Abstract
Juvenile delinquency is prevented and controlled effectively to make sure young offenders are free from crimes through advising them and giving them moral support. The entire society participates actively all the time to reduce the rate of crime and report committed crimes to the justice system for disciplinary measures to be taken. Rehabilitation centers help with long-lasting solutions by taking care of offenders where their problems are looked at to give them instructions on how to be morally upright. Complex programs solve complex causes of juvenile delinquency and control measures to change behaviors. Experienced educators and counselors listen to the problems of juvenile offenders to know how to help them develop moral behavior that is acceptable.
Opening paragraph
Counselors have been employed to help young offenders who commit a crime so that they can be advised on how to be morally upright. The approaches used should not be confusing so that the advice given does not lead to confusion and is taken seriously by everyone. The rate of crime is not increasing because of the role of police in ensuring that they put in place practices that ensure crimes committed by young people are reported immediately and are dealt with without favor or discrimination. The minor offenses that are reported are dealt with outside the justice system instead of taking the offenders to prison.
According to (Henggeler, 2006 pp34-38) Juvenile offenders who do not commit serious crimes are not rehabilitated because of the fear of the youths, and research shows that the young offenders’ belief is being taken to prison or rehabilitation centers can not work towards changing their behavior for the better. This is a very unfortunate trend because; it may not be effective for a long period of time and does not help in looking for better means of preventing juvenile delinquency. Many young offenders who commit crime for the first time and are punished do not repeat the crime again but if they are left without being punished, the rate of repeating the same crime increases.
The rehabilitation that is of great significance is the one that is done at home and in the community because; members of the community know the offenders well and are witnesses of the committed crime that need to be prevented before it reaches advanced stages. The youths have rehabilitation programs after being incarcerated and not all of them are appropriate and appreciated by all delinquent youths. The programs help in educating about concrete skills and take care of deficiencies in learning and psychology with principles for giving sound instructions. (Delbert, 2004 pp23-25)
Experienced people who educate young offenders and counsel them to know how some of the youths may be resistant and opposing which brings about confusion on the better means that can be used to deal with them without encountering difficulty. This calls upon the community and school to ensure that rules and regulations are set to be followed by everyone failure to which punishment would be administered until good virtues are developed and vices eliminated completely.
When dealing with juvenile offenders, it is important to know the changes that occur in the society because; crimes that are committed are products of entire society such as family and school and it is difficult for individuals to control it unless people work in unity to look for effective means of controlling Juvenile delinquency. Poverty should be addressed because it can lead to crime due to lack of sufficient resources and everybody in the society should be treated as equals without regarding some individuals with high esteem. Once a young offender commits a crime, it should be understood that there are psychological deficiencies and social problems leading to offending behavior which require proper intervention so that the individual can be rehabilitated.
According to (Nevin 2005, pp13-20) The justice system should ensure that offenders who are in society do not affect other people by offering protection to the entire society; those who commit crime intentionally must be responsible for their crimes and be reliable for a penalty imposed by the society. Order must be maintained all the time by implementing laws to ensure that any wrongdoing does not go unpunished. Young offenders should be prepared to make a positive contribution to society through their productive work that generates income and improve their well-being. Members of society should make sure behaviors that lead to crime are dealt with before they reach advanced stages and become a habit that is difficult to stop.
Programs help young offenders address many things to determine the cause of crime, consequences, and how to control and stop it completely. The necessary skills for solving problems, monitoring behavior, and controlling aggression are helpful to individuals and peers for them to set their goals and develop means of achieving them through proper utilization of the time available to them.
If the results of the programs are not seen, this means there is failure due to faulty evaluation and the use of unreliable criteria that fail to address complexity and outcome. The programs work better if the people offering it believe that it is efficient but if there is any doubt, implemented program will always fail. Lack of fidelity of the program leads to failure and complex programs are successful because they consider complex causes of offense in youths. The programs should be delivered the way they are designed by the use of trained people so that they can be successful.
Supporting information
Prevention and control of Juvenile Delinquency
Community programs
(Ivan, 2004 pp40-44) found that, Youths who are at risk and young offenders are taken care of through effective programs offered by the community. At school, teachers give pupils advice on how to be morally upright and how to behave properly all the time with minimum supervision and to be self reliant.
There are groups at homes where children meet together to be advised by the elders and social agencies with qualified people on how to help young offenders change their behavior for the better and never to commit crime again. These programs are supposed to be intensive to care for every young offender who is in need and be long lasting without failing at a particular point after implementation. Systematic evaluation is done to ensure the program serve the whole community without discrimination so that everybody benefits from it.
These programs do not focus on specific career when helping the youth but can find jobs for offending youths so that they can get something to keep them busy and forget about engaging in criminal behaviors that may come as a result of idleness and lack of commitment. As community mould behavior of young offenders, they train them to prepare them on how to work and how to maintain their jobs once they are employed.
There is a program for twelve weeks used at school or in the area of residence to deal with giving instruction and principles for developing cognitive behavior. This helps students to be given same treatment with other employees to enhance group identity. The supervisor is a teacher or counselor who gets salary and bonuses to work well, attend meetings of the staff and help in short term recruitments. This helps young offenders to discover the areas where they are best talented and skills they have relating to job and learning the strategies for developing good behavior, solving problems and having good relationship with other people.
Evaluation program takes 2 years to learn on good behavior strategies and their application in various settings. There are follow up interviews to ensure that the learned behavior is properly utilized in solving problems and controlling unwanted behavior.
According to (Smith, 2003 pp45-46) Programs based in the community takes four months to address what causes delinquency with focus on family system that includes siblings and peers. The major emphasis is on how family can be preserved with good morals and positive attitude to develop skills for being socially recognized. To be able to control aggression, ten week program help in moral reasoning and being socially recognized by family members.
Program for young offenders have principles that result to change of attitude and having effective behavior. This task may be difficult without getting solution in the short-term and there is no single program to solve the entire problems. Educators and counselors need to have experience to meet the need of all individual and the group. These programs are properly supervised to ensure that they are productive and reach as many young offenders in the community as possible and every community must have programs that are taken care of by experienced people.
Guidance programs help in rehabilitation and counseling with parents being involved actively. Counseling sessions for juveniles are established through visiting them in their homes, established family camps and in the community service. This programs aims at developing self-control in juveniles for them to be responsible for their actions and have life skills. If guidance program is completed by juvenile successfully, there will be no police who will charge them. (Smith 2003 pp47-48)
Options ordered by the court for offenders
(Champion, 2002 pp11-14) argues that, When an offender is aged over fourteen years, he is forced to offer community service free of charge for forty to two hundred and forty hours. The implementation of this scheme enables the court to deal with young offenders while still in their community without being imprisoned and at the same time offer the community with tangible benefit. The tasks assigned in the community involve taking care of old people and befriending them. The disabled are assisted and repairing and maintaining hospital facilities and participating in fund raising and helping less disadvantaged people with social activities.
Offenders’ employability is enhanced by being given community service that adds value to them as a program for developing work. Weekend detention is given by juvenile court for people below 16 years where juvenile offender reports to detention camp every weekend for fifty two weeks. Juveniles reports to detention from 3pm to 5pm and undergo exercise drills and perform group work.
The juvenile offender under detention order below sixteen years can reside in detention for three months to be equipped with relevant skills and face disciplinary to mould his behavior. Detention can be undergone without probation by juvenile but if there is poor progress after probation, detention order is offered by sending offender to detention center and after discharge continue with the probation. Order for periodic training requires practitioner to report to an agency for social service for some hours to get social skills, training and guidance for vocational development and preparation for work. Young offenders who may be taken to the penal are given option for alternative order such as section in the prison that deals with young persons.
A young offender under probation is put under supervision for six months where he goes on with his daily activities such as attending school and working while still respecting conditions ordered by the court. Probation officer help probationers to solve the problems that made them commit the offence and look for concrete solution to stop the offence in future. Parental involvement is very important through parenting talks, programs for child interaction and workshop in rehabilitation centers where juvenile offenders freely interact and give their views on why they involve themselves in improper behavior and how they can be helped to stop it.
Feedback is gathered by discussing with parents on the improvement that is noticed on the young offenders so that the ones who do not follow instructions can be given verbal warning due to breach of the instructions given to them. (Quay 2007, pp56-60)
Juvenile offenders are given advice depending on their level of need and benefits generated from the assistance. This depends on the crime, skills for coping with it and the need to change behavior depending on stage of development. Departments for investigating crime help to secretly discover incidents of crimes for immediate measures to be taken to prevent and control it immediately.
(Borduin, 2004 pp26-29) asserts that, Volunteer participation in creating awareness in places where juvenile offenders are rehabilitated help in reducing the rate of delinquency because, recruited experts assist in taking care of the offenders and encourages them to live a life free of crime. Free in-house programs train volunteers using external agencies that sponsor the training and equip people with skills necessary for working with offenders and families that are affected.
Institutional rehabilitation
Graduated approach is used to reintegrate juveniles and provide them with services to make good progress through aftercare service. The objective of rehabilitation is to take care of needs of every person where formulation and implementation of care plans for every individual is done in order to enhance personal discipline, life skills and develop means of coping with society challenges without engaging in any anti social behavior that results to problems and affect normal life.
Family role is recognized as a building block for development of behavior and change agents where behavior of young people is changed for the better. Potential of the family is strengthened and preserved in order to achieve greater success in effort made. Supportive, safe and secure environment is provided to ensure the environment is suitable for residents without being attacked by criminals. Residents are supposed to abide by the rules and get self discipline and adhere to standards of having access to better living conditions. The rewards for good behavior are defined well with incentives for supporting desirable behavior and punishment for bad behavior is known to everyone. (Borduin, 2004 pp23-25)
Closing paragraph
According to (Glick, 2004 pp25-26) the behavior of juvenile offenders should be taken care of with every effort geared towards improving the overall behavior and ensuring that crimes are eradicated completely. Juveniles should be helped to adjust and live with their families again even after they have committed offence to help them have a sense of belonging and motivate them to do away with bad acts and replace them with good virtues that are acceptable in the whole society.
Experts who help to control and prevent juvenile behavior should be patient and give young offenders enough time to adjust their character and change completely and never to repeat it again. Juvenile offenders need to socially reintegrate, join schools and get employment opportunities just like other employees so that they can solve the differences between them and their families and never return to their old ways of living.
Assessment and classification accurately identifies the needs of juvenile offenders and risks involved by existence of juvenile delinquency. Interventions are done in a timely manner to ensure they are effective and interdisciplinary teams work and carry on frequent assessment to help in making assessment plans are followed in decision making. If it is found necessary and achievable, members of the family and juvenile offenders meet together in a family conference to help young offenders discuss about offending behaviors so that the family can support them and commit themselves towards helping them change their behavior to be acceptable in the society and avoid social problems.
Parents attend counseling and seminars for them to cope with teenagers and manage them. Parenting sessions help in knowing how to treat young offenders with care and helping them understand why the society expect them to behave in one way or another. (Glick, 2004 pp27-28)
Adolescent sex offenders are given special programs to teach them on the dangers of sex before marriage and importance of abstaining from sex until the right time. The offenders need to be handled with care because; they commit crime without knowing and out of influence from peers making them have difficulties in future after getting the consequences of their acts. Young offenders who may be at risk of having problems of anxiety and depression are assisted by intervention group and taught how to manage their emotions effectively and the program also cares for teenage girls.
Vocational classes equip young people with knowledge to make their lives better when they are away from their homes. Those who can attend school are taught for six months while the ones who are not eligible enroll in vocational training. Basic skills in domestic maintenance are offered so that juvenile offenders can involve themselves in constructive chores and never engage in criminal activities. Religious groups provide moral education to reinforce desirable behavior and develop social values. Physical training in sports and games help to enhance healthy lifestyle where team work is encouraged for people know about strength and weaknesses they possess and improve on their areas of weakness.
Contact programs help society residents to have confidence and develop trust of the available opportunities for them to contribute to charity events and Red Cross programs. Residents who have good progress attend competition in cultural performances and meet with their fellow youths who have discovered their talents. This encourages young people and keep their mind occupied all the time thereby reducing the chances of committing crime because, all their available time is properly utilized in constructive activities and they have no time to stay idle. (Jaffe, 2005 pp14-19)
References
Glick P. (2004): Community intervention to reduce delinquency, New York: Pergamum, pp. 25-28.
Henggeler S. (2006): Adolescence delinquency, Newbury: Newbury Park, pp. 34-38.
Jaffe W. (2005): A revolution act for young offenders, Toronto: University of Toronto, pp. 14-19.
Borduin C. (2004): Family therapy for juvenile offenders, Pacific: Pacific Grove, pp. 23-29.
Quay C. (2007): Juvenile delinquency handbook, New York: Wiley and Sons, pp. 56-60.
Delbert E. (2004): Prevention and controls of Juvenile Delinquency: Newbury Park, pp. 23-25.
Nevin R. (2005): Theoretical understanding of juvenile justice policy, Toronto: Toronto University Press, pp. 13-20.
Ivan F. (2004): Delinquent behavior and family relationship: Wiley and sons, pp. 40-44.
Champion J. (2002): Delinquency, processing and the law: Prentice Hall pp. 11-14.
Smith B. (2003): Juvenile justice processing, United States: American journal of sociology pp. 45-48.