Do Social Workers Help Juveniles Receive Mental Health Service

Juvenile Justice Journeying — Social Work Role Returns in New Era of Reform
Past Christina Reardon, MSW, LSW
Social Work Today
Vol. nineteen No. 5 P. 12

Reestablishing a historical bond, social workers reemerge in the juvenile justice system every bit it shifts from a midcentury punitive arroyo back to its protective roots.

Social workers led a juvenile justice revolution in the Us during the late 19th century. They were among the reformers instrumental in establishing a split justice system for youth, recognizing that children committing crimes did not bear the aforementioned level of responsibility and did not deserve the same sanctions as adults.

By the stop of the 20th century, this ideal for juvenile justice had been replaced by a arrangement that favored penalization over rehabilitation and institutionalization over community care. Constabulary enforcement, prosecutors, and "get tough on crime" politicians dominated, with social workers left on the sidelines.

But the 21st century has brought a wave of reforms attempting to bring the juvenile justice organisation back to its roots of protecting children'south rights, recognizing how environment affects behavior, and supporting youth and families. These reforms give social workers a crucial opportunity to reassert their place in the system and ensure that reforms continue and are expanded.

"Social workers are definitely taking a more important role in the organisation, and that role is gaining more than prominence," says Alida Merlo, PhD, a professor in the section of criminology and criminal justice at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "The social worker is critical in making people see what factors touch on a child's behavior."

Shifting Priorities, Changing Policies
The history of the American juvenile justice system is often said to have begun in 1899 with the establishment of the Cook Canton Juvenile Court in Chicago. The court'south opening was a victory for reformers who had fought to create a separate court for youth where they could exist kept away from the adult criminal justice organisation. The early juvenile justice system was centered around parens patriae, the concept that the country could step in to aid delinquent children and provide them with services to promote their well-beingness and make them productive citizens. As social work pioneer Jane Addams wrote in 1935, "There was almost a change in mores when the Juvenile Court was established. The child was brought before the judge with no i to prosecute him and no one to defend him—the estimate and all concerned were only trying to find out what could be washed on his behalf" (as cited in Tanenhaus, 2013, p. 283).

Juvenile court judges and probation officers had wide discretion to make decisions such as when to file delinquent petitions, which children needed to be held in pretrial detention, and which children should be transferred to the criminal justice system (Tanenhaus, 2013). The capricious nature by which these judges could decide the fate of the youth earlier them led to disparities in handling and increasing calls for reform by the 1950s and 1960s (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, north.d.).

In 1966, the American Civil Liberties Union sued to free Gerald Gault, a teenager whom a judge had ordered to serve six years in juvenile detention for allegedly making an obscene phone call to a neighbor, even though an adult charged with the same offense would accept received a maximum of a fine and ii months in jail. In 1967, the United States Supreme Courtroom ruled in its In re Gault determination that children were entitled to many of the same due process rights as adults such as the rights to obtain counsel and cross-examine witnesses, as well every bit the correct against forced self-incrimination (Abrams, 2013; Georgetown Police Library, n.d.). Later In re Gault, juvenile court proceedings became more like those in the criminal justice system, with defence attorneys, and peculiarly prosecutors, taking center stage (Tanenhaus, 2013).

The years after the Gault determination were a transition to a new punitive era in juvenile justice as states beyond the country made it easier for a juvenile to be transferred to the adult system. Changes included dropping the minimum historic period at which a juvenile could be treated as an adult and expanding the listing of offenses that could pb a juvenile to being treated every bit an adult (Abrams, 2013). Past the 1990s, demands increased that the public be protected from a predicted surge of and so-called "superpredators," extremely violent, dangerous, and unremorseful youth who would terrorize communities. Although this myth was eventually discredited, it had pervasive furnishings on the juvenile justice system. By 2005, a quarter of a million children were prosecuted in adult courts each twelvemonth (Dennis, 2017). In addition, schools became increasingly willing to apply suspensions, expulsions, and police involvement to address misbehavior, leading to more youth interest in the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Despite their core interest in the establishment of the juvenile justice system, social workers' directly engagement with the system dwindled as time passed, according to Peters (2011), even though the vulnerable and oppressed populations about afflicted past the arrangement were those whom social workers traditionally served. Peters cites several possible reasons for the decline, including gender politics in the system that favored men to serve every bit probation officers as opposed to the largely female field of social work, a distaste among social workers to piece of work with nonvoluntary clients, and the focus of social work on services, such equally delinquency prevention, ancillary to the system.

A New Era
Social work now has a chance to reverse those trends equally the juvenile justice system continues a new era of its history, says Laura Abrams, PhD, a professor and chair of the section of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin Schoolhouse of Public Diplomacy. "Social workers should care about juvenile justice reform because we need to restore our rightful identify with youth who have been in contact with the law," Abrams says.

The United States Supreme Courtroom's 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons to cancel the decease penalty for crimes committed by youth younger than 18 and its subsequent decisions to cancel life without parole sentences for juveniles accelerated an upsurge of reforms among states and localities nationwide. These reforms address areas such as the following:

• Keeping youth out of the adult system. Many states' "enhance the age" efforts have increased the age when youth are automatically sent to the adult system from xvi or 17 to xviii. In 2018, Vermont became the start country to let 18- and 19-yr-olds to be treated in the juvenile justice arrangement (Sears & Schiraldi, 2018).

• Diversion. Diversion has go pop with states equally an effort to keep youth from inbound the juvenile justice system. Diversion programs typically allow nonviolent youth to complete certain requirements, such as interventions to improve beliefs and emotional performance, to avert existence placed in the justice system (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2015). Some states and localities take decriminalized minor offenses such as truancy, underage possession of alcohol, and fare evasion (Dennis, 2017).

• Reducing detention. A variety of states take curtailed their dependence on detention, especially for youth who do not pose a significant public safety gamble, and increased the use of community-based interventions. For example, New York'south Shut to Habitation initiative closed 23 upstate youth institutions then resources could be directed to community-based services closer to New York City, where the majority of juveniles in residential facilities came from (Center for Children's Law and Policy, 2018). Wisconsin plans to close its juvenile prison complex in 2021 and supervene upon information technology with smaller regional centers (Marley, 2019).

Juvenile justice reforms take enjoyed support from policymakers across the ideological spectrum. For example, President Donald Trump signed the bipartisan-supported Juvenile Justice Reform Act into law in Dec 2018. The act updates the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Deed, which had not been reauthorized since 2002, and reestablishes cadre standards for how states and territories treat youth in the justice system. These standards include prohibiting youth from being incarcerated for condition offenses such as skipping school, stopping youth from existence held in adult facilities while awaiting trials as juveniles, and requiring states to address racial and indigenous disparities in the organization (Coalition for Juvenile Justice and National Criminal Justice Association, n.d.).

The factors driving these reforms reflect many primal components of the social work perspective. For example, a major commuter of reform has been a growing body of cognition almost brain science and child development that demonstrates what social workers argued at the beginning of the juvenile justice system—that children are unlike from adults and are amenable to treatment. "There has been a huge shift in how the system looks at children under the police," says Riya Shah, Esq., managing manager of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

At that place also is increasing recognition of how trauma contributes to juveniles' interactions with the justice system. Justice-involved youth often struggle with a variety of traumas, such as poverty-related stress, community or familial violence, parents lost to substance utilize disorders or incarceration, educational opportunities disrupted past suspensions or expulsions, and undiagnosed or unresolved mental health issues, says Jenese Brownhill, LICSW, program director of SMART Team. The team, a program of the Justice Resources Establish in Boston, provides mental health services, advocacy, and example management to youth and families affected past the juvenile or criminal justice systems. "A lot of young people want to be successful and they don't want to make bad choices, but there are things that take happened around them," Brownhill says.

In addition, there is more understanding about the negative long-term consequences incarceration has on youth. Amidst the problems incarcerated youth can feel are worsening mental health symptoms, abuse from staff or other youth, and an increased likelihood of reoffending—driving them deeper into the justice system (Justice Policy Establish, 2006). These youth, Abrams adds, face up special challenges every bit they attempt to reenter the community, such as completing their teaching and acquiring the skills needed to successfully transition to adulthood.

Finally, reforms reflect the increasing attention being paid to the persistent problem of disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system. African Americans comprised 17% of juveniles merely 31% of arrests in 2010 (The Sentencing Project, 2014). Black juveniles are more than likely than their white peers to be referred to juvenile court, processed, sent to secure solitude, and transferred to developed facilities. Information technology's besides important to focus on intersectionality in the juvenile arrangement, says Ashley Daftary, PhD, an assistant professor in the School of Social Piece of work at the Academy of Nevada, Reno. "Often ignored in both media and scholarship are the negative impacts on immature women of color, especially black young women. This again only perpetuates the bug faced by youth and young adults," Daftary says. "The same heterosexism and transphobia that pervade U.S. policies and practise also pervade the juvenile justice system."

Advancing the Cause of Reform
Even though the juvenile justice arrangement has undergone pregnant reform in the past two decades, at that place is no guarantee that the system won't eventually swing back toward a more punitive, institutional-based orientation. For ane affair, politics affects juvenile justice policy much in the same fashion equally it affects other types of policy. Although juvenile crime rates accept dropped since the 1990s, Merlo says an uptick in those rates could shift public opinion back to a "go tough" opinion that threatens current reform policies. "I'm optimistic that we're going to go along [with reforms], but I'm aware that there could be a sudden shift," Merlo says.

Abrams says another issue is whether reforms truly pervade the juvenile justice system. The arrangement has then many layers and and then many private actors that information technology's hard to tell whether reforms are beingness fully implemented. "It's a very complicated system, and I think that's why nosotros have to proceed an eye on it," Abrams says. "We can't consider [reform] done, even though a lot of progress has been fabricated for certain."

There are deep-seated societal and systemic barriers to reform, as well. Sonya Goshe, PhD, an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Ohio Dominican University, has identified iii bug that would impede progressive reform if left unresolved: the credo of "draconian self-sufficiency" that ignores how environmental factors shape personal choices, neglect of child welfare and human rights, and a focus on efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and chance management that threatens to further marginalize youth considered "high run a risk" (Goshe, 2015). These issues have persisted since her article's publication, and it's still uncertain whether reforms will be enough to overcome the punitive legacy of the country's justice arrangement, Goshe says.

Despite these challenges, in that location are myriad ways social workers can advance the cause of juvenile justice reform. A good place for social workers to start is to become informed about the problems, gain awareness of what'southward going on to support reform in their communities, and connect with advancement groups, Abrams says.

Campaigning for reform is key, equally well. Brownhill argues that social workers are ideal advocates for reform considering they oft work with youth and families affected by the juvenile justice system and can bring key data nigh the experiences of these populations to lawmakers. Social workers as well empathize the human rights implications of racial and ethnic disparities in the arrangement, Brownhill says.

Some social workers are empowering youth to participate in advancement. The Juvenile Law Center's Juveniles for Justice program gives youth who have been involved in the juvenile justice system the opportunity to develop and implement advocacy projects. The program's recent projects have focused on issues such as educational outcomes, conditions in juvenile prisons, and juvenile justice fines and fees. "Information technology allows people who are making the decisions to hear directly [from youth] about their experiences," says Marcía Hopkins, MSW, senior manager of the youth advocacy program and policy at the Juvenile Constabulary Center. "[The youth] want to share these experiences."

Another expanse in which social workers are getting more involved is building cooperation and collaboration between the kid welfare and juvenile justice systems. Fostering connections between the systems is vital to preventing crossover of youth from the child welfare system to the juvenile justice system, says Karen Kolivoski, PhD, MSW, an assistant professor at the Howard University School of Social Piece of work. "If we strengthen resource for child welfare, that could disrupt the child welfare to juvenile justice pipeline," Kolivoski says.

Central to ensuring that reforms continue is to ensure that more than social workers play a direct office in the juvenile justice system but as they did at the system'due south beginnings. The system could merely benefit from a greater presence of social workers, Brownhill says. "I'm actually excited about what'southward going on currently, and if nosotros have more social workers who see this every bit an area where they could have a career, that'south great," Brownhill says. "The kids deserve it."

— Christina Reardon, MSW, LSW, is a freelance writer based in Harrisburg, PA, and an editorial advisor at Social Piece of work Today.

References
Abrams, L. S. (2013). Juvenile justice at a crossroads: Scientific discipline, evidence, and twenty-first century reform. Social Service Review , 87(4), 725-752.

Middle for Children's Law and Policy. (2018, Feb). Implementation of New York's Close to Home initiative: A new model for youth justice. Retrieved from http://www.cclp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Shut-to-Dwelling-Implementation-Report-Last.pdf.

Eye on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. (due north.d.). Juvenile justice history. Retrieved from http://www.cjcj.org/education1/juvenile-justice-history.html.

Coalition for Juvenile Justice, National Criminal Justice Association. (north.d.). Summary of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018. Retrieved from http://www.juvjustice.org/sites/default/files/resources-files/Summary%20of%20the%20Juvenile%20Justice%20Reform%20Act%20of%202018.pdf.

Dennis, A. L. (2017). Decriminalizing childhood. Fordham Urban Law Journal , 45(i), ane-44.

Georgetown Law Library. (northward.d.) In re Gault research portal: Introduction. Retrieved from https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/in_re_gault.

Goshe, S. (2015). Moving beyond the punitive legacy: Taking stock of persistent issues in juvenile justice. Youth Justice , 15(1), 42-56.

Justice Policy Institute. (2006, November 28). The dangers of detention: The bear upon of incarcerating youth in detention and other secure facilities. Retrieved from http://world wide web.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/06-11_rep_dangersofdetention_jj.pdf.

Marley, P. (2019, Feb xviii). Pecker would filibuster closure of Lincoln Hills and could put a new agency in charge of programming at teen lockups. Milwaukee Periodical Sentinel. Retrieved from https://world wide web.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/18/neb-would-delay-lincoln-hills-closing-put-new-agency-accuse/2904037002/.

National Conference of State Legislatures. (2015, September). Trends in juvenile justice state legislation: 2011-2015. Retrieved from http://world wide web.ncsl.org/documents/cj/Juvenile_Justice_Trends.pdf.

Peters, C. M. (2011). Social work and juvenile probation: Historical tensions and contemporary convergences. Social Work , 56(4), 355-365.

Sears, D., & Schiraldi, V. (2018, July 5). Dick Sears and Vincent Schiraldi: Vermont leads the way on juvenile justice reform. Bennington Banner. Retrieved from https://www.benningtonbanner.com/stories/dick-sears-and-vincent-schiraldi-vermont-leads-the-way-on-juvenile-justice-reform,543986.

Tanenhaus, D. Southward. (2013). First things first: Juvenile justice reform in historical context. Texas Tech Law Review , 46, 281-290.

The Sentencing Project. (2014, May). Disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system. Retrieved from https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Disproportionate-Minority-Contact-in-the-Juvenile-Justice-System.pdf.

DETENTION CENTERS PURSUE Change IN ERA OF REFORM
Perchance no entities in the juvenile justice arrangement have come under more criticism than juvenile detention centers. Reports grow of overcrowding, understaffing, reliance on restraints and isolation to control behavior, youth suffering abuse, and lawsuits over mistreatment.

Despite efforts to reduce the use of detention centers, they remain a office of the juvenile justice landscape, holding more than 18,000 youth a day (Prison Policy Initiative, 2018). And some centers, recognizing the need for reform, have enacted sweeping reforms in an attempt to change their cultures.

One such middle is the Ingham County Youth Centre in Lansing, MI. Once run using an adult corrections model, the center began to move toward a treatment-based model in the mid-2000s as it shifted to an approach centered on cognitive behavioral interventions, social learning theory, and positive youth development. The center worked to create a trauma-sensitive surround for youth that includes mindfulness activities, meditation exercises, yoga, and aromatherapy, and information technology likewise offers gardening, fine art, and therapy dog programs.

Richard Gentry, managing director of the Ingham County Youth Center, acknowledges that it was difficult to make the changes, as staff wondered whether a new approach would work or would give too much power to youth. But the middle recognized that changes were needed to all-time serve youth. "We know that [adult, punitive] approaches are not healthy, and they're non effective in working with juveniles," Gentry says.

A similar evolution occurred at the Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Center in Covington, LA. Among the changes at the center were the implementation of a mediation team where youth work with staff to process disputes, the introduction of de-escalation teams, and a mentorship program (Roush, 2019). In 2016, the heart received the Barbara Allen-Hagen Award from Performance-based Standards, a Massachusetts-based organization that helps juvenile justice entities provide constructive and safe rehabilitation and reentry services.

The Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Center also uses a cognitive behavioral therapy approach and has several social workers and a child psychologist on staff to accost immature people's mental health problems, as well as a psychiatrist available via telehealth, says Joseph Dominick, MPA, executive director of the Florida Parishes Juvenile Justice District. "We're headed in the right direction," Dominick says. "Society is e'er evolving, and we accept to evolve with it."

— CR

References
Prison Policy Initiative. (2018, February 27). Youth confinement: The whole pie. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2018.html.

Roush, D. W. (2019). Recalibrating juvenile detention: Lessons learned from the court-ordered reform of the Melt County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center . New York, NY: Routledge.