Juvenile Correctional

facilities

Rocio Morales
Content:
1. Establishment of juvenile correctional center
2. Changes over time and causes for such changes
3. Feature that have not changed
4. Participants in the institution
5. Member of institution perceive Juvenile Correctional centers
6. Working for all members of society or just some?
7. Perception from society
8. Functionalist analysis
9. Conflict analysis
10. My personal improvement to juvenile correctional centers

Citation
Establishment of Juvenile Correctional Center

Religious philanthropist organizations created most of the juvenile facilities in the United
States.
● the official public juvenile corrections established in the second half of the 9th century.
○ By 1876, there were fifty-one reform schools or houses of refuge nationwide which
nearly three-quarters facilities were operated by state or local government.
○ Youth admitted were for a broad range of behaviors such as criminal offenses,
status offenses, and dependency
○ Length of stay was regulated by facility administration also exercise full discretion
to transfer disruptive young detainees to adult prisons.

● By 1890 most states outside South had a reform school, and many U.S. states had separate
○ facilities for male and females, as well as separate facilities allowing for racial
○ segregation

● During the Civil War II, there was an inflation rate reducing funds spent on institutional upkeep crating deterioration of conditions and confinement
○ Southern reforms were damaged in battles.
○ Increase in incarcerated juvenile was caused by participation in the Northern draft riots by youths while in the south white official arrested
thousands of emancipated slaves and sent them to segregated southern prison and reform schools (the worst abuses of slavery)
○ Contract labor system began and became the principal function of juvenile facilities instead of reformation.
○ Contracting labor of the young’s charges increases revenue for the reform school.
○ The exploitation of the young captive created violence among inmates and staff.
Changes over time and causes for such changes

During the 19th century Organized labor, religious groups and childsavers led many states to
investigate juvenile facilities and to establish state boards to oversee the operation of juvenile
correctional institutions.

● The National Prison Association (now ACA) was established

○ Discovers horrid conditions, massive corruption and abusive practices
○ The goal was to reveal enlightened professional standards for the operation of these reform
schools with new regulatory organizations would curb these problems
■ However little change was made, schools continued to reproduce condition, and
housing population increased.

In the early decades of the 20th century begin the growth of the juvenile court movement
Ushered in the expansion of probation services and diagnostic clinics for juvenile offenders.
● Innovation such as physical exercise, special asage and nutritional regimens’ popular military drill, the precursor of the today’s correctional boot camp.
Offender self-government institutions, such as the George Junior republic, organized to be a virtual microcosm of the outside world.
● Youth were involved in the definition and enforcement of rules under close supervision of staff.
○ Still seen today. In popular treatment methods known as guided-group interaction or positive peer culture.
Changes over time and causes for such changes (cont.)

Juvenile correctional facilities continued to function almost impervious

to change throughout the next 50 years
● Late 1950’s a few states began experimenting with alternatives
to traditional incarceration.
● 1960’s legal decisions were established that juvenile possessed
basic rights to due process and equal protection under the law.
● The president's crime commision in 1967 called for diverting as many
youngsters as possible from the failed system of juvenile corrections
○ Nearly 1000 youth were quickly removed from brutal and corrupt
institutions to innovative and hummane community programs in the early 1970’s
○ the first training school in the United States, the Lyman school closed and replaced with network of very small, secure facilities and a
wide array of community-based services helped draft the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act ( JJDPA) of 1974.
■ Landmark legislation offered grants to states that were willing to remove status offenders from secure custody, to separate
adult and juvenile offenders and to promote ‘advanced juvenile justice practices”
■ Only three states - Missouri, Utah and Vermont- tried to faithfully replicate the Massachusetts approach
■ Blunted b 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations that fundamentally opposed the concept of deinstitutionalization .
Feature that have not changed
● Juvenile facilities face severe conditions of crowding.
● Length of stay have increased in the past 15 years.
○ Public officials have not invested much in new facilities or increased agency budgets.
○ Increasing caseloads and restricted budget, many juvenile corrections facilities have experienced deteriorating conditions of confinement and basic
lapses in meeting professional standards.
● While states spend between $100,000 and $300,000 a year for every single young person held in a secure facility, only 13 states provide those locked up with the
same educational services as students on the outside, according to the findings of The Council of State Governments Justice Center.
○ Most of the young people serving time in juvenile detention tend to be several grade levels behind in school already and most have been either
suspended multiple times or expelled from school, the report says.

● Education in Juvenile facilities offered to young offenders can be poor.

○ classes in a juvenile correctional school are restricted by the inability for teachers to bring
certain materials such as science classes to prevent from becoming potential weapons.
○ Also, juveniles are placed in classes by age and teachers have to find a way to teach student
at different levels of comprehensions and ability to perform well during the class session
because homework is rarely assigned outside classrooms.

○ In Lancaster, CA The American Civil Liberties Union and several other public interest law
firms settled a class-action lawsuit filed in 2010 against Los Angeles County, alleging
substandard educational efforts at a Lancaster juvenile detention center.
■ The case alleged that a student that was never taught to read graduated from
Challenger’s Christa McAuliffe High School.
■ the settlement in one part agreed that the county would move towards developing
more efficient methods of educating students
Participants in the institution

A. Superintendent- top administrative position , provides treatment programs for youth delinquency, oversees
administration of personnel and programs to ensure safe,efficient, operation., and requires an understanding
of the therapeutic needs of delinquent youth and best practices for treatment.
B. Youth Correctional officer and counselor
● Correctional officer- control, direct, and instruct inmates individually and in groups, make
appropriate use of disciplinary options, subduing combative inmate.
● Youth Correctional Counselor- services to juvenile offenders and their families, supervise the
offenders by enforcing discipline, making and maintaining records, work in social service
organizations, make recommendations as to the appropriate destination for and offender based on
their evaluation provide specialized courses such as addiction recovery and anger management.
C. Education
● Many educational staff such as, Supervisor of Academic Instruction , general
education teacher, Special Education, physical education, elementary multiple
subjects, to school psychologist and librarian.
○ For Example General education teachers engage in student activities,
Managing student records, evaluating student performance, participating
in faculty meetings (individual Educational PLan-IEP), obtaining supplies
and material, participating in graduation ceremonies, developing faculty
meetings or seminars.
Participants in the institution Cont.

A. food service: Cook specialist II, Correctional Supervisor cook, and Supervising Correctional Cook
● plans, supervises the conduct of inmates, and assists with preparation, cooking and serving food
to inmates and employees
B. Health care
● Nurse- administration of medication, obtaining specimens for diagnostic testing, medical and
minor procedures,therapeutic intervention consistent with the youth physical and psychological
status,document all nursing activities in medical records.
C. Plant operation
● making sure that all adult and juvenile state correctional facilities are operating efficiently seven days a week, 365
days a year.
D. Religious
● Different religion : Catholic, jewish, Muslim, Native American Spiritual Leader,
or Protestant Chalain
○ Gives spiritual and moral guidance to State institution residents; interviews
on couples youthful offenders on ethical and moral problems and spiritual
matters cooperate with other staff members, counsels with families on
problems involved in rehabilitation
Member of institution perceive Juvenile Correctional centers

● This 1980’s and 90s period witnessed a wave of legislative reforms designed to make it
easier to decide youth in adult courts.
● States such as Colorado, Georgia, and Minnesota passed laws
permitting juvenile corrections officials broad latitude in
administratively transferring young people to ‘’youthful offender.’’
facilities operated by the adult corrections department

Personal opinion of staff members in Juvenile correctional facilities

provided by indeed.com

Detention Aide (Former Employee) – Mountain Grove, MO – March 13, 2019

○ Amazing job. As long as you love kids. The environment is great.
Hours are good. No negativity. Always coming up with new ways to
help children. Clean.
● Relief Youth Specialist (Former Employee) – West Olive, MI – December 19, 2018
○ The hardest part of the job was the inconsistent schedule and the
type of people who worked there. The easiest part of the job was
working with the youth.
● Correctional Officer (Former Employee) – Orlando, FL – May 10, 2017
○ Most stressful job ever. Management sucked. No breaks and short staffed. Juveniles
runned the place not staff. Pay was horrible and no raises. Benefits was only thing good.
Working for all members of society or just some?
According to Paula Schaefer’s article girls in the juvenile justice system she states that court services send
many girls to out- of-home placement without knowing to whom or to what they are sending these girls.
● Still housing boys and girls together in residential services throughout the nation.
○ Jurisdiction say it is ‘’cost-effective’’ ‘’ these kids need to learn how to get along with each
other’’ without merit.
■ Mrs. Schaefer suggest Girls-only day treatment centers are a cost-effective way to
serve a number of girls in any local community or jurisdiction in far more meaningful
ways than sending them long distances away from their family to very expensive
residential care.
○ Many pregnant girls who are in facilities do not receive
○ adequate prenatal education and health care services
○ or support during labor and delivery from facility staff.
Perception from society
● Through most of the 1980s and 90s the public response to juvenile offenders was decisively unsympathetic.
○ In a survey conducted November 2014, by the PEW Charitable Trusts on democratic, independent, and Republican
voters, the majority of the public favor a range of less-costly alternatives for lower-level offenders as well as strongly
support a more robust probation system and more intervention by families, schools, and social service agencies.

65% voted in favor that Juvenile offenders should be 85% think juveniles should never be placed in juvenile
treated differently from adult offenders with 24% should corrections facilities for status offenses like skipping school or
be treated the same. running away, which would not be a crime if they were adults.
Functionalist Analysis

For Durkheim, society begins to function and progress to higher

order when society comes to terms with apparent threats and
challenges. Social control is obtained by placing deviant behaviors
of youth and placing them to Juvenile detention center to juvenile
correctional school. The placement in juvenile correctional schools
is needed to make societies functional. The schools teach
juvenile delinquents to adhere and accept moral guidelines and
rule that are social factors to society. Social solidarity forms
by creating a feeling of shared experience and idea of
community; juveniles are provided with seminars relatable to their
own experiences and learn to support each other. Tasks such as
cleaning and cooking or behavioral control are required to learn and
apply them after their time in correctional school. As their behavior
and responsibilities improve, youth detained are compensated with
special privileges. The positive function of juvenile correctional schools
is to establish social equilibrium by setting rules to prevent the child
from unwanted behavior in society through designing an environment that
will enable their future.
Conflict Analysis
Criminal law and the criminal justice system are used by dominant groups
to control subordinate ones.
E. Wright Mills asserts that the ability of those in power to define
Deviancein a way that maintian the status qou.
Crime is socially constructed; deviancy is not a quality of the act a
person commits but rather a consequence of the application of rules and
sanctions to others. All behavior occurs because people act in ways
consistent with their social problems. Negative labels are generally given to the
powerless by the powerful
- Believe that deviance is the result of selective labeling by
agents of social control or view girls as being sexually precocious.

Juvenile correctional school are bureaucratic that can be biased.

There is a division of labor; correctional officers are interacting and
supervising juveniles constantly while administrative stay in offices with
little contact with the youth.
The hierarchy of authority prevents some employees and youth to voice their
needs or concerns.
There are rules and regulations that lead to goal displacement but sometimes too
restrictive for the youth.
My personal improvement to juvenile correctional centers

Encourage people to volunteer to come for seminars for youth in correctional

school

Awareness for the youth about the services provided outside correctional
school that provide assistance

Communication between the youth justice system throughout the states about
successful programs in correctional school working and
not working.
- Correctional school evaluation every three or ten
years.
- Data collection to adjust improvements.

Youth delinquents become pen-pal with youth mentor

Outside school.
Citations
Brady, J. (2014, December 14). Public Opinion on Juvenile Justice in American. Retrieved from

https://www-aws.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2014/12/public-opinion-on-juvenile-justice-in-america

Juvenile Detention Center. (n.d) Retrieved May, 29,2019. Retrieved from

https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Juvenile-Detention-Center/reviews?start=40

Krisberg, B. (1995). The legacy of juvenile corrections. Corrections Today, 57(5), 122. Retrieved from

https://login.ezp.pasadena.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/215706811?accountid=28371
Citations Cont.
McCluskey, Molly. (dec 24,2007). What if this were your Kid?. retrieved from

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/juvenile-solitary-confinement/548933/

Quinlan, Sandra. (2010,Nov. 20). LA County Settles Lawsuit Alleging Poor Educational Efforts at Challenger. Retrieved from
https://www.justicenewsflash.com/2010/11/20/la-county-settles-lawsuit_201011206183.html

Schaefer, P. (2008). Girls in the Juvenile Justice System. GPSolo,

25(3), 16–21. Retrieved from

https://login.ezp.pasadena.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/lo

gin.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=32435110&scope=site

California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (2019).Correctional Officer & Counselor Careers. Retrieved May 29,
2019, from https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/career_opportunities/por/joinourteam.html

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