ascertains his grade level he will begin work at his grade level on the computer and will progress at his own pace. The students have headphones on while at the computer. These headphones give him instructions that assist his learning and keep him focused, but they also serve to prevent distraction from other students. There are no comparisons or rivalry between students. Students are not separated based on ability or having Special Education problems.


13 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM (CONT.)

The Special Education program is particularly unique. At any one time, students in the Special Education program may consist of those who have visual, auditory, or speech impairment, are emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, have ADD or ADHD, or may simply be academically challenged. An Inclusion Teacher is provided for these students. This teacher and the Special Education students, or Diverse Learning Style Participants as they are referred to, are not separated from the rest of the students but rather all are included in the same classroom setting. Consequently, they do not suffer the embarrassment of being singled out. Nevertheless, the Inclusion Teacher is there to interact with them and give them special reassurance. This teacher conducts the class in a manner that is consistent with the spirit of Stars and Stripes with an emphasis on positive reinforcement and providing learning tasks and content that match to their individual readiness. Many of these students have their very first positive experience with school.


13 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM (CONT.)

As a result of this approach, those many factors in the regular public schools that cause feelings of shame, inferiority, low self esteem, alienation, and animosity are eliminated. The structure of this educational environment results in all of the students being able to feel good about themselves and about education. Furthermore, students are encouraged to assist one another with assignment problems, giving them a sense of responsibility for and bond with their fellow students. Finally, if the student does not exhibit negative behavior during the week he earns a special privilege of getting to play games on the computer. When the learning environment eliminates those factors that make students feel bad about themselves and promotes those factors that make them feel good about their progress in learning and, at the same time, emphasizes rewards for positive behavior, these students not only learn to truly like school and learning, but they also make very rapid progress.


14 ENTRY LEVEL of “STARS AND STRIPES” RANKS

Initially, the youth is introduced to dorm mates and dorm staff as a Greenhorn. He even gets a plain green shirt with no insignia on it. Other youths have shirts with insignia based on their progress. This clearly distinguishes the greenhorn from the other youths who have attained a rank. He is not expected to know the rules or to exhibit the correct behavior. This allows staff and advanced peers to pay particular attention to him and to coach him so he can move up from the greenhorn green shirt to the highest rank with a white shirt, signifying the attainment of higher degrees knowledge, skills, and responsibility that go with a more advanced pro-social role.


15 ORIENTATION BY PEERS

The more advanced peers orient greenhorns to basic parameters and rules such as the institution's layout, the location and function of departments, schedules, and the like. More importantly, they instruct the greenhorns in such things as the Stars and Stripes rules, procedures, and ranks of pro-social roles; levels of work responsibilities; procedures and requirements for advancement; and the meaning of the different colored shirts and number of stripes or star. These advanced peers also educate the greenhorns on the consequences for counterproductive behavior.


16 STUDENT GOVERNMENT

Early on the greenhorns learn about student government in dorms. There they discover what it means for the group to function as a democratic organization. Students elect their own dorm president, vice president, secretary and sergeant of arms. Students running for office stand in front of the group and make a campaign speech and the election is held by secret ballot. At times the dorm will impeach an officer who is not doing a good job in the position. Elections held as needed. The dorm officers run the weekly community government meetings, with caseworkers and dorm parents there to listen and facilitate as needed.


16 STUDENT GOVERNMENT (CONT.)

A typical meeting consists of three parts: 1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: welcoming new dorm members, assigning

student mentors, congratulating students who have earned rewards, Stripe promotions, and special certificates.

2. CONFRONTATIONS: discussion of dorm problems, one student confronting another, students who have been in a discipline class speak to the dorm about their rule infraction and advice is give to the dorm on how to avoid their mistake

3. ISSUES/REPORT/PLANS: Peer Mentors report on how their greenhorns are doing and areas in need of improvement; program and project ideas are presented; committees are appointed to study problem issues and report back the next week with recommendations; and finally there is input from the Dorm Parent and the caseworker as to how the dorm as a whole did that week.

The meeting usually ends with an inspirational message, poem, or prayer presented by one of the dorm members.


16 STUDENT GOVERNMENT (CONT.)

This whole process introduces the youth to an understanding and appreciation of the meaning of citizenship and gives them a feeling of positive empowerment, and a realization that they can be and are participants in a democratic society.

Finally, as youths make the transition from home to the world, they become highly influenced by their peers. They internalize the code of values and behaviors of their particular peer group so that, even when away from their peers, they dare not act contrary to the group’s or gang’s norms.

In Stars and Stripes, and particularly student government, they begin to internalize a peer reference group that is highly positive in contrast the gang at home. If this new reference group is strong enough, it may persist after being discharged from the institution.

If there were continuity in terms of a post release program that maintained such a positive peer influence, there would be much less of a chance of recidivism


17 SUPPORT TEAMS AS SURROGATE PARENTS

Advanced peers instruct greenhorns concerning the role of Support Teams in the attainment of promotions. Residents are assigned staff from the institution and the school to act as Support Team members. Support Team members function somewhat like surrogate parents in order to provide bonding between the youth and the parent surrogates, creating a substitute 'healthy' family for each youth. The Support Team provides guidance and feedback to the youth concerning how well he has attained his goals in order to warrant a promotion. The Team interprets quantitative measurements of the maturity of his behavior to him so that he knows on what areas he needs to work. The Support Team, however, mainly facilitates the youths’ learning how to use their own judgment in decision making and goal setting.


18 LEARNING GOOD JUDGMENT

A by-product of the process of the Support Team is that it assists youths to work through their adolescent need to emancipate themselves from parental control and dependence upon their parents. Assisting the youths to learn to use their own judgment and decision making with respect to achieving the increasingly more mature criteria for each additional stripe allows them to grow gradually and incrementally. When they face issues with peers and particularly with adult authorities and react with defiance and rebellion, they have the Support Team to turn to and work through these issues, explore consequences and more effective and responsible skills for handling these situations, and set their own goals. With this approach, they are never faced with demands beyond their current level of maturity. They are provided the conditions wherein they can incrementally and successfully grow in maturity so that they may eventually emancipate themselves from their parents and adult authorities in a healthy way rather than rebel against them.


19 INCORPORATING SURROGATE PARENTS

When the youths begin to see that the Support Team members respect and support them and trust the youths to use their own judgment, they, in turn, accept the Support Team members. This process generates a strong bond with the Team members. Youths eventually internalize the Support Team members so that, even when not in their presence, the youths think and feel about how the surrogate parents would want the youths to behave, how the Team would react to the youths. The youths particularly feel that the surrogate parents care about them and would be proud to see them being strong and good, becoming more mature, using good judgment, and making good decisions. This means that the youths have internalized a genuine feeling of self worth that has such a profound effect on them that it carries over to their return to their families, home communities, and schools. The positive, caring surrogate parents have supplanted the negative real parents as the primary influence in their lives. This is a profoundly important transformation.


20 SYSTEM OF STRIPES AND GRADUATED ROLES

Both Support Teams and advanced peers instruct greenhorns and youths with only one or two stripes about the system of graduated roles marked by the additional stripes and in the increasingly more responsible work assignments that also accompany promotions. The more stripes one has, the more mature his behavior should be and the more he takes initiative to maintain a high quality of community life. More stripes means the pro-social roles and complex job assignments entail more responsibility. As the more advanced youths learn to value their teaching role, those who are also more academically advanced may even tutor other youths having difficulties academically. The higher striped youths can sometimes be entrusted with a kind of remediation approach that encourages lower youths to adopt more effective study skills. They also assist the greenhorns learn the course material. Once again, assuming this esteemed role of teaching to others what they have learned gives the tutors a deeper appreciation for school and learning and identification with the teaching establishment.


21 STRIPES VERSUS TOKENS

In many level systems used in juvenile correctional institutions, residents must demonstrate a certain degree of good behavior and an absence of negative behavior in order to move to a higher level dorm with increased privileges. These promotions are typically based on the subjective judgment of dorm staff and caseworkers. Similarly, in token economies, a staff member can reward a youth's good behavior with a token. An accumulation of tokens can either be traded in for valued goods or be the basis for promotions. Awarding tokens is supposed to be based on objective criteria; however, the decision to award a token is usually made by one staff member’s subjective judgment.


22 MANIPULATION IN TRADITIONAL INSTITUTIONS

When residents are given tokens, in some cases, they can, unofficially, use them like cash in secret exchanges between residents. Therefore, not only are the token awards based on the subjective judgment of one staff member, but the youth soon learns how to manipulate staff members, play one off against another, and, therefore, beat the system. Typically, the behavior that gets rewarded is essentially the behavior that is not annoying to the staff member. Youths also learn how to manipulate each other in accumulating or bartering tokens. In such systems, the incentive is not to increase maturity of behavior and character. Rather, to the contrary, such systems, unofficially, tend to motivate the youths to outwit the staff and avoid being blamed for bad or disruptive behavior. They may even try to convince staff that they are actually good and deserving or reward. They are really learning how to be better con artists.


23 PROMOTION POLICY DISCOURAGES MANIPULATION

In contrast, in Stars and Stripes the emphasis is on growing in maturity, character, and social responsibility. In this system there are regular, quantitative measures of progress toward objective goals that relate to maturity. Caseworkers, dorm staff, teachers, and fellow residents use a quantitative scale for each of a number of clearly specified categories of mature behavior. The measures are specific to each increase in stripes and represent a carefully graduated progression in behavioral maturity. The measures begin at an elementary level that consists mainly of not fighting or exhibiting other grossly negative behavior. As measuring criteria for character and behavior change in the direction of increased positive, pro-social behavior, and responsibility in their work assignments, attainment of the criteria is recognized as the attainment of increased maturity and is met with a next higher level of criteria.


24 EVALUATIONS HAVE A PROBLEM SOLVING FOCUS

In order to advance in pro-social roles and job assignments, the youths must receive independent ratings from the dorm staff, caseworkers, and teachers, and also from peers. In this way, it is possible to gain consistency in both the evaluation content and in its communication between the staff of all the different departments within the institution. This fact makes it is possible to check for consistency and objectivity of ratings. These ratings are then taken to the Support Team whose members carefully go over the youth’s ratings from the various sources. The Team identifies what they notice as problem areas for the youth. The youth can then set new goals to work on for the next meeting so he can attain his next stripe.


25 OBJECTIVE MEASURES AND PUBLIC RECOGNITION

When the youth receives the additional stripe and wears it for all to see, everyone knows exactly what behavior is to be expected of a youth with that many stripes. If he does not live up to his stripe level, this will show up on the next set of objective measures. This system discourages manipulation of staff and keeps the youth from simply trying not to annoy staff members, as well as prevents peer manipulation. On the other hand, the system encourages the incorporation of increased degrees of good character, maturity, and a sense of responsibility for the quality of community life.


26 EVOLVING IDENTITY IN COMMUNITY

Attainment of the goals for each higher stripe is difficult and requires diligence and focus, but this is rewarded with recognition by the whole community. The community comes to formulate an identity for the youth based on his positive, observable, and consistently mature behavior. Furthermore, he does not move out of his dorm to one with greater privileges. He stays in that same dorm so that he can serve as a role model and help his peers attain similar maturity goals. In other words, all youths mutually facilitate of each others' growth toward greater maturity. As this is how the real world tends to work, they are also learning behavior that is appropriate in the real world.


27 PERSISTENCE AND LONG TERM GOAL ORIENTATION

It typically takes weeks or even months to attain an additional stripe. This means the youths have to learn to work toward long-term goals. They have to learn to keep themselves organized and focused because they are overcoming old, strong, negative behavioral, cognitive, and emotional habits. They also learn, however, that by keeping focused on their goals they are eventually rewarded. They then know that they are rewarded for consistent, persistent, dedication and effort. They now find that people are recognizing what the youths are going through and appreciate how hard it is and how much effort the youths put into it. For most, this experience of understanding and recognition is a first. At each stripe attainment there are formal ceremonies publicly acknowledging the level achievement. Youth have learned that delay of reward, acceptance of objective feedback, and learning to accept the consequences of their own judgment and choices represents the pathway to a new found self esteem, self respect, self concept, and community respect. These new inner controls and perspectives are hallmarks of adolescents developing maturity.


28 ADVANTAGES OF LEARNING THEN TEACHING

When the youths attain a higher rank, they turn around and use their "certified" knowledge to instruct and train those with lower rank. Learning becomes more deeply incorporated when it must be taught to someone else. In taking this teaching and training role, the youths gain new found status and self esteem. It also helps them develop an identification with the program. Since they not only have to teach information about the institution, rules of conduct, the ranks and their requirements for progress, and job skills and responsibilities, but also teach social skills and how to handle difficult social situations and use proper behavior, their learning becomes more refined.


29 IDEAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

To be able to teach such content effectively, they must serve as role models for what they are teaching. Putting all of these processes together means that what they are learning is deeply incorporated into their conceptions of the world and themselves and their identity and over time these changes become established behavior patterns. The graduated levels of demonstrated increased responsibility lead to graduated increases in freedoms and privileges. While the youths are doing this, the staff and their peers are mutually supportive and the youths are rewarded for their achievements through public ceremonies before the whole institution. These characteristics of the program make it an ideal learning environment.


30 MEDIATION: AGGRESSION TO ASSERTION

One of the cornerstones of the Stars and Stripes program is Mediation Training. A highly experienced Mediation Training professional leads the program. The Mediation program also has graduated stages that coincide with the progression in stripes. Beginners are trained in a peer mentoring system so they can help greenhorns ease into and adjust to the Stars and Stripes program. Beginners advance to doing peer counseling which entails learning to listen to their peers who are embroiled in conflict and stressful situations. As the Mediation trainees move up, they are introduced to conflict resolution techniques and are authorized to assist in resolving minor conflicts between peers. As a part of the most advanced stage, marked by four stripes and a red shirt, youths receive certification for advanced mediation training, allowing them to intervene in major conflicts. Staff and residents immediately identify, by the four stripes and red shirt, which youths are authorized to act as Mediators. Now, when staff members perceive a major conflict, they can call upon one of these high ranking residents to intervene as Mediators.


31 MEDIATION AND THE HEALTHY COMMUNITY

This conflict resolution part of the program is vital in teaching the youths how to perceive and act quickly to defuse conflict situations. Instead of reacting emotionally, they now know how to respond in a professional manner. Instead of taking sides in the fight, they are now neutral and help both parties to verbally express their anger and listen to each other. By learning mediation skills, assuming the role of Mediator, and practicing these skills in highly charged situations in the institutional environment, these youths are actually facilitated to grow in emotional and interpersonal maturity. As they attain the higher ranks and exhibit these responsible roles, they are credited with maintaining a high quality in the community environment. As a consequence, they identify even more with the institution and with the idea of a healthy community.


32 AGGRESSION MANAGEMENT FOR EXCEPTIONS

In rare cases a youth may exhibit such violent and uncontrollable aggression that mediation is impossible and something outside the normal procedures of the program is required. For this type of behavior there is a rarely used program called Aggression Management. Here the youth is placed under greater supervision and control and the trained staff work on the underlying dynamics of these explosive residents. The aim, however, is to return the youth as quickly as possible to the normal program procedures. The positive pull of the program is so strong that this Aggression Management is rarely necessary.

When the offense can not be addressed by Mediation, resident government, or the Support Team, the highest ranking residents in coordination with staff can hold due process hearings (similar to teen court). This, too, is rarely needed. When it is used, however, the youths have the opportunity to participate in a judicial-type process. This process teaches them how to be sure accusations are correct; how to be dispassionate and impersonal in determining whether the offense occurred; and if it did occur, how to make accurate assessments concerning how damaging or dangerous it was; and, finally, how to decide on a reasonable and constructive consequence. In this way, they learn to value objectivity, rationality, and even-handedness over primitive emotionality. This is another way they learn the meaning of greater maturity and good character.


33 FAMILY'S READJUSTMENT

As the youth is gaining social skills and maturity, his family has to readjust its perceptions of the youth and redefine his identity. Not having been an insider in the program, this can be very difficult for family members. While the youth is in the institution, the family has maintained their old, ineffective and negative habits of relating to the youth.

To address this issue, caseworkers use family counseling to help change these negative, habitual patterns and change their ideas of what the youth is like, or his identity. The caseworker can provide opportunities for the youth to demonstrate his mediation skills during the family's interactions. This way the family can also gain a new respect for the youth.


34 INCLUDING FAMILY IN PROCESS

To keep his family abreast of his progress in the institution, youths are required to write to their family each week. They take this opportunity to teach their family about the nature of the stars and stripes program, about its procedures, and to share with them which behavioral criteria they are currently working on as well as about their progress in school and what they are currently studying. In this way the family is able to participate in their child’s progress, struggles, and achievements as he works his way through the program.

Families often report they are pleasantly surprised by the student’s new skills and responsibility. Some students report they take the community government model and use it to hold family meetings. They mediate between their brothers and sisters, and are able to reasonably negotiate with their parents for house rule modifications. They use their peer mentoring skills to act as better role models for their younger brothers and sisters. Taking all of these new techniques and skills back home with them helps lessen the tension in the household.


35 FAMILY SKILL TRAINING

Families may often feel inferior about their parenting skills and style, and this can make them quite defensive. One way to diffuse this humiliation and defensiveness is to have them participate in multi-family counseling. Each family that participates in multi-family counseling has the opportunity to see that they are not alone in having these feelings and problems. Once they hear the plight of other families in the group, they can relax and feel more comfortable about expressing their shortcomings and their feelings of frustration and hopelessness. This experience turns despair and shame into exhilaration and hope and gives parents a new found willingness and even boldness to experiment with new ways of parenting.


36 POSITIVE ROLE IN FAMILY

Family counseling also helps the youth change his former perception of his family as inexcusably inept in their parenting into an understanding and acceptance of the fact that many families have to cope with harsh conditions. Now, at least, youth and parents can try techniques to manage such problems. Now, at the very least, they can agree to try to muddle through without becoming so enraged that they give up or leave. On the other hand, with the youth’s change of perception, instead of standing aloof, judging critically, and sabotaging and rebelling, the youth can begin to pitch in and help the family cope, problem solve, survive, and make the best of sometimes impossible life situations.


37 CRITICAL POST RELEASE PERIOD

Typically, when a youth leaves the institution and returns to the home community, the family will unconsciously exert pressure on the youth to resume his unhealthy role in the family's social system. Often, after a honeymoon of about two weeks, this pressure to return the family and the youth to the status quo of their social system prior to incarceration begins to intensify. In order to head off this disaster, the Caseworker can work with the youth and family to develop a mutually agreed upon family pre-release contract. Formerly, typical reactions by parents consisted solely of shouting criticisms, physical punishment, or meting out other harsh consequences with no real follow through.

Through the family contract process, all members of the family, as well as the youth, express and clarify their expectations for the youth, their rules, and more constructive ways to react. Now the family is assisted in formulating reasonable, and mutually agreed upon expectations, with constructive techniques for resolving problems. The pre-release family training in mediation, also, helps families learn these skills.

The main influence here is restructuring the family social system. Helping with this change of approach, however, is the family’s mutual redefinitions of whom they are and who they can become upon the youth’s return, along with the redefined and more reasonable mutual expectations. This part of the program can be vitally important in heading off the post-release “two-week end-of-the-honeymoon” phenomenon.


38 STAFF BENEFITSFinally, Stars and Stripes has an interesting and valuable by-

product. While staff are functioning as maturity coaches to the youths, assisting them to reach the maturity goals, two important changes are happening. The staff become astute in the art of looking for ways to help the youths grow. They begin to bond with the youths and to have a strong investment in seeing the youths grow. As the staff see these youths succeed, for the first time ever while working in the institution, the staff have a feeling that they are having a positive effect on these youths. As a result of this experience, almost to the person, they look forward to coming to work. They take great pride in the program and their association with it. Second, as they coach these young men in immediate situations in the institution, staff, too, are learning the meanings of maturity and character. They identify with the program and the institution but, more importantly, they also recognize that they are growing as people. In many cases this maturity transfers to the parenting of their own children.


39 REDEFINING POSSIBILITIES FOR DELINQUENTS

The changes wrought by Stars and Stripes give staff a different outlook on the residents and on youth in general. Youths are no longer seen as inherently bad and hopeless but as capable of a dramatic turnaround for the best, if given the proper care and guidance in a well-structured program. These changes translate into being able to be relaxed, accepting, and warm in their parenting and coaching and to be less suspicious and controlling of the youths. The youths respond by bonding and identifying with the staff, listening to the staff, and by taking them as role models. Youths will remember these positive role models long after they leave the institution.


40 MISSION

Bringing a youth to a point in life where he reliably uses good judgment and resists the temptation to use bad judgment is contingent upon being provided several necessary life conditions. The youth must be provided with the conditions in which a set of norms and values are clearly and regularly practiced and expressed. The youth must be provided with the conditions in which he can learn how to use, and practice the use of, good judgment. The youth must be provided with the conditions in which he is motivated to incorporate those norms and values as his own. Stars and Stripes provides the youth with those necessary life conditions.


Stars and Stripes is what it takes to have the citizens and officials of your county proudly say to you, to your juvenile correctional institution, and to its residents:

“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!”

Documents

Copyright Ed Young, PhD 8/20021 ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF ‘STARS AND STRIPES’ 1 MISSION Suppose the mission of your juvenile correctional institution was to