A Neighborhood Correctional Program for Juvenile Offenders

by Edward Pabon

A true community-based system for the super- vision, control and service of juvenile offend- ers requires the involvement of numerous street-level indigenous community organiza- tions within inner-city neighborhoods as alter- natives to the formal juvenile justice system.

The traditional response of the juvenile justice correctional system to juvenile of- fenders essentially is in two modes: insti- tutional and community-based. The more typical method of handling the serious juvenile offender is the public or private juvenile institution. In recent years, partly because of skepticism about the ability of the traditional institution to accomplish its goals of protecting the public and reha- bilitating the offender, there has been a movement in the direction of deinstitution- alization. Emerging policies of many states, as well as the federal government, favor community-based services for all but the more serious o r dangerous juvenile offenders.

But whether this movement to local cor- rections can be grounded in social knowl- edge and research findings as opposed to emotional hopes and optimism is open to debate. Surveys of the results of large numbers of treatment projects have so far yielded little conclusive evidence that any of them work. The assumption that deinstitu- tionalization of juvenile offenders is more

effective than incarceration is relatively untested.

A fair summary of public policy concern- ing intervention in the juvenile justice area might be that most intervention strategies are nothing more than cherished assump- tions. Public policy has not been guided by recourse to scientific data. Strategies in juvenile corrections have been determined by various conventional wisdoms and spe- cial constituency values and interests. The conventional wisdoms of practitioners, the aggregated opinions of a profession that achieves some consensus from its members, come from the formal training which has its very purpose in inculcating new profession- als with the wisdom of their predecessors, from common, mutually shared and mutu- ally reinforced field experiences. The guide- lines come from supervisory personnel whose superordinate position in the profes- sional work setting symbolizes professional wisdom while it legitimates the passing on of such wisdom. The special constituency values and interests represent the stake in the game of the various social service and justice system constituencies. Included among these constituencies, of course, are those local, state and federal politicians who find the delinquency field a congenial arena for playing out their political roles.

But there are problems. First, profession-

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Edward Pabon

als in these positions have developed a socially sanctioned conceit about their wis- doms that often transcends the available documentation of their validity. For exam- ple, with frightening consistency, decades of research have failed to confirm the assump- tion that counseling is an effective treatment modality for juvenile offenders. Yet, Mul- vey and Reppucci in a recent study of the perceptions of appropriate services for ju- venile offenders remark: “The most striking aspect of the results is the consistency with which personnel across the three agency types (juvenile court, social service depart- ment, and community mental health center personnel) recommended therapeutic ap- proaches as the treatment of choice for juvenile offenders. Consistently, subjects named individual or family therapy as ideal, real, or effective services.”’ Second, there are many wisdoms, not one. They need not be, and often are not, in accord. In the dis- position of certain delinquency cases, the court’s wisdom suggests treatment under wardship; probation officials see clearly the advantages of informal probation; the com- munity advocate is certain that diversion to a non-justice, community agency is the method to use. Each wisdom, with the sanc- tification of professional consensus, is thus revealed not as wisdom but as perspective. Third, as more social science data on delin- quency becomes available, the more it ap- pears that a significant portion of our con- ventional professional wisdoms and inter- ests may be, in fact, incorrect perspectives.

Thus, expecting service innovations to arise from within current determiners of public policy as to juvenile corrections is an unrealistic hope. If gatekeepers see counsel- ing as effective, they are more likely to favor the establishment of additional ser- vices. The essence of the problem is found in a quote from a delinquency counselor to whom it was suggested that the value of counseling for diversion clients had yet to be demonstrated: “I can’t believe that fifteen minutes of counseling with me wouldn’t help a child.’? Given the level of our national investment in counseling therapies, it is shocking that the available data have had so little impact on the public policy, but it is

also a testament to the vitality of our men- tal health practitioners in the delinquency arena and to their faith in their own wisdom and interests.

Yet, there is scientific data which suggest a new approach to intervention with juve- nile offenders. Several recent studies ac- knowledge the fact that somewhat intrusive interventions can effectively reduce juvenile crime and recidivism and that these inter- ventions do not necessarily require institu- tionalization. Murry and Cox in a study of the Unified Delinquency Intervention Ser- vices (UDIS) discovered the more restrictive the degree of supervision practiced by UDIS, the greater the reduction in arrest rates.3 A similar finding was found in another study-the Provo E ~ p e r i m e n t . ~ This study was, in principle at least, an even better test of changing recidivism rates than the UDIS project. The former randomly as- signed delinquent boys to either treatment or control groups and kept detailed records in addition to before and after measures of what actually happened to the youth in the treatment group or control population. Final- ly, additional support of the concept that fairly high degrees of restriction and super- vision can have a suppressive impact on juvenile crime can be found in the results of the Philadelphia Plan.5 In 1974 an opera- tion known as Crisis Intervention Network was established in Philadelphia to combat gang violence. Concentration was on patrol- ling the gang areas in radio-equipped, marked cars, responding to gang and non- gang rumors and events threatening vio- lence. Councils of parents were organized, and workers were assigned to neighborhood areas rather than their own groups. Accord- ing to police statistics, gang homicides de- creased from 41 in 1973 to levels in succeed- ing years of 32, 14, six and eventually one. It is reasonable to speculate that much of the effect may be attributable to the com- munity control emphasis that evolved in the program.

The awareness of the impact of some kinds of programs involving intensive super- vision, control and services for juvenile offenders suggests a strategy for the renais- sance of neighborhood self-help/ control

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Neighborhood Correctional Program

developments in the creation of correctional interventional roles for the numerous social, welfare, fraternal, religious and community- indigenous organizations found in inner city neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods and communities that may foster criminal character in youth also have many natural resources that, if prop- erly tapped, can be effective in addressing the community’s most complex problems. A community can be a viable organism. When it suffers acute breakdown, it fights off threats to its existence. Over the past dec- ade, programs and activities in several cities have been studied. Findings show commun- ity members together are using their own resources to deal with the problems of delinquent youth and the disproportionate representation of minority youth in the juve- nile justice system.6 In many cases, youth who were once an anathema to community stability have reversed roles and are now acting as protectors of their own neighbor- hoods. The success of these youth develop- ment projects appears to be based on prin- ciples of youth growth associated with a strong sense of family, blending together adult supervisors and youth, while provid- ing close supervision and control over youth activities.

In such programs a structure of primary relationships among members support the possibility of cooperation and authentic mutual influence, as individual and com- munity development proceed together. The importance of primary bonding in any person-changing process must be stressed. Socialization and development are influ- enced by contact with other individuals. In this, conformity is never total, and individ- uals observe some norms and ignore others. But the desire to be with people in gratify- ing relationships leads the individual to compromise, and the gratification from finding needs met through encounters with others and the development of emotional and practical interdependence increase indi- viduals’ willingness to modify themselves in a group-approved direction.

The chance that anyone will genuinely subordinate learned adaptations to the in- fluence of a new group and new norms

depends on the degree to which the new group resembles, or is in fact composed of, already familiar people with whom the indi- vidual can readily find things in common. It seems probable that those with whom they may have associated all along-people from their own neighborhood as well as people from the same social, cultural and economic circumstances-could gain entrance to their deeper personal feelings and strivings more readily than professional helpers drawn from other social categories, educational levels or cultural orientations as is custom- ary in current community correctional ef- forts. The already familiar neighborhood people are also more readily accepted in psychodramas of self-renovation than sim- ilar but unchosen associates.

A community correctional system built around indigenous groups differs greatly from the traditional community-based sys- tem of juvenile corrections. In the latter, a public or private agency establishes an office in a neighborhood location and immediately announces itself as a community agency. But, in reality, the agency has no positive ties to the community, and is not identified a part of the community. As such, the agency has no linkage to the resources of the community, cannot establish or main- tain significant involvement with friends and peers, and cannot encourage internal behav- ioral controls and social skills. These prac- tices rely upon the availability of commun- ity resources, linkages and networks which can be more readily available to youngsters. The traditional community-based system of juvenile corrections, whether publicly or privately sponsored, lacks these strengths.

Coates, Miller and Ohlin report the find- ings of their research in Massachusetts indi- cates the extent and quality of a program’s community linkages are statistically asso- ciated with several client measures including recidivism, referral rates, past offense rec- ord, family self-sufficiency, attitudes toward public officials, self-image and perceptions toward primary groups.’ Spergel also stresses the need for interaction with the surrounding community and attributes the failure of community-based delinquency prevention programs to the lack or poor

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Edward Pabon

quality of community ties.8 Program fail- ures are caused by isolation from and lack of interaction with significant subsystems such as schools or employers; a lack of po- litical and fiscal support from established agencies, politicians and community groups; and intolerance by the community of in- volvement of delinquents in social or politi- cal action. A true community correctional effort requires that the community have the capacity to provide the resources and sup- port necessary to enable juvenile offenders to become reintegrated into their societies and prevent potential offenders from serious law violation. The task of building a com- munity's capacity for absorption and toler- ance requires an intimate knowledge of that community's strengths and weaknesses.

The numerous social, welfare, fraternal, religious and indigenous community organ- izations in inner city neighborhoods offer great promise as a means for the generation of community resources and linkages. They enable juvenile offenders to become re- established and function in legitimate roles, while at the same time providing supervi- sion and control of these juveniles, replac- ing such traditional enterprises as secure pre-trial detention, state level institutions and even probation services.

For example, far too many youth are being held in physically restrictive detention facilities across the country for a variety of reasons unrelated to the protection of the community. Yet, high levels of security can be provided by programs which are essen- tially non-residential in nature, cost less and are as effective as traditional institutions. These programs are usually designed to use the youth's own home as an alternative while awaiting court action. Ordinarily, youth workers will visit each youth on their caseloads regularly (Le., making three or four unannounced visits per day) and will either phone or personally contact the youth's parents, teachers and employer. The goals of these home detention programs vary. Workers in some programs merely try to keep the youth trouble-free and assure they appear in court. Others attempt to provide counseling to youth and their fami- lies and oiganize regular recreational activi-

ties. In general, alternatives to secure deten- tion programs enjoy high rates of success, when success is defined as ( 1 ) failure to commit new offenses during the program, and (2) appearance in court.9

There is no reason why indigenous com- munity organizations could not perform such correctional intervention roles for the juvenile justice system. Public policy should encourage the involvement of such groups through the negotiation of contracts on a fee or voluntary basis. Inner city neighbor- hoods, where social and cultural identities are widely shared, have the potential for acting as true communities; that is, they are not mere aggregates of statistics of social problems and social disorganization. There is the strong possibility that the residents will come together in conscious awareness of shared problems and relationships, form- ing communities of interest. Spergel demon- strates in his study of communities in Chicago that differences in community struc- ture play an influential role in determining the effectiveness of delinquency control programs.10 In the community that was more communal in nature, where solidarity, common interests and kinship ties are impor- tant, deviant youth tended to be absorbed by primary groups and local organizations. But in the community characterized by a high degree of control by outside agencies and a weak or fragmented local system, they were handled by the official juvenile justice agencies and referred or reported as deviants.

In addition, since it is now common knowledge that minority offenders are over- represented in the juvenile justice system, inner city neighborhood groups have an increasing need to intervene in juvenile crime, shaping problem formulation and subsequent solution generation. In 1982, 1,291,581 whites under the age of 18 were arrested, whereas 47 1,495 blacks and 180,6 13 Hispanics under 18 were arrested. Blacks made up only between 12 and 13 percent of the population in the United States, and Hispanics made up only 6.2 percent. Yet, blacks accounted for 26.9 percent of all arrests, while Hispanics comprised a total of 12.1 percent." Furthermore, while the issue

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Neighborhood Correctional Program

Notes ‘Edward Mulvey and N. Dickon Reppucci, “Per-

ceptions of Appropriate Services for Juvenile Of- fenders,” Criminal Justice and Behavior (1984).

2 M. McAleenay, The Politics of Evaluation in a Juvenile Diversion Project, 1975, mimeo.

3Charles Murray and Louis Cox, Beyond Pro- bation (Beverely Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1979).

4LaMar Empey and M. Erickson, The Provo Experiment: Evaluating Community Control of Delinquency (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1972).

~Malcolm Klein, “Where Juvenile Justice Meets Social Service,” in Handbook of Social Interven- tion, ed. Edward Seidman (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1983) pp. 362-384.

6Robert Woodson, A Summons to Life (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1981).

’Robert Coates, A. Miller, and L. Ohlin, Ju- venile Correctional Reform in Massachusetts (Washington D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1977).

8Irving Spergel, Community Problem Solving: The Delinquency Example (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

9Thomas Young and Donne11 Pappenfort, Secure Detention of Juvenile and Alternatives to Its Use (Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1977).

lorbid. 11 Uniform Crime Report, 1982.

of racial bias in the differential handling of minority youth is not conclusive because of disparate results in a number of studies, census data indicates that minorities are more likely to be detained or institutional- ized than whites.

A greater appreciation is needed on the part of public policymakers in the juvenile justice system regarding the connection be- tween the goals of community corrections and the kind and quality of the relation- ships between program and normal settings of the community. Also necessary is an understanding of community theory that provides insight into processes, structures and models of communities and how com- munity-based programs are related to them and the development of strategies which encourage the involvement of indigenous community organizations in the supervision, control and services for juvenile *fenders.

Author S address: Edward Pabon, ACSW Institute for Children and Youth Services, Inc. 1 1 I7 Olmstead Ave. Bronx, NY 10472

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