Community Treatment for Juvenile Offenders

Introduction

Because the goals of juvenile justice and the procedures of the juvenile court are so different from both the criminal and civil processes, they are examined separately. We will review the historical development and legal foundations of juvenile justice, procedures of the juvenile court, and juveniles prosecuted in criminal court. Community is a commonly used word in the criminal justice context and yet it is difficult to define. It usually refers to a geographical area or a 'community of interests'. Community is viewed by policymakers as a key element in the strategy to reduce crime. This paper discusses if community treatment is better than institutionalized treatment for juvenile offenders or not.

Discussion

Criminal justice policies utilize the notion of community extensively: a community order locates treatment and punishment in the community; offenders released from prison are resettled and reintegrated into the community. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced community safety units and Crime Reduction Partnerships that rely on community involvement. Community representatives are included in a range of criminal justice tasks, from independent monitoring boards (IMBs) in prisons to lay community members of multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPAs). So, 'community' is a concept integrated into the language of criminal justice. (Wasserman 197-247)

The perceived loss of community is often cited as evidence of the decline of social relationships and social control and a reason for the increase in anti-social behaviour and disorder and increases in crime. A romanticized ideal of community, when there was no crime, people could leave their houses unsecured in the knowledge that they would be safe and where everybody knew everybody, is often presented as the lost 'golden age', a time when things were more secure and society safer. However, there is little evidence to support this romantic ideal of the cohesive, supportive, safe and crime-free community of the past. Communities are also described in less positive terms: as hostile, anti-social, crime ridden, deprived and disadvantaged. All these images conjure up another view of community that is a place of threat rather than one of safety. So, community is an ambiguous term: on the one hand community is presented as safe, secure and supportive; on the other, as a place of conflict, tension, hostility and insecurity.

Among the many ways of defining community is as a geographical area that has definite borders. These areas can vary from large areas to relatively small ones (for example, a city or town as a community to one or two streets being defined as a community). The architect Oscar Newman viewed community as a geographical area that provided protection and social interaction through shared space. The important element for Newman was that, through proper design, 'defensible space' could be created that would allow people to control their immediate surroundings. This social concept of community through the shared control of space is one way of understanding community. However, geographic definitions are not unproblematic (for example, there can be conflict between different groups in the same geographical locations). The definition of a ...