The Importance Of Alternatives To Detention

Alternatives to Detention
Since incarceration has been proven to be ineffective for reducing crime and delinquency. I propose an emphasis on rehabilitation. Instead of locking up juveniles, the juvenile judge should make it his or her goal to divert youth offenders away from secure detention facilities and instead use dispositional alternatives that better match the need of the child. Studies have shown that smaller, intensive programs can work when they are run by well-trained staff who can “provide security through…[the] program content (Mitchell, 1996, p. 129). Still, these dispositional alternatives must also be proven to be successful. Though well-liked, intermediate sanctions such as boot camps, home confinement, electronic monitoring, and intensive surveillance programs run by probation and parole officers have all been shown to be counterintuitive in that they do not have …show more content…
What has shown to be effective is functional family therapy (FFT). FFT is an existing intensive supervision alternative in Baltimore and is actually a model program by