A juvenile justice court needs to have sufficient and accessible disposition services so that it can be reasonably assured it can meet the needs of youth in its jurisdiction. Meeting these needs includes disposition alternatives that:
- Include a range of options allowing the court to place youth in the least restrictive setting that will provide community safety;
- Will hold the youth accountable;
- Are developmentally appropriate;
- Will assist the youth to learn new attitudes and competencies resulting in law-abiding behaviors;
- Will repair the damage caused by the offense to the extent possible;
- Are timely with no or short waiting lists;
- Understand the various cultures of the jurisdiction; and
- Include service options which are delivered by members of significant ethnic groups in the jurisdiction.
It is not likely that a juvenile justice court will have the quantity and quality of disposition resources it needs unless the court does two things: 1) controls its intake by referring the less serious offenses to informal systems operated by the community; and, 2) collaborates with other child-serving organizations in the community. The following disposition options should be available to the juvenile justice court in sufficient quantity to ensure that they are readily accessible when needed:
Probation
In the majority of cases, probation is the juvenile justice court’s disposition. According to the Desktop Guide to Good Juvenile Probation Practice, good juvenile probation practice is mission-driven, performance-based, and outcome-focused. This means that probation department policies and procedures are designed to help the juvenile justice court reach its goals, probation plans move youth from objective to objective toward those goals, and the probation department systematically measures intervention results.
As a disposition, probation not only provides the services of monitoring and supervision, but also serves as a connector for the youth and family to needed services provided by others. Within the probation service of supervision, there should be varying levels, including intensive probation supervision for high-risk offenders. When a probation officer supervises a youth who resides at home, the officer, the youth and family, and other service providers should have developed a probation plan that the juvenile justice court judge approved. A probation officer may also supervise a youth in placement, in which case the officer, youth, family, and placement worker develop an initial reentry plan.
It is not effective to run probation programs that see youth once a month or focus entirely on surveillance. These types of programs cannot help juvenile offenders learn new attitudes and competencies that will result in law-abiding behavior. “Surveillance only” probation programs succeed with youth who would probably not have re-offended without intervention. Youth who are not likely to re-offend should be handled through informal options using community resources. They should not be placed on probation.
In order for a juvenile justice court to ensure that probation services meet the individual needs of youth and that youth leave the juvenile justice system more capable of living within the law and more productively than when they entered, probation departments must have the following components to select from in creating probation plans:
- Skill-building interventions to provide competency development;
- Cognitive behavioral interventions that teach different ways to think, make decisions, and solve problems;
- Strength-based approaches that identify the strengths and resources of the youth, family, and community and build upon them;
- Culturally competent services and decision points that ensure fair and consistent decision-making and minimize the possibility of bias, services that are designed with appropriate cultural understanding, and service providers who represent significant ethnic groups in the jurisdiction;
- Programs for female offenders that take into account their distinctively different causes for delinquency, understand the impact of victimization, and provide opportunities to develop trusting relationships;
- Programs for very young aggressive offenders that early and accurately identify which of these youth are likely to graduate to serious and violent offending and incorporate interventions to address the maltreatment that the majority of these youth have experienced;
- Programs for offenders who are victims of physical or sexual abuse that address the past abuse. This approach is an essential component of services provided to the female offender and very young aggressive offender, but should also be available to any youth with a history of child abuse or neglect; and
- Timely access to services that will meet the mental health, substance abuse, sex-offending, and educational needs of youth as defined in subsequent subsections 4 through 10.
Restitution Programs
Some juvenile justice courts order restitution only to later set aside the orders because the youth does not have the money to comply. When this happens, the youth is not held accountable nor does the victim receive appropriate compensation. In order to hold youth accountable and repair damage to victims, juvenile justice courts should have programs for youth to earn money to pay restitution. Restitution programs can be implemented by entering into janitorial, recycling, graffiti removal, or other paid service contracts with public or private agencies in order to provide stipends to youth. The stipends are deposited into their restitution accounts and forwarded to the victim. Some juvenile justice courts may have access to other types of funding that can be used to provide stipends to youth for performing public service, with the stipends deposited into their restitution accounts and forwarded to the victim. Other juvenile justice courts provide or access job development services for individual youth and make arrangements for a percentage of the youth’s pay to be allocated to their restitution account, monitoring to ensure that the payments are made.
Community Service
Meaningful community service is an important tool for juvenile justice courts to hold a youth accountable and to help repair damage caused by the offense, particularly when the victim of the offense is the community as opposed to an individual (e.g., vandalism to school or other public property). When the community sees youth working to repair the harm they inflicted on the community, the community views youth as assets. If designed well, community service can also provide an opportunity to assist youth to learn new attitudes and competencies resulting in law-abiding behaviors. Community service also provides youth who cannot pay their court-ordered fines and costs with a mechanism to work off their court obligations and can improve academic and workplace skills.
In order for community service to provide an opportunity to assist youth to learn new attitudes and competencies resulting in law-abiding behaviors, the service must be meaningful. Community service should be designed to lead groups of youth through project-based service learning activities where they identify a problem, address it, and evaluate the impact on the community and themselves. Community service can also be designed to show youth that they have something to give that will help others less fortunate and provide the opportunity to re-connect in a positive way with members of the community.
Mental health evaluation and treatment which includes individual therapy, family therapy, group therapy, acute care facilities, and services for youth with co-occurring disorders (e.g., mental health and substance abuse issues)
A substantial number of youth who come before juvenile justice courts have mental health issues, including histories of trauma and victimization. The behavior of these youth will not significantly improve unless the underlying mental health issues are addressed. Most mental health issues can be successfully treated with appropriate interventions.
Youth with mental health treatment needs should be identified as early as possible when they enter the juvenile justice system. Juvenile justice court staff should use screening instruments that enable early identification of youth with possible mental health issues and refer these youth for more in-depth evaluation by trained mental health professionals. These professionals will differentiate between the three broad classes of mental health issues. If the disorder is biologically based (e.g., bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, major depression) there are very effective treatments, most of which include medication. If the problem behavior is reactive to trauma or victimization that the youth has experienced in the past or is experiencing in the present, successful treatment depends on identifying the traumas and counteracting maladaptive coping strategies. If the problem behavior is a result of budding characterological problems, which is rare, sophisticated community-based interventions such as multisystemic therapy, wrap-around services, and therapeutic foster care have been shown to be effective. Congregating youth with juvenile criminality escalates their antisocial behavior, and there is no evidence that incarcerating them decreases their antisocial trajectory.
When involved in less serious offenses, youth with mental health treatment needs should be served through the informal system and referred to mental health agencies for treatment. When youth with mental health treatment needs engage in more serious offenses and come before the formal juvenile justice court, evaluation recommendations regarding mental health treatment services should be incorporated into the juvenile justice court disposition, and the court should monitor to ensure follow-through.
Juvenile justice courts should not allow juvenile detention facilities to put youth and staff at risk by being inappropriately used as acute care mental health facilities. If this is happening in a jurisdiction, the juvenile justice court administrative judge should convene a task force to identify an appropriate mental health facility to provide for the needs of these youth.
Substance abuse evaluation and treatment that includes individual and group counseling, drug testing, day treatment, and residential treatment
Youth who come before juvenile justice courts with substance abuse issues, including alcohol and drug abuse, need to be properly evaluated and referred to treatment as necessary. Addressing underlying substance abuse issues is important to ensure youth become productive law-abiding citizens.
Juvenile justice system staff should use screening instruments that will identify youth with possible drug and alcohol abuse at the earliest opportunity and refer these youth for more in-depth evaluation by trained substance abuse professionals. Since withdrawal symptoms can constitute a medical emergency, detention intake must have the capacity to identify and assess youth who are under the influence of alcohol and drugs so that they can obtain appropriate medical intervention.
Substance abuse professionals can identify youth whose substance abuse requires treatment as opposed to those youth whose illegal activity requires education and accountability but not treatment. It is important to note that the nature of the youth’s offense will not provide clarity on treatment needs. Many youth who need substance abuse treatment do not have drug offenses. Youth involved in drug trafficking, on the other hand, rarely use illegal substances to the point of dependence, and rather than treatment, need to be held accountable for their illegal behavior. Although infrequent, it is very important to identify intravenous use of drugs by a youth and to address it immediately and aggressively. Once such an addiction is established, it is essentially intractable and may persist into adulthood.
When probation officers are involved in conducting drug and alcohol testing, they should receive in-depth training in substances of abuse, systems of drug use, methodologies for testing, protocols for ensuring that a specimen is valid, legal issues to consider so that results will be likely to withstand legal challenge, and what to do in response to both positive and negative test results.
Juvenile justice courts should not allow juvenile detention facilities to put youth and staff at risk by being inappropriately used as detoxification facilities for alcohol or drug abuse. If this is happening in a jurisdiction, the juvenile justice court administrative judge should convene a task force to identify an appropriate substance abuse detoxification facility to provide for the needs of these youth.
Evidence-based sex offender treatment based on individualized needs which includes individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy, and residential treatment
The evaluation and treatment of sex offending behavior is a complex field of knowledge that requires specific training and skills. As a disposition, specialized sex offender treatment can be effective in aiding in the rehabilitative progress of youth, whereas more extreme responses such as residential placement and detention may actually disrupt rehabilitative pathways. Thus, it is critical that an individualized approach is taken to allocate resources according to need and based upon offense characteristics. Overall, research has demonstrated low recidivism rates for juvenile sexual offenders who receive appropriate treatment. Juveniles who commit sexual offenses are more responsive to treatment than adults and have an improved chance of rehabilitation.
Juvenile sexual offending may stem from a variety of reasons. Some juveniles who commit sexual offenses may have experienced a history of sexual abuse and may be acting out offenses that were perpetrated against them in the past or are happening to them currently. Many juvenile sexual offenses occur out of youthful exploration, indiscretions, curiosity, immaturity, and/or inability to understand consent. A smaller number of juvenile sexual offenses occur due to a calculated intent to harm. It is critical to identify the motivation behind the juvenile sexual offense to distinguish between intentional sexual violence and developmental-related sexual curiosity that led to inappropriate behavior.
If the offense occurred as a result of repeating patterns of abuse that the youth has experienced themselves or due to curiosity or other developmental delay; it is possible for the juvenile justice system to further harm the youth by placing them with more serious and aggressive offenders. These youth can greatly benefit from treatment that specifically targets faulty cognitions, behavior regulation, and education around appropriate sexual behavior. As indicated, some sexual offenses may be more characteristically high-risk. These offenders can also greatly benefit from treatment that specifically targets their antisocial behaviors and problematic sexual behaviors. When evidence based treatments are implemented with juvenile sexual offenders of all types and risk levels (e.g., Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; Multisystemic Therapy for Youth with Problem Sexual Behaviors) – recidivism can be reduced, community safety can be increased, and high costs of residential treatment can be avoided.
There are extreme cases where juvenile sexual offending may be calculated, aggressive, intentional, and repetitive. In the case of true sexual obsession or compulsion, expert psychiatric or psychological expertise is required and the youth should not continue along a dispositional path until the dynamics that underlie the sexual offending are clear. It is common for sexually abusive youth to have multiple diagnoses. Consequently, it is important to adequately evaluate sexual-offending behaviors to identify those offenders who are likely to repeat the behavior, to identify all diagnostic issues, and to engage the offenders in appropriate treatment at the earliest possible identification point. Thus, juvenile sexual offenders that engage in calculated, repetitive, and sexually-abusive behaviors should be court ordered into treatment and monitored for follow through.
Juvenile delinquency courts should not allow juvenile detention facilities to be used as acute care mental health facilities for juvenile sexual offenders. Most juvenile sexual offenders are best managed and treated through community based treatment options. Using detention for low-risk offenders and offenders with developmental delays is doing a disservice to the youth by not addressing their needs and putting them in a high-risk environment that may disrupt their positive trajectory toward rehabilitation.
Education evaluation, tutoring, remediation, education interventions, and alternative education environments
Marginal and difficult youth who are behind in school, have poor attendance, and have behavioral problems, place demands on public school systems that often do not have the support resources available to help. Learning disabilities occur frequently in the juvenile offender population and can be a contributing factor to behaviors such as lack of impulse control, poor perception of social cues, and diminished ability to learn from experience which may predispose them to delinquent behavior.
Since learning disabilities can be hard to diagnose and often go unrecognized, these youth can be inappropriately labeled as behavior problems as opposed to identified and treated as learning disabled.
The reaction of some schools to these challenging youth is to manage their behavior by removing them from the school environment. This is done through suspensions, expulsions, or allowing these youth to stop attending without consequence. Sometimes schools may unnecessarily criminalize school misbehavior by filing justice petitions in the juvenile justice court. Sometimes, however, the behavior is so severe that the school has no alternative but to file a justice petition.
If youth involved in serious delinquent behavior are not successfully engaged in the education system, it is not likely that their delinquent behavior will stop, and it is likely that it will escalate. Similarly, youth whose behavior problems are a result of learning disabilities as opposed to delinquency, if not successfully diagnosed and intervened, are likely to become court involved.
It is critical for juvenile justice court judges to demonstrate judicial leadership and engage school systems to collaborate with the juvenile justice court to:
- Commit to keeping school misbehavior and truancy out of the formal juvenile justice court by ensuring early identification of, and appropriate educational assistance for, youth with learning disabilities; by early identification of attendance problems and immediate engagement by the school and community to address the underlying issues causing the problem; through teacher training in behavior management, the impact of poverty on communication and interrelationships of children and families, and de-escalating conflict; and by ensuring the school is following federal and state laws on expulsion and suspension;
- Work together with educators and representatives of mental health, substance abuse, and other community services to address the needs of those youth engaged in acting-out behavior within the school setting;
- Ensure that lines of communication are open between school staff and probation staff, setting the expectation of a close working relationship between them; and
- Work together to ensure that youth, whether residing in the home, in juvenile detention facilities, in community placements, or re-entering the community after completing residential or correctional placement are being appropriately educated, and to successfully re-engage these youth in school or in alternative learning environments that will enable these youth to succeed educationally.
In some juvenile justice courts a representative from the school system is located in the court to coordinate and facilitate information-sharing between the two systems, to be at court hearings when needed, and to problem-solve individual youth education issues.
A collaborative model with potential involves the creation of a team, led by a school district administrator experienced with youth who have behavioral issues, a juvenile justice court representative, a child welfare representative, and a representative from mental health. The team identifies youth who rise to the level of suspension, expulsion, justice, and placement. They prepare an educational plan with each youth and parent and support the school the youth is enrolled in to implement the plan successfully. If a youth is placed in detention, foster care, or correctional placement, the team and the plan follow the youth, and the team participates in reentry planning to ensure a successful return to the community school after placement.
Developmental disabilities evaluation and treatment
Evaluating and providing appropriate services to youth with developmental disabilities is a significant challenge for most juvenile justice courts. Depending on the severity of the impairment, these youth may be unable to benefit from many of the services used by the juvenile justice court. Consequently it is very important to identify whether these issues exist as soon as possible and to obtain thorough evaluations from specialists in these fields.
It is important to do everything possible to support the families of these youth so that placement does not become necessary. This is not only in the best interest of the youth, but it can be very difficult to reintegrate a youth with severe disabilities back into the home after a separation. Most youth with significant developmental disabilities can live successfully with their families when provided with wraparound interdisciplinary services and coordinated case management. (See subsection 10.)
Day and evening treatment centers
These centers can be very effective for youth who engage in unacceptable behavior at certain times of the day because of a lack of internal controls or a lack of external supervision. They can be equally effective as placement step-down centers, easing the transition from the very structured placement environment to the less structured community environment. Without the option of day and evening treatment centers, youth needing substantial levels of supervision are likely to end up in more expensive residential placement or to remain in expensive residential placement longer than would be necessary if this step-down option were available. With day and evening treatment centers, youth can receive skill-building and cognitive interventions, educational support, and mental health, substance abuse, and sex offender services while remaining in their home and remaining engaged with their family.
These programs can be designed to address a specific treatment need or can be delivered geographically with all child-serving systems bringing their treatment component to one center. Day programs can be offered during the school day for youth who are suspended, expelled, or who have dropped out of school; and, by extending their hours, the same centers can offer programming before and after school and on weekends for in-school youth who need to learn how to handle unsupervised time without engaging in delinquent activity.
Wrap-around interdisciplinary services and coordinated case management for youth with multiple needs
Every juvenile justice court has juvenile offenders who are involved with several child-serving agencies at the same time because of multiple treatment needs. Typical examples are the juvenile offender who has serious mental health and substance abuse problems or the juvenile offender with borderline mental retardation and sex-offending behavior. These youth are expensive to serve, and consequently agencies short on resources can become involved in the counterproductive, “He’s your responsibility, not ours” argument, also known as competition not to serve.
Youth with multiple needs cannot be successfully served with the needed resources unless all involved agencies, the juvenile justice court, and the probation officer participate in coordinated treatment planning and contribute resources to the coordinated wrap-around plan. Wrap-around interventions make an unconditional commitment to create services on a “one child at a time” basis to support normalized and inclusive options for the child with complex needs. Wrap-around interventions include:
- Creating a child and family team composed of the people that know the youth best to design an individualized plan; the plan is needs-driven, strengths-based, and focused on normalization;
- Services within the plan are based in natural home environments;
- Services are comprehensive and designed with cultural understanding; and
- The plan is financially supported by a flexible funding mechanism.
Probation officers must be willing to be a partner in a child and family team, not only sharing responsibility but also “power.” In order to be successfully involved in wrap-around services and coordinated case management, one individual from the child and family team must serve the role as the care manager to prevent contradictory and confusing communication between youth, family, and service providers. This individual may be the probation officer or may be an individual representing a primary treatment component of the service plan.
Through judicial leadership and collaboration, several juvenile justice courts have successfully created or participated in wrap-around service systems where they coordinate services to youth with multi-system needs. A few juvenile justice courts have taken the concept an additional step and created pooled funding systems of care for these youth.
Placement resources including foster home care, community placements, residential treatment, and non-secure and secure correctional placements
Juvenile justice courts require access to a range of placement alternatives for youth who need to be removed from their homes, in order to provide community safety, while they are receiving services. However, when the juvenile justice court orders the placement of a juvenile offender outside of the home, it is important for the court to carefully consider whether this option, the most restrictive and expensive of disposition options, is necessary. According to the NCJFCJ publication, The Role of the Juvenile Court in Reentry:
When juvenile offenders are placed outside the home and then released and returned to the community without preparation, monitoring, and services, any positive changes that may have occurred within the institutional structure are likely to disappear when the institutional structure is withdrawn. Old habits and associations reassert themselves.
When a juvenile justice court pre-disposition investigator recommends placement of a youth as a disposition, and when a juvenile justice court judge makes the final decision on the recommended disposition, both should ensure that placement is the least restrictive disposition that will provide community safety, hold the youth accountable, assist the youth to learn new attitudes and competencies resulting in law-abiding behaviors, and repair the damage caused by the offense. The pre-disposition investigator and the juvenile justice court judge should be able to articulate why services cannot be safely provided to the youth without removal from the home, through day or evening treatment centers, wrap-around services, or other services combined with probation and coordinated case management.
All things being equal, treatment programs run in the community are likely to be more effective in reducing recidivism than similar programs provided in institutions.