Becoming Delinquent

Young Offenders and the Correctional Process

Peter G. Garabedian, Don C. Gibbons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351327862
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book addresses the social experiences of juvenile offenders in the correctional machinery and the career effects these experiences have on offenders. It follows offenders from apprehension through detention, court appearance, probation and institutionalization, showing how the organizations operate, the role definitions of the people who man them, and the views of the correctional organizations held by members of the public. It is a valuable supplement to courses in deviance, criminology, social problems and organizational analysis. The book begins with the delinquent population and endeavours to identify the major characteristics of juvenile lawbreaking. It separates youths who most often remain as "hidden" delinquents from those who are observed and apprehended. The text then moves through the major parts of the correctional machinery in much the same way as offenders are processed through it. Information on each topic is marshalled in accordance with five dimensions; the nature of the organization; the perspectives of the consumer (the public); the perspective of the employees; the perspectives of the offenders; and the impact of the agency upon offenders. Thus, a major focus of the book is an organizational analysis, a basic feature of the current sociological perspective. This work, on first publication in 1970, was one of the first to tackle the growing skepticism as to the beneficial aspects correctional institutions may have on the young offenders, and the analysis of those benefits. The readings attempt to show something of the impact of correctional experiences on juvenile delinquents, and suggest that the overall effect is to drive deviants further into deviant activities rather than attaining the desired goal of rehabilitation.

PART ONE

Introduction

Delinquency and “Juvenile Delinquents”

Where do juvenile delinquents come from? The usual answer to this sort of question holds that social experiences of one kind or another produce juvenile delinquents who then become the subject of public concern. In turn, public attention takes the form of police apprehension of the deviant youth, court referral and court appearance, placement on probation, incarceration in an institution, and other experiences. This view of things implies that “delinquency will out,” that is, those who conduct themselves in a lawbreaking fashion will inevitably reveal themselves and will get into the hands of the authorities. In the common view, the correctional machinery (police, probation, courts, etc.) exists in order to react to youthful misconduct after it has broken out.

But a moment’s reflection will show that matters are not all that simple. To begin with, there is a large body of available research evidence which shows that much juvenile misconduct goes undetected, so that it does not become the subject of a correctional response. However, demonstration of this point does not require detailed empirical evidence, for most readers can probably recall instances of youthful peccadilloes in their own backgrounds that did not receive a formal response from the correctional apparatus. Who among the readers of this book has an unblemished record of proper conduct?

The matter of being a “hidden” delinquent or an officially observed one is complex, influenced by many factors. However, the evidence generally indicates that:

1. Nearly all youngsters engage in acts of misconduct of varying degrees of seriousness sometime during the juvenile period of life.

2. About 3 per cent of all juvenile court-eligible children (youngsters between 7 and 18 years of age) actually get into the juvenile court each year, while double this number come to the attention of the police.

3. Those youngsters who get officially processed by the police or courts are most likely to be working-class children engaged in serious and repetitive acts of lawbreaking.

4. But some middle-class juvenile delinquents are found in the population of official offenders, while some youths engaged in relatively petty forms of misconduct are also found in that group.

It is also the case that law-enforcement and correctional agencies do much more than passively react to youthful offenders observed by them. The police stand as the major group of reactors-to-delinquency who sift and sort some juvenile deviants into the correctional machinery, where they flow by various paths into court appearance, probation, and the like. The police also sift other youngsters out of this correctional apparatus, so that they do not become “juvenile delinquents” (do not become adjudicated as such in a court). The processing of juvenile delinquents beyond the point of police contact is big business. Children referred to juvenile courts in the United States in 1967 (excluding traffic cases) numbered some 811,000 out of a total population of 31,000,000 children between 11 and 18 years of age.¹ During 1965, a daily average of 62,773 youths were incarcerated in juvenile institutions in the United States, while another 285,431 were under supervision in community programs (probation and parole). Institutionalized delinquents required 31,687 employees to process and supervise them, while another 9,633 individuals were employed as community correctional agents.²

The thrust of these remarks is that the law-enforcement and correctional system is a decision-making structure of heroic proportions. At a number of points, someone must decide whether a lawbreaking youth is to be regarded as a “bad one” needing court attention or a “good kid” who only needs a mild tongue-lashing. Someone must decide whether a youth should be sent to a training school or placed on probation. Someone must judge whether a training-school inmate should be turned loose on parole this week, next month, or at some other time.

We might speak of the correctional process in metaphorical terms as a “people-processing machine.” But in doing so, we ought to keep in mind the fact that this is not an automated operation which runs by itself. Instead, it is a system, or machine, staffed by human operatives who are engaged in making myriad decisions about what to do with the offender raw material that it processes. A graphic portrayal of the major elements of the correctional decision-making structure, identifying most of those points at which critical decisions must be made by someone, is provided in the diagram.

The Juvenile Correctional Machinery*

* Don C. Gibbons, Delinquent Behavior, © 1970 Prentice-Hall, Inc. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.). By permission of the publishers.

The Study of the Correctional Machinery

The varied parts of the juvenile correctional system in the United States add up to a vast bureaucratic structure given over to purposes of social control. This system warrants the same kind of sociological attention as the other large-scale organizations which play a prominent part in the social structure of modern societies. In short, one reason correctional organizations ought to be studied is that organizational analysis is the “stuff” of sociological inquiry.³ The student of complex organizations has much to learn from an examination of the formal and informal rules of correctional organizations, role conflicts within them, and other organizational facets. Stated differently, it may be the case that prison guards, foremen, college administrators, and other bureaucratic functionaries, and the organizations within which they work all share many characteristics in common. The organizations within which they toil may show a number of common ingredients. If this be true, the study of correctional systems may inform us about organizational dynamics in other settings as well. This is a major raison d’être for the examination of correctional processes.

But there is another reason for the study of correctional processes. Perhaps these structures and the people who staff them have important effects upon the youths who are processed through them. Indeed, two different common-sense hypotheses have often been advanced regarding the repercussions of agency actions upon offenders. One of these holds that these experiences are harmful in effect, as illustrated, for example, in the view that training schools are “crime schools.” In this conception, children who proceed through these institutions undergo deleterious experiences which drive them further into deviance by acquiring more hardened delinquent attitudes and more proficient crime skills. The other hypothesis is more sanguine, taking the form of an opinion that correctional agencies manage to succeed in deflecting offenders from delinquency by rehabilitating them.

In recent years, optimism concerning the curative effects of juvenile correctional processes has waned, and the pessimistic view that these experiences are negative career contingencies or experiences has become more common among sociologists. Those who hold this view tend to argue that correctional agencies unwittingly go about labeling youngsters as lawbreakers, or that they have other harmful effects which constrict the lawbreaker’s chances to retreat from involvement in misconduct.

An early version of this position was advanced some years ago by Tannenbaum, who argued that official dealings with deviants constitute a process of “dramatization of evil.”⁴ He contended that official handling in the courts, training schools, and related places often fails to divert the person from a deviant career; instead, such experiences alert citizens in the community to the presence of an “evil” person in their midst. Once a “bad” person becomes singled out, he is likely to be consistently thought of as “evil” in the future, quite apart from how he actually behaves. Whether his deportment changes or remains the same, he continues to be seen as a “bad” person. In many instances, he develops sentiments of being unjustly dealt with, which operate as rationalizations for his misconduct. As a result, the end-product of correctional handling is the reinforcement of the very behavior the correctional agents are attempting to reduce.

There are a number of variables which ought to be considered in a fullblown exposition of the effects of correctional experiences upon offenders. First, these could conceivably have several different effects: positive, so that they propel persons out of deviance; neutral or benign, in which they have little or no impact upon offenders; and negative, in which they lead to the reinvolvement of the actor in additional lawbreaking. Quite probably some correctional encounters have more positive or negative repercussions upon deviant careers than do others. Thus, the first appearance of the lawbreaker in the juvenile court may have a markedly dramatic effect upon him, but later events, such as being placed in a forestry camp, may contribute little to his subsequent behavior. In short, to acknowledge that correctional agencies have deleterious effects does not mean that all such organizations are equally criminogenic in their workings.

Another consideration is that we ought not to lump all training schools, all probation agencies, or all other correctional structures together when we look at the question of their impact upon delinquent careers. For example, those wards who are processed through a state training school in a progressive correctional system may be influenced by institutionalization in quite different ways than are wards in a punitive, harsh training school. Then too, offenders ought not to be lumped together as though correctional organizations have the same impact upon all of them. Instead, we ought to entertain the possibility that incarceration in a training school might have very different meanings for first offenders as opposed to urban, gang delinquents who are wise in the ways of institutions.

Dimensions for Study

There are at least five dimensions or aspects of correctional organizations about which we should like to have detailed information. To begin with, there is the nature of the organization and the behavioral processes that go on within it. Here, attention is focused upon questions of the sort: What are the functions of the organization? Are some of these formal or stated, while others are informal and unstated? What are the rules, formal and informal, governing organizational processes? What is the nature of the organizational hierarchy, status system, and role definitions? Are there role conflicts within the organization, centering about discordant tasks being carried out by the personnel in the system? In short, there is a series of questions about organizational structure that engage our attention when we study complex organizations of any type.

A second concern in the analysis of correctional organizations has to do with the perspectives of the “consumers” of the service, that is, the general public in whose name these agencies operate. To what extent are citizens’ views of correctional goals congruent with the actual operation of agencies? A third dimension is closely related to this one, namely, the perspectives of the employees or agents within correctional systems. Among other things, we want to know whether their views are in tune with those of citizens. Also, what of organizational consensus? Do agents within a particular correctional operation share a body of understandings about tactics and strategies for dealing with offenders? We may find that, in some organizations, the workers are in violent disagreement about the nature of the work task. A fourth dimension, related to these above, is the persepctives of the offenders. To what extent do offenders agree with the image of them held by the workers or citizens? Do they see themselves as “bad” persons in need of punishment or rehabilitation? Do they regard the conditions of probation or the rules of the institution as fair and just? How do they perceive the organization and its functionaries as it operates upon them?

The final dimension of correctional organization analysis, the impact of the agency upon offenders, is the most difficult one to study. As we have already noted, these structures may have positive, negative, or benign effects upon the human material they process. But how do we measure this impact? Suppose we find that training-school wards generally become more docile and cooperative during their stay in the institution. Is this an indication of basic change on their part that will carry over into their life after release from the institution? Perhaps, but it may simply be a manifestation of “playing it cool,” in which wards are engaged in a transitory adjustment to the school. Their cooperative behavior may be short-lived once they are released from the institution. Clearly, the measurement of agency impact must take place some time after the offender has moved through the organizational experience. All of this is made even more difficult by the problem of separating out agency effects from other experiences which play upon offenders and influence their behavior. Thus successful adjustment upon release from custody might be the product of the correctional experience, but it might also be due to other contingencies, such as the availability of a post-release job, school placement, or some other factor. Given the complexity of the task of assessing correctional outcomes, it is little wonder that relatively little research has been conducted on this question.

Prologue

This book is about the correctional decision-process, correctional organizations, and the dimensions of analysis identified above. It begins with the delinquent population and endeavors to identify the major characteristics of juvenile lawbreaking. In particular, it attempts to identify the sorts of youths who most often remain as “hidden” delinquents and the kinds that get observed in their lawbreaking acts. The text then moves through the major parts of the correctional machinery in much the same way that offenders are processed through it, starting with police contact, moving to the juvenile court, then on to probation, and finally through incarceration in an institution.

In all of the sections of this book, we shall marshal what information we can on the five dimensions of correctional agencies enumerated above. But let us recognize at the outset that there are important gaps in the available evidence. One of the main tasks in the connective discussions at the beginning of each part will be to identify some of these soft spots in the evidence. The book can be viewed as somewhat programmatic in that it identifies problems for empirical investigation.

Before moving to the study of specific correctional processes, let us examine a general essay by Werthman concerning the impact of social definitions upon delinquent careers. In his lucid and insightful paper, he shows some of the ways in which the opinions, views, and definitions of persons with whom the offender interacts condition his self-perceptions and his opportunities for conforming and deviant conduct. Although Werthman’s essay deals in part with interactions between delinquents and correctional organizations, it also speaks to the broader question of social intercourse between deviants and those who react to them. The essay serves to remind us that the offender is not some kind of alien from another social world, but instead he is, in various ways, the product of social influences in which we are all implicated.

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1. Children’s Bureau, Juvenile Court Statistics, 1967 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1969), p. 10.

2. The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing office, 1967), p. 161.

3. A useful collection of readings illustrating this point is Amitai Etzioni, ed., A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the AdineTransaction Edition
• Preface
• PART I. INTRODUCTION
• PART II. DELINQUENCY: HIDDEN AND OBSERVED
• PART III. DELINQUENTS AND THE POLICE
• PART IV. THE JUVENILE COURT IN OPERATION
• PART V. PROBATION AND THE OFFENDER
• PART VI. TRAINING SCHOOLS AND DELINQUENTS
• PART VII. CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVES ON CORRECTIONAL DECISIONS
• Index