Juvenile probation programs are organized programs whose aim is to provide a series of services for juveniles at all stages of the juvenile justice system from zero criminal record to several felony convictions. This process begins after the release of a juvenile from detention and placed on probation. The two main juvenile probation programs that will be discussed in this paper are; the Operation Night Light and the Community-Based Juvenile Justice (CBJJ).
Operation Night Light Program
Operation Night Light program is an association between probation officers, Youth Violence Strikeforce , District Court and Boston and MA that was launched in 1992 in Boston. This alliance was formed when Boston was incurring heightened gang violence, which was marked with an increase in homicide victims aged 17and below, elevated bold behaviors of juvenile gang members in courts and continuous criticism by minority community, leaders and judges of police tactics of “stop and search” (Farrington, 1999). The goals of Operation Night Light are to effectively impose the terms and conditions of probation. Seeks to enhance public safety and protect the safety and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders and put more emphasis on violent youths and the illegal gun market.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
As a result of high caseloads and exacerbated crimes, probation officers were forced to make few visits to communities while relying on phone calls. Both the police and probation officers worked independently. Probation officers operated during the day while police officers who worked at night endured hard times since they did not know who was on probation. Police officers had limited powers to intervene even in instances they witnessed probation violations. At the same time, courts did not impose curfews which made it had to enforce them (Jordan, 1998).
The police and the probation officers work together under the Operation Night Light through the following ways. First, probation officers persuade judges to impose elaborated probation conditions such as geographic restrictions, curfews and other limitations to keep off the youths from re-offending. Second, a probation officer works with two ununiformed police to make impromptu visits to schools, residential, and worksites of high-risk youth probationers during untimely hours of 7 p.m. to midnight instead of the well mastered 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Jordan, 1998). Third, all probation terms are strictly imposed. Probation officers are mandated to choose which of 10-15 probationers they should visit every evening depending on which youths defaulted on compliance. Lastly, all teams both from the police and probation officers wear plain clothes as well as making use of unmarked cars. During home visits, officers behave professionally and courteously and motivate parents and guardians to assist their children refrain from trouble (Farrington, 1999). Probation and police officers also conduct street patrols at night to check whether offenders are complying with probation terms through the use of “stop-and-frisks.”
Success
As a program that is focused on juvenile probation, it has been succeeded in many ways. The program has been credited with minimizing the rate of juvenile homicides, promoting probation compliance, and raising public safety. According to the report by Rhodes and DuBois (2008), homicides diminished from 243in 1990 to 28 in 2006. Juvenile homicides decreased from a high of 24 in 2001 to 0 in 2013. The other success of Operation Night Light is that the rate of compliance to curfews in juvenile doubled to 75 percent over the same period.
Failures
Although Operation Night Light has increased the cooperative efforts between probation departments and the Boston police, the program has also failed on the other hand. First, it is hard to measure its success since the stream of unsupervised youths into flocking street gangs are still high. When one youth is diverted from crime, two takes his place. In spite of the efforts of the program to help the juveniles to avoid a troublesome life, Operation Night Light program is highly welcomed by parents than youths (Greenwood, 2008).
Community-Based Juvenile Justice
Community-Based Juvenile Justice (CBJJ) program is a juvenile probation program that was formed in 1995. It operates out of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. Its goals are to decrease juvenile crimes and violence at communities and schools via increased communication and proper sharing of resources and information. It also seeks to identify and offer services for juveniles who are involved in violence acts or those who might find their way into gun violence (Champion, 2001).
The CBJJ Program collaborates with three major Federal giants from the United States. The first department is the Department of Justice which overs funds to youth services in a geographical corridor where the majority of at-risk and court-involved youths reside. The second department is the department of labor. This is composed of the Youth Opportunity Area that provides funds for job opportunities and education for youths. The last department is the United States Department of Education that supports the truancy initiative.
CBJJ team meets twice in a month to prescribe measures for juveniles who are involved in violence and those who are at risk of joining gang groups. In schools, principals conduct roundtable meetings to brief the police officers on students who come with guns in school, tell counselors of youth situations regarding legal proceedings and also to refer kids who are in trouble to social services. In CBJJ meetings, there is always an agency that is designed for follow-up planning on a certain juvenile (Champion, 2001). Juvenile interventions include indictment as a youthful offender, recommitting offenders to the Department of Youth Services regarding the violation on his or her terms of release, invalidation of probation if a juvenile is not complying with court stipulated conditions; ask the court to enforce specific conditions before trial and after disposition and conduct prosecutions basing on priorities.
Through the use of roundtable meetings, CBJJ teams can secure reasonable prosecution for violent juveniles, more elaborated responses among the concerned agencies that deals with court-involved courts, and more synchronized intervention initiatives designed for at-risk youths. The meetings aid in greater accountability and high predictability of impacts for delinquent behavior. Over 552 successful roundtables, juvenile cases were discussed at CBJJ from September 2006 to November 2007 out of which 44percent were solved in court. The other initiatives of CBJJ include expansion of truancy sweeps by Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority (MBTA) police, school attendance police officers and local police, and coordinate when violent events have been reported in schools (Greenwood, 2008).
Success
CBJJ Program has assisted in drawing attention to other significant issues such as lack of other education placements, desire for extra tutorial services, in absence of proper juvenile placements over the age of 18 years with minimal academic credits as a result of past incarcerations and also little coordination between schools and probation officers concerning CHINS cases. 32.9 percent of students from the cases that were completed in 2006 demonstrated an increase in positive behavior (Greenwood, 2008). CBJJ Program established the grant-funded position of diversion program coordinator in 2008 to control a therapeutically-minded system to connect youths and hold them accountable for their own actions.
Failures
The program has not fully improved the behavior of the juvenile since 15.7 of the students had to be transferred to other schools for more reforms while 8 percent of the total that was held in 2006 was brought into custody. CBJJ Program shatters social bonds and it doesn’t hold concerned government agencies accountable for ineffectiveness. The program is also associated with racial disparities, fails to empower and reform juveniles and work with a minimal threshold of cultural competence and also violates human rights (Rhodes & DuBois, 2008).
Conclusion
To conclude, the best juvenile probation program that would be most effective in treating and rehabilitating juvenile delinquents is the Community-Based Juvenile Justice. Since youths come to the attention of law enforcement due to reasons like law violations and adolescent conduct, the program has the potential to lay early interventions that can create more responses to curb bad youth behaviors and if it is implemented properly, it can keep away the youths from coming in contact with the juvenile justice systems like arrest, status offense and petition (Greenwood, 2008). The program can be improved even more through a number of innovations that can help to reverse the trend and put away the youths from getting into trouble that can expose them to the juvenile justice system. The first innovation is to come up with a school-based restorative conflict resolution programs. The essence of this program is to unite youths who have had conflicts to heal the harm that was done peacefully. The second innovation is to establish evidence-based school-based disciplinary practices. This program involves techniques and strategies that can help students to attain the goals developing self-discipline, prevent and correct misbehaviors and also respond to students with chronic and serious behavior problems. The last innovation is to avoid policies like zero tolerance. Policies such as “zero tolerance” result into mandatory punishments of expulsion and suspension from school due to certain offenses without factoring considering the seriousness of the action. According to the current research, policies like zero tolerance are highly ineffective at boosting school safety and have been termed as counterproductive as expelled or suspended students from schools are likely to drop out of school and commit delinquent acts (Rhodes & DuBois, 2008).
References
Champion, D. J. (2001). The juvenile justice system: Delinquency, processing, and the law . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Greenwood, P. (2008). Prevention and intervention programs for juvenile offenders. The future of Children , 185-210.
Farrington, D. P. (1999). Serious and violent juvenile offenders: Risk factors and successful interventions . Sage.
Jordan, J. T. (1998). Boston's operation night light: New roles, new rules. FBI L. Enforcement Bull. , 67 , 1.
Rhodes, J. E., & DuBois, D. L. (2008). Mentoring relationships and programs for youth. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 17 (4), 254-258.
