Juvenile Delinquency Interventions

The findings from the studies examining the effectiveness of the Scared Straight programs and juvenile boot camps

Scared straight is a program designed to encourage deterrence of the juvenile participants to future criminal offenses. The participants engage in the activities of visiting inmates, observing the prison life and also interacting with the adult inmates. The main reason for engaging juveniles in the programs is to deter them from violating the law in future, hence the term "scared straight" (Bottcher & Ezell, 2005).

According to my analysis, the programs are not effective deterrents to crime. They tend to neglect two important aspects of deterrence theory including certainty and swiftness. The deterrence theorists explain that as a punishment increases in severity, the efficacy of deterring the future criminal acts also increases. As such, it is essential to have swift and certain punishments to ensure effective deterrence. The swift punishments have a likelihood of having an association with the crime committed. The efficacy of the punishments reduces if the offenders do not regard the implementation of the punishment as a likely occurrence. Therefore, specific deterrence should have more emphasis in which offenders are arrested and punished appropriately (Kurlychek & Kempinen, 2006). The strategy is swift and certain and ensures that there is less likelihood of committing future crimes.

Case Study

Jonny has a diagnosis of Psychopathic, which is a disorder that impairs his interpersonal, affective, and behavioral functions. The diagnosis has a significant impact on the opportunities of receiving appropriate rehabilitation services. Jonny will tend to be antisocial, with reduced empathy and remorsefulness, as well as have a bold behavior. People believe that the condition is untreatable, and rehabilitation may not be effective. According to psychologists, psychopaths demonstrate a failure of taking responsibility for any action. They also lack fear to punishment. People label them as those they dislike, hard to understand, and engage in evil (Norton, 2014). Thus, the rehabilitation process is challenging basing on the evidence available about their behavior.

References

Bottcher, J. and M. E. Ezell. (2005). Examining the effectiveness of boot camps: A randomized experiment with a long-term follow-up. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 42 (3), 309–332.

Kurlychek, M. and C. Kempinen. (2006). Beyond boot camp: The impact of aftercare on offender reentry. Criminology and Public Policy, 5 (2), 363–388.

Norton C. (2014) Can Psychopaths be rehabilitated? The complications of sentencing psychopathic criminals, Adopted from the Atlantic Monthly Group

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at Melda Research in custom research paper services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for a custom research paper from top research paper writing companies.