The number of adjudicated delinquents is rising along with the need to develop effective deterrents and rehabilitative programs. Most rehabilitative efforts, when evaluated individually, do not show any significant degree of effectiveness or appreciable decrease in recidivism. Research in other fields suggests that delinquency is a group…

Presented in this document are a description of Chapter 766, Massachusetts legislation governing education for youth with special needs, and a compilation of guidelines and procedures affecting the core evaluation of student turned over to the Department of Youth Services (DYS) by the courts. Requirements of the Core Evaluation Team (CET) and core…

The suburban or rural Short Term Adolescent Rehabilitation Treatment (START) Centers house 20 or 25 youths unable to cope with daily community involvement, yet not requiring institutional isolation or security. This program evaluation monitors the effectiveness of the START program. The report examines in detail the types of delinquent youth…

The project was a residential youth center designed to address the needs of hard-core, high risk, girls between the ages of 14 and 18, with a history of poverty, unemployability, and school failure. The report describes the history and goals of the project, the nature of the population under study, the use of volunteers and nonprofessionals in…

The document presents hearings before the Subcommittee on Public Health, Education, Welfare, and Safety of the 92nd Congress concerning the proposed District of Columbia Youth Act of 1971. The bill proposed to establish a Youth Commission, an Office of Youth Commissioner, and a Youth Commissioner's Advisory Board to plan, coordinate, and monitor…

Discusses conceptual clarification of dimensions in the treatment environment of a residential unit for young offenders. Examines ideas of structure, control, contemporaneous, and developmental matching from the Conceptual Level Matching Model. Describes specification of types, quality, and settings of staff-youth interactions. Addresses the…

An 11-day English back-packing expedition in the Sierra Nevada mountains (Spain) included 4 staff members and 7 youth offenders. The program discouraged criminal behavior and increased the self-esteem of the youth offenders through development of teamwork and a sense of responsibility and commitment to the expedition. (LP)

African American males in the United States have been killing each other at alarming rates. Gang members commit violent crimes at a rate three times that of nongang delinquents, and gang-involved youths are more frequently victimized by violent crime than the rest of the general population. This volume offers insight into the reasons youths are…

The study shows that thoughtful communities can and have developed viable alternatives to detention for children in trouble--alternatives that are more humane than secure detention and present minimal risk to the community. The study's four program formats (residential and nonresidential) were roughly equal in their ability to keep both alleged…

This document describes the present activities of and recommends improvements for the Ohio Youth Commission, an organization designed to provide treatment and rehabilitative services for socially deviant youths. (LLR)

This publication discusses an emerging strategy for preventing delinquency and helping the youth of the United States. It is based on a reassessment of present public policies for dealing with youthful deviance, and on the development of new linkages between an understanding of what causes such activities and what can be done about them. The…

A young man who completed Project Adventure's Legacy Program for young sex offenders in Georgia explains how group therapy and adventure programming help participants understand their behaviors and develop empathy for their victims. A follow-up program uses adventure to develop healthy living habits, requires completion of high school or GED, and…

This article highlights the importance for the youth justice movement to come to terms with a critical reality: The struggle for justice on a societal level cannot be separated from the work of nurturing, healing, and developing young people. Ruben S. Austria, Juvenile Justice Coalition steering committee member and founding director of…

A sports counseling scheme for young people on criminal probation in Hampshire (England) was developed in the 1980s as a partnership between the Sports Council and the Probation Service. The scheme aims to encourage offenders, aged 14 and up, to make constructive use of their leisure time; to allow participants the opportunity to have positive…

The Youth Center Research Project studied the effectiveness of two different treatment programs with 983 adjudicated delinquents assigned by random procedures to two institutions, one of whose programs was based on transactional analysis and the other on the principles of behavior modification. (Author)