CRJ522 Week 5 Discussion 2

CRJ522 Week 5; Discussion 2

At first in the early 1980’s to 1990’s lawmakers believed that if juveniles proceeded and accomplished criminal behavior, they deserved to be treated as adults and deserved criminal punishment like and adult. In recent years though, this has been challenged by courts and scholars as they have realized that this is not the case. Juveniles are not developmentally ready to be placed in a prison with adults because they are immature and have not fully mentally developed. The larger the institution is, the more likely hood that the juvenile will recommit crimes and be forever in and out of the legal system (Scott & Steinberg, 2010).

When and if we see a continual problem with a juvenile, there are steps and programs that have proven effective that we can take to get these juveniles and their families back on the right track. There are three programs that are proven for success depending on their situation that have worked that were conducted in previous studies. The three are Functional Family Therapy (FFT), Multi-systemic Therapy (MST), and Multidimensional treatment to foster care (MTFC) (Henggeler & Schoenwald, 2011). FFT will help the juvenile with their family to help decrease their antisocial behavior. This therapy helps by sitting down with the family to help with their communication, establish new patterns, and help with any type of anger management issues. With MST, this is used to help with those juvenile offenders that are more violent in nature, to include substance abuse, sexual abuse, and any type of emotional disturbance. This treatment will hit all aspects of their life to include their family, school, social, community, peer, and individual life issues. Lastly, MTFC is used when in-home and out of home services have failed (Henggeler & Schoenwald, 2011).

The three therapy programs that were just discussed up above can help because they are redirecting and teaching not only the juvenile how to cope and interact, but their families too. It is teaching them how to openly communicate with each other regardless of the problem. By addressing these problems with the juvenile, their families, community and disengaging those with deviant networks will enhance their performance in all areas of their life. Let’s face it, if we put a large group of deviant juveniles together for a long time, what are they really learning from this experience, but making friends and talking with the “wrong” crowd.

References

Bartol A., M., & Bartol C., R. (2015). Introduction to Forensic Psychology: Research and Application (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Henggeler, S. W. & Schoenwald, S. K. (2011). Social Policy Report: Evidence-Based

interventions for juvenile offenders and juvenile justice policies that support them.

Sharing Child and Youth Development Knowledge, 25 (1), 1-28. Retrieved from

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519241.pdf

Scott, E. S. & Steinberg, L. (2010). Social Welfare and Fairness in Juvenile Crime Regulation.

Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 10-243. Retrieved from

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1662579