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30 Crime & Delinquency 5 (1984)

handle is hein.journals/cadq30 and id is 1 raw text is: 



Child Welfare, the Private Sector,

and Community-Based Corrections



      Paul  Lerman


      After more than a decade ofcarrying out a community-basedjuvenile correctional
      policy, it is useful to stand back and gain perspective on how this policy has been
      implemented. From national data the following facts about implementation are
      readily apparent: Implementation is strongly associated with private sector
      dominance; alternatives are linked to the child welfare system, as well as the
      juvenile correctional system; privately administered alternatives are heavily
      subsidized by federal and state public funds; the division of labor that has
      developed between the public andprivate correctional sectors is strongly associated
      with degree of offense seriousness, deviance diversity, and disproportionate
      number of females; and the utilization of private alternatives tends to vary by
      geographical regions. These facts are documented and the reasons why American
      implementation ofthis strategy has occurred with these characteristics is discussed.

      For the past 20-25 years there has been interest in the creation of
alternatives to traditional juvenile institutional facilities. The idea of
promoting   community-based alternatives has been promoted at the
national level by the President's Commission  on  Law  Enforcement  and
the Administration   of Justice (1967), the National Commission   on the
Causes  of Violence (1969), and the National  Advisory  Commission on
Criminal   Justice Standards and Goals in Corrections (1973). In
addition, community   alternatives have been singled out as a preferential
recommendation in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Act  of 1974 and several standard-setting  organizations. While  diverse
meanings  have  been attached to the concept community-based correc-
tions  (or community alternatives), there appears to be broad
agreement   that small size, access to the surrounding community,   and
insecure  controls are minimal  features  of any definition (McCulloh,
1981).



   PAUL  LERMAN:   Distinguished Professor of Social Work and Sociology, School of
Social Work, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
   This article is an expanded version of a paper delivered at the 1983 Annual Meeting of
the American Society of Criminology, Denver, Colorado.


CRIME  & DELINQUENCY,  Vol. 30 No. 1, January 1984 5-38
@ 1984 Sage Publications, Inc.
                                                                        5


from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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