Neighborhood Solutions for Troubled Youth
Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, the parent organization for New Village Press, is deeply concerned about the escalation of incarceration in response to violence. Rather than build more prisons, ADPSR believes in investing in the health of our communities. ADPSR’s national Prison Design Boycott has recently evolved into a Prison Alternatives Initiative and will be making an effort to learn about and promote programs that strengthen communities rather than break them apart.
Today’s New York Times featured “A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders”, a report by Leslie Kaufman about an alternative sentencing program started a year ago this month in New York City called the Juvenile Justice Initiative. The program allows medium-risk youth offenders to stay with their families and provides intensive home therapy instead of jail, prison or other correctional facilities.
According to Kaufman, “New York State studies found that more than 80 percent of male juvenile offenders who had served time in correctional facilities were rearrested within three years of their release, usually on more serious charges.”
Westchester County, as well as other counties and states, have run intensive home therapy programs with children who have significant criminal records but are not psychopathic. Treating young people within their families and neighborhoods rather than in isolation has proven over ten years of experimentation to reduce recidivism in most cases by more than half.
“at roughly $17,000 per child, such in-home therapy programs cost a fraction of the annual expense of keeping a child in secure detention, which can be $140,000 to $200,000.”
What alternative programs does your juvenile justice system provide?
Did you know that science has proven that our brains are still growing until approx age 22? In fact, America, for 200 years considered anyone younger than 21 a “youth.” This was changed in the 60’s for the wrong reasons. I would love to see the term “youth” (everyone 21 and under) reinstated like the old days. It worked better. If someone gets arrested, send a “nanny” (like the one on TV), to teach parents how to raise their children, and to teach children how to respect their parents. Usually it is incorrect raising that causes kids to go bad. If there are other factors (ie: bi-polar) involved, they will be more likely be found out and taken care of. However, I would NOT like this to be a government program. I’d rather see the local churches/temples get involved. This is a Judeo-Christian country and we must help our fellow Americans that can’t seem to help themselves. We can help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps, rather than just enabling them. I’m all FOR your idea of therapy programs.
Comment by Miriam Gaddis — February 21, 2008 @ 11:11 pm