The officers that work in juveniles’ facilities should possess a different skill set compared to those that work in adult detention facilities. In the United States, the correctional system punishes offenders through incarceration. However, the goal of imprisonment differs in juvenile and adult facilities. The former focuses more on rehabilitation than punishment. As such, officers should possess skills that prioritize the goals of rehabilitative approach. Convicted juveniles should not be treated in a similar way as the incarcerated adults. If this happens, there will be violation of the purpose for placing underage offenders in separate facilities with an objective of insulating minors from negative influences and curb criminal tendencies before the young adults reach adulthood (McCord, 2017). Hence, the measures that the officers use to govern juveniles must align with the fulfillment of the need to reform and rehabilitate minors to reduce their tendency for becoming adult criminals. According to Cox, Allen, and Hanser (2017) over the past 75 years, there have been consistent calls for improvement of police skills through education and training. The result has been an increase in the number of law enforcement and criminal justice courses in colleges, including special seminars and institutions dealing with specific police training on juvenile policing. Thus, the number of officers that are specially trained to serve in juvenile facilities has increased drastically, especially in metropolitan departments. Such emphasis on the specialization of the training that officers are offered in police departments highlights the necessity of police possessing a skill capable of monitoring juveniles should differ from that of their counterparts who deal with adult criminals. Cox et al. (2017), further emphasize that in instances that specially trained juvenile officers are fewer than required, as is the case in smaller cities, the appointment of officers that are assigned duties associated with monitoring minors is done based on their likelihood to “get along with juveniles.” The stated affinity cannot replace the necessity of specialized training, but it provides evidence that the skills of officers working in juvenile settings must differ with those of their counterparts working in adult criminal facilities. An officer that has worked with adults for ten or more years cannot successfully transition to work in a juvenile facility. Policing adult criminals for a decade or more would have accustomed them to punishing and correcting, rather than rehabilitating, which is the primary focus of juvenile facilities (McCord, 2017). Such an officer would be affiliated to enforce rules and keep order through the application of sanctions such as loss of privileges and other types of punishments. This approach will be opposed to achieving the same goal through counseling and giving warnings to the offender. An officer that has dealt with adult criminals for more than ten years would find it difficult to alter their duty execution criteria to suit the needs of the juvenile system. Additionally, without undergoing training as part of the transition process, the adult criminal officer would not possess the right skill set for their new job in a juvenile facility. As established, officers working in juvenile facilities must be trained specifically for that purpose. If there is no training available, they should be assigned the stated duties depending on their alignment with the affiliations of individual officers (Cox et al. 2017). Therefore, if an officer is moved from an adult to a juvenile correctional facility, they would have a hard time adjusting because they would lack the know-how on the best approach to execute their duties. Thus, long-term adult criminal officers cannot successfully work in juvenile facilities without undergoing specialized training.
References
Cox, S. M., Allen, J. M., & Hanser, R. D. (2017). Juvenile justice: A guide to theory, policy, and practice . Sage Publications.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
McCord, J. (2017). Beyond empiricism: Institutions and intentions in the study of crime . Routledge.
