Criminal Justice System Juvenile Delinquency Term Paper

For example, Cook County, IL, has built a network of support for juvenile female offenders within the local community. The county has developed its own gender-specific assessment and treatment guidelines and has trained youth-facing community workers on assessing juvenile offenders and recommending programming. (Juvenile Justice Journal, 1999, p. 30). Also, the county designed a pilot network of social service agencies in order to provide a community-based continuum of care. (Juvenile Justice Journal, 1999, p. 30). This continuum of care helps to prevent at risk youth from slipping through the cracks.

Cook County's program was so successful that the State of Connecticut adopted a similar network of institutions practicing a uniform assessment method. Whereas Cook County agencies used the assessments to select programming choices for at-risk youth, Connecticut criminal justice institutions used the assessments to issue alternative sanctions tailored to the juvenile offender's particular risks, needs, and strengths. (Juvenile Justice Journal, 1999, p. 30).

3.Analyze trends and patterns of these programs as they contribute to reduced recidivism.

It is telling that states and various local governments, which possess different powers, responsibilities, and capabilities, have all converged on a rehabilitative, diversionary approach to female juvenile programming. Each institution came to the realization that most female juvenile offenders committed criminal acts for somewhat different reasons than male juvenile offenders. For females, criminal behavior was not rooted in pride or greed, but rather, grief. It was grief resulting from a very unhealthy childhood experience marked by sexual or physical abuse. These offenders did not know that they could interact with other people in a manner which did not involve sex or violence. Thus, the gender-specific assessments sought to identify grief-stricken offenders and suggested programming designed to acculturate them to more healthy, platonic, and peaceful interpersonal relations.

4.Relate the trends and patterns to the programs overall validity and effectiveness.

Gender-specific, rehabilitative programming is valid in the sense that it is based on the common risk factors and causes of female delinquency, childhood abuse, neglect, poverty, and disadvantage. (Hawkins, et al., 2011, p. 7). The programming attempts to build the delinquent's resistance to these behavioural influences, through exposure to a caring adult as well goal-setting exercises. (Hawkins, p. 6). These practices are meant to shift the female delinquent's perception of her environment from one of hostility to one of cooperation, trust, support, and opportunity.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (1999). Juvenile Justice Journal, 4, 1, 1-35.

Hawkins, S.R. Graham, P.W., Williams, J., & Zahn, M.A. (2009). Resilient Girls --…