The Effectiveness of Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Public versus Private Management

This paper uses data on juvenile offenders released from correctional facilities in Florida to explore the effects of facility management type (private for-profit, private nonprofit, public state-operated, and public county-operated) on recidivism outcomes and costs. The data provide detailed information on individual characteristics, criminal and correctional histories, judge-assigned restrictiveness levels, and home zipcodes—allowing us to control for the non-random assignment of individuals to facilities far better than any previous study. Relative to all other management types, for-profit management leads to a statistically significant increase in recidivism, but, relative to nonprofit and state-operated facilities, for-profit facilities operate at a lower cost to the government per comparable individual released. Costbenefit analysis implies that the short-run savings offered by for-profit over nonprofit management are negated in the long run due to increased recidivism rates, even if one measures the benefits of reducing criminal activity as only the avoided costs of additional confinement.Juvenile Crime; Juvenile Correctional Facilities; Recidivism; Prison Privatization; Provision of Public Goods: Nonprofit, For-profit, Public

Boot camps: An alternative sanction for better or worse

In the past twenty years boot camps have been evaluated for effectiveness on reducing recidivism, crowding, and costs to the Departments of Corrections. Program and offender characteristics have been studied. This analysis intends to determine how well studied boot camps are, why there is so much disagreement in the findings, and what impact, if any, boot camp programming has had in corrections

Perceived conditions of confinement: A national evaluation of juvenile boot camps and traditional facilities.

In a national study of juvenile correctional facilities, the perceived environment of 22 juvenile boot camps was compared to the perceived environment of 22 traditional facilities. Self-report surveys completed by 4,121 juveniles recorded information on demographics, risk factors, and perceptions of the facility\u27s environment. Compared to juveniles in traditional correctional facilities, boot camp residents consistently perceived the environment as significantly more controlled, active, and structured, and as having less danger from other residents. Boot camp juveniles also perceived the environment as providing more therapeutic and transitional programming. Overall, from the perspective of the juveniles, boot camps appear to provide a more positive environment conducive to effective rehabilitation considering almost all of the conditions measured. A major concern is that in both types of facilities, juveniles perceived themselves to occasionally be in danger from staff (rated as rarely to sometimes). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved

The History, Problems, and Solutions of Juvenile Incarceration

There is a trend that has swept across America\u27s juvenile justice system, and that is to send children as young as fourteen years old into some of the most violent and oppressive adult prisons in the nation. When children are housed with adult criminals, the result is a process that does not rehabilitate children; rather it only seeks to further their criminality. Children have not always been treated this way, so we must ask the question: How did we get to this point in the justice system? When did we stop viewing children as children, and begin to fear them as hardened criminals? The idea of childhood as a developmental stage has not always been an accepted fact. In the Middle Ages infancy ended at age seven, and adulthood began. At the age of seven one was expected to begin work, and these children were just seen as little adults (Sheldon, 13). It was not until the late nineteenth century that the term adolescence even became a part of the language (Sheldon, 12). Prior to this time any sort of child deviance was dealt with on an informal basis. If children acted out or committed a crime, it was up to the family to deal with this type of behavior. There were no juvenile courts, and children were not sent to prison. Juvenile delinquency was a family affair that needed to be dealt with on an individual basis, and was not a matter for the state to interfere in

Persistence Rates of First-Year College Students Who Attend an Extended Orientation Camp Program Compared to Those Who Do Not Attend

Student retention is a topic of concern among higher education institutions. The dissertation pronounces a comparative quantitative research study to examine participation in summer extended orientation programs as a predictor of fall-to-spring persistence for first-year college students. This research study was conducted through a conceptual replication of a decade-old study at a regional Texas institution. In this conceptual replication study, the researcher observed the enrollment impacts, such as persistence rates and grade point average, of first-year college students who attended a summer extended orientation program compared to those of students who did not. Conducting more specific research in the area of extended orientation and its impacts on retainment of first-year students guides higher education leaders on decisions, programing, and leadership of first-year students to help increase retention, thereby increasing institutional funding, and provide students with better career opportunities. The findings of this study provide time-relevant persistence data intended to inform funding decisions for first-year college student programming efforts

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Boot Camps in the Future

Boot camps have developed over the past two decades into a program that incorporates a military regimen to create a structured environment. While some critics of this method of corrections suggest that the confrontational nature of the program is antithetical to treatment, authors Doris Layton MacKenzie and Gaylene Styve Armstrong present research knowledge and personal discussions with community leaders that offer insight into both the strengths and weaknesses of this controversial form of corrections. Correctional Boot Camps: Military Basic Training or a Model for Corrections? provides the most up-to-date assessment of the major perspectives and issues related to the current state of boot camps. The book goes beyond cursory examinations of the effectiveness of boot camps, presenting an in-depth view of a greater variety of issues. Correctional Boot Camps examines empirical evidence on boot camps drawn from diverse sources including male, female, juvenile, and adult programs from across the nation. The book explores empirical research on both the punitive and rehabilitative components of the boot camp model and the effectiveness of the “tough on crime” aspects of the programs that are often thought of as punishment or retribution, in lieu of a longer sentence in a traditional facility. Thus, offenders earn their way back to the general public more quickly because they have paid their debt to society by being punished in a short-term, but strict, boot camp. Correctional Boot Camps is a comprehensive textbook for undergraduate and graduate students studying corrections and juvenile justice. The book is also a valuable resource for correctional professionals interacting with offenders

Specialized Regional Conferences Support the Professional Development of Subject Librarians: A 5-Year Analysis of the Great Lakes Science Boot Camps for Librarians

Conference attendance can play an important role in supporting the professional development of subject librarians by offering opportunities that allow librarians to learn about new services, strategies, and technologies while growing and maintaining professional networks. However, barriers such as accessibility challenges, budgetary and resource restrictions, difficulty measuring learning gains, and difficulty measuring the value of professional development when applied to the job can restrict opportunities for many librarians. Specialized regional conferences have the potential to reduce many of these barriers. How can librarians, library administrators and conference organizers quantify the value of regional conference attendance as an accessible means for fostering librarian professional development? This paper examines five years of assessment data and participant feedback from attendees of a specialized regional conference for STEM librarians, and measures participant learning and participant motivation for conference attendance. We propose specialized regional conferences, such as the Great Lakes Science Boot Camp for Librarians, as accessible and affordable continuing education opportunities that support the professional development of subject librarians