Your Detention Program—Is It Focused On The Needs Of The Children Detained?

Abstract

Ordering the detention of a juvenile who has broken, or who has allegedly broken, the law creates the need for some kind of service. However, such an order does not specificaIly indicate what kind of service or how much and to whom it is to be given. Automatically, the community receives service in the form of immediate protection from the actions of a young person who has infringed upon or endangers the safety and rights of others. The juvenile court receives a service by having the assurance that a boy or girl is held in secure custody until his appearance in court a t the appointed time. But, what about the child? When a youth violates the law, opinion differences result: should we punish or should we treat? Should only a showing of child temorse be expected or is the beginning of a plan to change behavior called for?Study and observation of children held in detention in order to provide the probation staff and the juvenile court with pertinent diagnostic information is one of four interrelated objectives of sound detention care. Basic information is provided by psychological and psychiatric evaluation, but such studies do not reveal the entire picture. How, for example, does the child behave in less clinical surroundings? How does he act and react toward more famiIiar activities? Answers to questions such as these can only be provided through astute staff observation of the child's participation in a wellrounded program of diversified activities designed to meet his personal needs. To make observations from any other posture can only reveal behavior produced by boredom or environmental artificiality and be untypical of the individual. Such reported observations would be a disservice to the child, to probation services, and to the court. What, then, are detention program requirements that will provide study and observation that is accurate, reliable and valid? The answer is (1) knowledgeable staff personnel and (2) a well designed activities program that is flexible and allows variety to meet the requirements of many different individuals.In developing a knowledgeable staff, one must first consider the sources of knowledge and the approaches to it. There are three. There is the nonscientific approach, the pseudoscientific approach and the scientific approach.The non-scientific approach is a blind reaction with nothing to serve as a guide to the practitioner except emotion, instinct, prejudice, and superstition. In the non-scientific approach, fragments of factuality may exist but too much is left to chance and ultimate results cannot be objectively predicted.The pseudoscientific approach is a particularly