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10 Crim. Just. 20 (1995-1996)
What Works with Juvenile Offenders - A Review of Graduated Sanction Programs

handle is hein.journals/cjust10 and id is 80 raw text is: What Works With Juvenile Offenders? A review of graduated sanction programs By BARRY KRISBERG, ELLIOTT CURRIE, and DAVID ONEK 7 dhese are tough times for ju- venile offenders. Across the country, there have been re- peated calls to get tougher on young people who break the law-and those calls have often been followed by increasingly dracon- ian responses. States have rushed to lower the age at which juveniles can be waived to adult courts. Last year's federal crime bill authorized half a billion dollars to support new prisons for youths. And the revision of that bill now working its way through the new Republican-dom- inated Congress would slash its funding for youth-oriented prevention programs in favor of still more billions for new prison construction. In many states, funds for rehabilitative programs-such as intensive probation supervision, af- tercare, and vocational training-have dried up while prison budgets have sky- rocketed. Part of the rationale for these devel- opments is the claim that nothing but incarceration works with serious ju- venile offenders. This is by no means the first time that claim has surfaced; it has had a powerful influence on our thinking about appropriate responses to juvenile crime as far back as the mid- 1970s. But in the nineties it has taken on an unprecedented virulence. Pro- grams designed to prevent delinquency or to rehabilitate young offenders are routinely derided as pork; at best, they are described as well-intentioned but naive efforts to use social work to address what only harsh punishment can solve. Public perception not borne out by research A careful consideration of the evi- dence for that popular view finds it wanting. Criminologists have suspected for many years that some kinds of inter- vention programs for juvenile offenders do indeed work to prevent recidivism and often do so far more cheaply than imprisonment. Under a grant from the federal Of- fice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) re- cently analyzed a vast array of materials on interventions with young offenders. Our research confirms a more opti- mistic view. We found, unsurprisingly, that not everything works; not all programs to turn around young offenders make a difference. But some programs do work-and, increasingly, we are com- ing to understand why they work. The overall finding is clear: The idea that re- habilitation is nothing more than use- less pork is a myth. And it is a myth that dramatically hobbles our ability to cope with serious juvenile crime. Graduated sanction programs for ju- venile offenders are one type of solu- tion being explored by states across the nation. Types of graduated sanctions in- clude: immediate sanctions, which are ap- propriate for first-time, nonviolent offenders; intermediate sanctions, which target repeat minor offenders and first-time serious offenders; and CC * secure care, which is reserved for re- peat serious and violent offenders. In a model graduated sanctions sys- tem, the majority of youths are placed in community-based immediate and in- termediate sanction programs while se- cure care is reserved for the violent few. Research has been conducted on in- dividual programs and statewide sys- tems, and there have been meta-analy- ses of large numbers of individual studies. Drawing from all of this re- search, it is possible to determine the common characteristics of effective graduated sanction programs. Studies on graduated sanctions The research on graduated sanctions for juveniles is uneven. There are some areas with fairly strong results, but oth- ers in which research data are almost nonexistent. One reason for the overall dearth of graduated sanctions research is that Criminal Justice M20

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