Chapter 11

Juvenile Probation and Community Corrections

Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, 7th ed.

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What You Need to Know• In 2007, probation handled more than 600,000 youths who

were processed in some way for delinquency or a status offense by the juvenile court.

• In juvenile court, the probation presentence investigation may be called a social history investigation or predisposition report.

• “Aftercare” is the juvenile court term for parole.• One current approach in the juvenile community corrections

is the balanced approach, which attempts to balance offender accountability, competency development, and community safety.

• Police-probation partnerships, including searches of the offender’s residence, are an example of a tough approach to juvenile probation.

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What You Need to Know (cont.)• Other recent approaches in juvenile probation

include restorative justice, peacemaking, and community justice.

• A number of treatment interventions are effective, including cognitive-behavioral and social learning.

• Some current concerns about juvenile probation include the problems of goal confusion and some aspects of both restitution and community service.

• Probation managers must attempt to implement programs that are effective in a variety of ways, including reducing recidivism, meeting offender needs, and satisfying the public.

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Probation

• In 2007, an estimated 327,400 youths who were adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court were placed on probation, which is roughly 56 percent of all adjudicated delinquents.

• Probation is the most common disposition for adjudicated status offenders and continues to be a work horse for the juvenile justice system.

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Social History (Predisposition) Investigations

• Typically conducted by a probation officer when a juvenile has been adjudicated as either a delinquent or a status offender.

• Legal information includes descriptive material about the delinquency or status offense, including the child’s, the victim’s, and the police officer’s version of the offense, and verified data on the child’s prior contacts with the juvenile court and with the police department’s juvenile bureau.

• Social information is also collected, which includes; the child’s age, information on the child’s development, family, education, and possible problems such as alcohol or other drug abuse.

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Probation Supervision• Youths placed in formal probation supervision must follow

various conditions, such as reporting regularly to a probation officer, obeying the law, attending school, and remaining within the geographical jurisdiction of the court.

• However, the judge may also order specific conditions, such as restitution to the victim(s) of the delinquent, community service, attending counseling sessions with a social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, or requiring the parents to attend counseling sessions.

• A judge may also order a short stay (about 1 month) in detention as a condition of probation.

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Aftercare• Very similar to probation supervision in that youths

must follow specific conditions and report on a regular basis to a parole officer.

• If they do not follow the conditions set forth by their parole officer, their parole will be revoked and can be sent back to an institutional placement.

• Suggestions for success include:– Mental health services can reduce recidivism.– Mentoring is related to reduced recidivism, reductions in

testing positive for drug usage, and more connections to educational and employment services and mental health treatment.

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Supervision and Counseling• Probation and aftercare (parole) officers working

with juveniles use various combinations of assistance and control to help youthful offenders avoid further trouble.

• Probation officers typically assume one of two roles: – They may assume the role of a social worker or counselor

to help understand the youth and assist the youth in gaining self-esteem and greater self-insight.

– The may also assume a much tougher role by threatening to punish the youth and monitoring the youth’s compliance to court conditions. This type of officer typically believes that deterrence and incapacitation are more important goals than rehabilitation.

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Current Trends in Community Supervision• Several developments are taking place in community

corrections. • The first development could be described as the balanced

approach which requires the system to provide balanced attention to the need for competency development, accountability, and community safety and requires efforts to restore, to the greatest extent possible, the victim and community to their pre-crime status. So there is emphasis on restorative justice.

• One concern about the balanced approach is whether it in fact “balances” the concerns for competency development, accountability, and community safety, or simply places emphasis on accountability.

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The Punitive Model

• This philosophy is quite direct; the offender, even if a juvenile, deserves to be punished. This philosophy is also known as attack (tough) probation.

• Some argue that the toughening of probation has gone too far, and that parole officers see their role as one in which to search out any means possible to send the probationer to prison.

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Renewed Emphasis on Status Offenses• A status offense is an action that is prohibited only to a

certain class of people, and most often applied to offenses only committed by minors.

• In 2007, more than 150,000 status offense cases were petitioned to juvenile court and about 45,500 juveniles were placed on probation for status offenses.

• About 40 percent of the children were placed on probation for truancy, 20 percent for a liquor law violation, and about 25 percent for either runaway or governability.

• There is a fear that if these troublesome behaviors are not dealt with, then there is a definite possibility of much worse behavior in the future.

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Restorative Justice

• In contrast to retributive justice, which focuses on vengeance, deterrence, and punishment, restorative justice is concerned with repairing the damage or harm done to victims and the community through a process of negotiation, mediation, victim empowerment, and reparation.

• In addition to a focus on such repair, restorative justice also emphasizes involving victims, offenders, and community members in the process and rethinking the roles of government and community in trying to achieve justice.

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Peacemaking • Much like restorative justice, peacemaking is a positive

philosophy that seeks to go beyond simply criticizing the status quo and beyond a simple focus on recidivism reduction.

• The primary goal is personal change or to: “help build a happier, peaceful person right there in prison (if working with prisoners), a person whose newfound self-honesty and courage can steer him or her to adjust to the biases and shortcomings of a society which does not feel comfortable with ex-offenders.”

• In a peacemaking perspective, both personal transformation and institutional change are critical, but personal change is seen as a basis of social change.

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Community Justice• Used to help community residents “manage their

own affairs, solve their own problems, and live together effectively and safely. This goal is best achieved by giving everyone a stake in the quality of community life.”

• To achieve this mission, community justice involves risk assessment and control of offenders, victim restoration, community contracting, and cost sharing.

• Therefore much like community policing, community justice is based on the principle that the community has a responsibility to deal with offenders.

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Effectiveness of Juvenile Probation and Related Sanctions

• One implication of the research is that simply making probation tougher does not work, Scared Straight programs, boot camps, and intensive supervision (without treatment) have demonstrated that harsher measures without more treatment elements, do not reduce recidivism.

• Community supervision may be no worse than incarceration - that is, at least as effective as incarceration while intensive supervision can lead to easier detection of technical violations such as breaking curfew, leaving the jurisdiction without permission, failing to report to a probation officer, testing positive on a urine drug test, and skipping school.

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Interventions With Offenders

• Although many politicians and citizens favor “get tough” approaches to crime and delinquency, there is considerable consensus that correctional interventions are effective and cost-effective.

• Through meta-analysis research, professionals report that counseling, skill building, and restorative interventions reduce recidivism by at least 10 percent.

• Some reduce recidivism by more than 20 percent.• An additional principle is attention to risk; intensive

programs should target high to medium risk youths rather than low-risk youths and should not mix high- and low-risk offenders.

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Continuing Concerns in Community Corrections

• Goal confusion — or mission distortion — means that judges, probation and aftercare officers, probation directors, state legislators, and juvenile justice experts disagree about the purpose and objectives of juvenile court and community supervision.

• A trend to reduce goal confusion is increasing emphasis on the use of evidence based practices to achieve measureable outcomes, this may also be referred to as Evidence-Based Policies (EBP), which demands empirical evidence, experimental/quasi experimental research designs, requires replication, and must be subject to meta-analysis.

• Restitution - Occurs when juvenile offenders pay for all or part of the damage inflicted on crime victims or property.

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Continuing Concerns in Community Corrections (cont.)

• Community Service - Similar to restitution, in that offenders perform unpaid work for government or private agencies as payment for crimes without personal victims. Community service could include cutting grass at local parks, doing volunteer work in hospitals, or painting the clubhouse of a Boys/Girls Club.