Juvenile Justice

Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice

Francine Sherman, Francine Jacobs

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470497043
• eBook ISBN: 9781118105856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"The lessons in this book remind us that we can—and that we must—do better, for the sake of our children, their futures, and the sake of our nation. . . . This volume is a call to action, and I encourage everyone who reads it to take steps to ensure that all America's children are given an equal chance to succeed. We must all work together to replace the cradle-to-prison pipeline with a pipeline to responsible, productive adulthood." —From the Foreword by Marian Wright Edelman, JD, President and founder, Children's Defense Fund, Washington, DC

"Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice appears at a critical time, when promising juvenile justice reforms are underway in so many jurisdictions across the United States. Sherman and Jacobs, and their impressive array of expert authors, fill a significant gap in the literature, making the current body of juvenile justice research and experience accessible to policy makers, researchers, and funders, and doing so through a practical and positive lens." —Patrick McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, MD

"Most people have narrow views of what it means to be a delinquent youth. In Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice, Sherman and Jacobs have diligently collected essays from the top experts in the juvenile justice field who tell an empirically based and powerful narrative of who is really in the delinquency system. As this book makes clear, until we ask and answer the right questions, we will remain unable to help the youth most in need." —Alexander Busansky, President, The National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Oakland, CA

A comprehensive reference presenting a rehabilitative, youth- and community-centered vision of juvenile justice

Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice brings together experts in juvenile justice, child development, and public health to explore the intersections between juvenile justice and needed development of programs and policies that look out for the health and well-being of the youth who enter this system. This timely book provides a usable framework for imagining juvenile justice systems that emphasize the welfare of juveniles, achieved primarily through connections within their communities.

A must-read for professionals working in juvenile courts and within juvenile justice agencies, Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice reflects both the considerable advances and the challenges currently evident in the juvenile justice system, with an emphasis on the development and implementation of policies that can succeed in building a new generation of educated young people able to embrace their potential and build successful futures.

Section III

Understanding Youth in Context

Chapter 10

Parents, Families, and the Juvenile Justice System

Francine H. Jacobs, Claudia Miranda-Julian, and Rachael Kaplan¹

For years modern developmental psychology, and perhaps our own experiences as well, convinced us that emotional upheaval—stress, alienation, separation from parents and families in favor of peers—was an inevitable, core feature of adolescence (see, e.g., Elkind, 1998, Erikson, 1986; Zeldin, 2004; see also Lerner et al., Chapter 5, this volume). We now know, however, that this developmental period is much more complex and nuanced: However much drama there may be, the vast majority of teens are also busy building and consolidating a repertoire of positive skills, behaviors, and relationships that will serve them well into their futures (Damon, 2004; Lerner, 2007; Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). As to their parents and families, most teens appear to want and need separation and attachment, differentiation and identification (Allen, 2008; Benson, Harris, & Rogers, 1992; Steinberg, 1990).

Ecological (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), developmental systems (e.g., Lerner, 2006), family and general systems (e.g., Bateson, 1979; Minuchin, 1974; von Bertalanffy, 1968), and cultural developmental (e.g., Rogoff, 2003) theory all argue that relationships are central to development and functioning, for our purposes here particularly the relationship between the child or youth and her proximate partners—parents, siblings, and grandparents. The consequences of these relationships begin before birth and continue throughout a child's life (Shonkoff, Boyce, & McEwen, 2009; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Recent research on brain development (Dahl, 2004; Masten, 2004; Scott & Steinberg, 2008a; Shonkoff et al., 2009) also speaks to the power of context, highlighting the key role played by children's physical, social, and emotional environments throughout childhood and into adolescence (Scott & Steinberg, 2008b)—in other words, even the teen brain is still maturing.

Although approaches to parenting vary across cultures, communities, and generations, the obvious lessons to draw from these lines of research are not surprising: Children need opportunities to connect positively to their parents and families, as do their parents and families to them; they need significant adults in their lives who believe in them and have the material and psychological resources to invest in them over the long term. They need guidance, supervision, direction, and protection, as well as respect, expectations, encouragement, and affection. They need to live in communities that support their development and functioning and the adequate functioning of their families.

This is a tall order, however, and some parents or communities fall short of filling it. A percentage of these parents become involved with public systems that shore up or extend parental resources or assume parental responsibilities altogether. The child protection, public welfare, and juvenile justice systems are most common, with markedly different roles vis-à-vis families.

For example, cash assistance programs administered through public welfare agencies have been characterized as “family preservation” policies because they provide material supports to enable children to remain with their families (Davidson, 1994). Acting as parens patriae—literally, “parent of country,” but in practice the default parent—child protection and juvenile justice agencies, however, have the authority to reconfigure and even dissolve these families. The child protection system, primarily concerned with the consequences of maltreatment, monitors and intervenes in family processes, places children outside their parents’ homes, and, working through the courts, may terminate parental rights altogether. The juvenile justice system is meant to protect public safety, and part of that job is to rehabilitate youthful offenders; it takes physical custody of youthful offenders during their commitment to the system (see Sherman & Blitzman, Chapter 4, this volume). The operating premise here is that inadequate parenting has led to the youth's delinquency, so that temporary abrogation of parental rights while the youth mends his way, with help from the state, is necessary.

But fair is fair, and one could also ask whether the state itself is behaving as would a “wise and just parent” (Ayers, 1997), providing what these youth presumably lack, given what we now know about the power of relationships and context, and the possibilities of continued development in adolescence. Does it engage the parents of these youth—with whom, given that parents retain legal custody, it is in de facto partnership—so as to optimize both public safety and the rehabilitation of its charges? Indeed, what does it know about these families altogether, and how does that information inform its practice? These questions are at the heart of this chapter.

We begin by locating the juvenile justice system's orientation to parents historically, and then explore, in broad terms, what is known about parents’ and families’ participation within the system, offering some possible explanations for how it has assumed its current shape and dimensions. We highlight a number of the barriers to increased parent participation, briefly offer strategies to enhance it, and then conclude by noting the limitations of any approach that ignores the material conditions in which many of these families and children live. The chapter attempts to incorporate the perspectives of parents, advocates, and juvenile justice system personnel, using primary data, Web sites of organizations that advocate for families, and comments made by family advocates in informal conversations with the authors.

In the spirit of this volume—reformist and strengths-based—we do not focus on the parental and familial risks or deficits (e.g., parental incarceration, inadequate parental monitoring, or child maltreatment in the home) that have contributed, in a significant percentage of cases, to a child's delinquency. We acknowledge them as potent factors for some youth, and their importance to developing effective prevention and intervention strategies. Our interest here, however, is to suggest an alternative view that encourages the system to implement more, and more positive, options for parent and family engagement.

A Brief Historical Note

The official genesis of modern juvenile justice is commonly set in the Progressive Era, when in 1899 the first juvenile court was established (Feld, 1999; Finley, 2007; Krisberg & Austin, 1993); before that time, children were considered the property of their parents, and were of no particular concern to the courts (Scott & Steinberg, 2008a). Progressive Era reforms concretized the growing conviction within mainstream U.S. culture that a child's character is not fixed at birth; that childhood is a distinct developmental period; and that children deserve special attention, protection, and dispensation when their behavior falls outside conventional norms. The theory held that well-tended, children would become competent, moral, and responsible adults.

Although the changes prompted by Progressives were largely altruistic in intention (Grubb & Lazerson, 1982), and improved circumstances for many delinquent juveniles, they had an unholy underside. First, Black youth, from whom earlier reformist impulses had been largely withheld, continued to be discriminated against in the courts, for example, by confinement in adult prisons (Bell & Ridolfi, 2008). Second, although not all the youth who became involved with the juvenile justice system in the early 20th century were poor, a significant percentage was. Yet the root causes and contexts of the poverty that spawn their often petty offenses (thefts, truancy, vagrancy, etc.) were not addressed, establishing an infelicitous but enduring approach to dealing with the problems of poor children and families (Grubb & Lazerson, 1982; Krisberg & Austin, 1993). Third, in adopting the role of parens patriae, the juvenile justice system essentially reinforced prevailing beliefs about the inadequacy of their parents (Ayers, 1997; Feld, 1999; Grubb & Lazerson, 1982; Schwartz, 2003; Scott & Steinberg, 2008a). The courts asserted that the juvenile justice system could, and would, do better.

The consequences of the system's early structures and decisions have remained: Black youth are still poorly served, as, faced with the evidence of disproportionate minority contact (DMC), is well documented, and broadly acknowledged by advocates, policy makers, and researchers (Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice [FACJJ], 2009; Piquero, 2008; see also Bell & Mariscal, Chapter 6, this volume; Holsinger, Chapter 2, this volume). Juvenile justice remains a back-end loaded, “residual” system (Lindsey, 2004; Nelson, 2008; Travis, 2009; see also Schiraldi, Schindler, & Goliday, Chapter 20, this volume), receiving primarily low-income youth who have fallen through gaping holes in other public service systems (e.g., child protective services, education, mental health, public health) that should have responded earlier and better (Maschi, Hatcher, Schwalbe, & Rosato, 2008; see also Beyer, Chapter 1, this volume; Ross & Miller, Chapter 17, this volume).

Particularly germane to our discussion, the Progressives’ belief that the stakes involved in proper parenting were too high to leave that task to parents alone, is still apparent in the system's general appraisal of parents. As Nelson (2008) notes, “most juvenile justice systems are more inclined to ignore, alienate, or blame family members than to enroll them as partners” (p. 10). To underscore the last point, regardless of the prevailing views of delinquent youth, the system has yet to determine whether, and how, to engage parents and families to yield the best results for their children and society at large.

Family Engagement With the System: What Is Done Versus What Is Known

In 2001, my 13-year-old son—who weighed 90 pounds soaking wet—was adjudicated delinquent and sentenced to five years in a Department of Corrections facility. My son's crime was stealing a stereo out of a truck with two other boys. At the time, I believed the promises of the probation officer and staff at the juvenile justice department that they would care for my son and get him back on the right track through a program called STOP. I also never asked for an attorney for my son after the probation officer told me an attorney would just stand in the way of my son getting the help the state could provide. I believed my son would have access to treatment to help him deal with the issues he faced.

Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong.. . .My 13-year-old boy had to fight for food and do without when his size failed to hold off other kids suffering from malnutrition and desperation. The education he needed—along with the other nearly 400 kids—consisted of a few worksheets, no certified teachers, and school hours filled not with instruction, but with military-like exercises done in the heat of the south's brutal summers. The mental health care the family court judge ordered was nonexistent (although it is difficult to see how one could get meaningful mental health treatment in a facility where children live with filth, neglect, and rampant abuse). I eventually learned that the STOP program, which the probation offices said would help, had a 70% recidivism rate.

All of this happened five and half hours away from where we lived and many times we traveled all five and half of those hours only to be told our son was denied visitors that day or that he was in the infirmary and we would not be able to see him.. . .It wasn't until I saw the evidence of an assault on my son's body that I sought the advice of an attorney. By then it was too late. The state now controlled every aspect of my son's life and I had no say in his treatment or care, nor did I have any power to stop the abuse and neglect of my son.. . .I wish I could say that what happened to my son was a rarity or that we have come so far in the last nine years that these things don't happen to children anymore. Let me be loud and clear, there is not one week that goes by in the last nine years that I haven't heard the pain and pleas of other parents in the same or similar situations. (Bauer, 2010)

In theory, family participation in juvenile justice system operations is possible at each juncture of the process: at the time of arrest, during intake, during consideration of detention, during the preparation for adjudication, at the time of disposition, during placement (Osher & Hunt, 2002), when youth are on probation at home, and at discharge. There appears to be more participation at certain points in the process (i.e., court hearings) than at others, in part because the law encourages or requires certain types of involvement (Gilbert, Grimm, & Parnham, 2001; Henning, 2006), and not others. But because the data are sparse, we can only offer an impression of how parents are actually engaged with the system.

One can think about the range of ways parents are involved in the juvenile justice pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword: Justice for America's Children
• Preface
• Introduction
• Contributors
• Section I: Framing the Issues
• Section II: Understanding Individual Youth
• Section III: Understanding Youth in Context
• Section IV: Working for Change
• Afterword
• About the Editors
• Author Index
• Subject Index