Claims are being made for deinstitutionalization that obscure some of the lesser known, negative effects. Within the juvenile justice system, for example, many juveniles who were previously institutionalized as juvenile status offenders are being relabelled and institutionalized as jivenile delinquents. In the state system studied in this report, the total number of juveniles in institutional programs did not decrease during the period of  deinstitutionalization

McNeece, C. Aaron

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The Journal of Sociology & Social WelfareVolume 7Issue 2 March Article 8March 1980The Deinstitutionalization of Juvenile StatusOffenders: New Myths and Old RealitiesC. Aaron McNeeceFlorida State UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jsswPart of the Criminology Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, andthe Social Work CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Social Work atScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contactmaira.bundza@wmich.edu.Recommended CitationMcNeece, C. Aaron (1980) "The Deinstitutionalization of Juvenile Status Offenders: New Myths and Old Realities," The Journal ofSociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 7 : Iss. 2 , Article 8.Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol7/iss2/8THE DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION OF JEVENILE STATUS OFFENDERS:NEW MYTHS AND OLD REALITIESC. Aaron McNeece, Ph.D., is the Assistant Dean, School of SocialWork, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida.ABSTRACTClaims are bei made for deinstitutionalization that obscure someof the lesser known, negative effects. Within the juvenile justicesystem, for example, many juveniles who were previously institutionalizedas juvenile status offenders are being relabelled and institutionalizedas jivenile delinquents. In the state system studied in this report, thetotal number of juveniles in institutional programs did not decreaseduring the period of "deinstitutionalization."Fairness and justice in the administration and execution of thelaw are concepts that are central to the foundations of the Americanlegal system. While it is widely recognized that inequities in theadministration of justice do exist and are perhaps inevitable, ourcommitment to striving toward those ideals has resulted in almostconstant revision of our criminal and juvenile codes. Hardly a yearpasses that major new legislation does not find its way into thesebodies of law for the purpose of improving conditions or providing formore equitable solutions for those persons affected by the administrationof justice.1During the past two decades we have become increasingly aware ofcertain inequities in the juvenile justice system. First of all, itwas acknowledged that there were large numbers of children who werenot charqed with any criminal conduet beinq kept in Juvenile correctionalinstitutions.' To make matters worse, most of the data indicated thatthese so-called juvenile status offenders were being detained lonqer insuch correctional facilities than their more seriously delinquent peers--in some cases, twice as long. 3 The severity of handling of juvenilestatus offenders seemed to indicate "that society is more concernedabout a juvenile's willingness to go to school, mind his parents, andrefrain from experimenting with alcohol or sex than about his tendencyto commit rape, robbery, or assault."4 There is evidence, however,that the general public actually believes status offenses to be lessserious than almost all other deviant behaviors. In one study, re-spondents ranked refusal to obey parents, truancy, and running awayas 130th, 136th, and 137th in seriousness, respectively, out of 140possible offenses.5Various proposals were made by concerned individuals and organi-zations to provide for differential handling of juvenile status offend-ers--handling which would recognize their status and their needs asbeing different from those of other juvenile offenders who were guiltyof violations of the criminal law. 6 Calls for reform culminated inthe Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. 7  In ad-dition to providing funds for diversion and other community-based pro-grams, this act prohibited the holding of status offenders in trainingschools, detention facilities, and jails. Within the State of Arkansas,Act 509 of the 71st General Assembly (Regular Session, 1977) declared:"That in cases of non-criminal acts committed byjuveniles in Need of Supervision, the juvenileshall be treated not as a criminal, but as mis-directed, misguided, in need of aim, encouragement,assistance, and counseling; and if such juvenilecannot be properly cared for in his own home, thathe be placed in a suitable home, agency, or otherfacility where he may be cared for, helped, educatedand equipped for useful citizenship.",8The Act further required that on or before August I, 1977, anyjuvenile charged with offenses that would not be criminal if committedby an adult "shall be released from all 'Secure Detention' facilities."9This Act, passed by the legislature as "emergency" legislation onMarch 15 and approved by the Governor three days later, gave thetraining schools approximately four and one-half months to find alter-native placements for their status offender residents. Juvenile courts,who were accustomed to committing status offenders to the trainingschools, had the same short period of time to develop alternatemethods for handling status offenders.The new myth created by the legislation is that juveniles who havecommitted no criminal act should not be maintained in secure facilities,but should be offered appropriate treatment in an open setting. Theold reality is that these youth will probably continue to be incar-cerated in detention facilities, training schools, and jails for sometime to come. Considering the large number of juveniles maintained inthese kinds of facilities (616,766 in 1973), 10 it will take more than afew simple changes in the law and a few million dollars in federal"seed" money to accomplish such a feat.The magnitude of the problem of deinstitutionalizing status offend-ers was awesome. The latest data available indicated that 38% of the 777commitments in 1974 were status offenders. Twenty-five percent of themales comml-ted and seventy-seven percent of the females were statusoffenders." Not only would a large number of alternative placementsbe needed, but the overall role and function of the training schoolsmight be expected to change dramatically due to a predicted decrease inpopulation. If status offenders were incarcerated for up to twice aslong as other juvelile offenders, then the removal of the 38% of theresident population who were status offenders should have lowered theschool's population by over fifty percent. The fact that the number ofstatus offenders committed to the State's Reception and ClassificationCenter fell dramatically in 1977 is illustrated in Table I.TABLE ICommitments to the Reception andClassification Center, 1974-1977Year Total Status OffenderCommi tments Commitments1974 777 2951975 912 3101976 944 1811977* 425 22*January I through June 30.A grant for $1,232.000 was received in January, 1976 from the LawEnforcement Assistance Administration for the purpose of removing juve-nile status offenders from the training school and developing community-based alternatives to training school placements. At the same time, allof those agencies responsible for providing services to juvenile of-fenders were reorganized into the newly-created Division of Youth Ser-vices in order to redefine and coordinate all of those functions pre-viously performed by the Training School Division, Social Services'Aftercare Section, and Rehabilitation Services.Status Offender CommitmentsA further breaksown of status offender commitments is presented inTable 2. Whi le there was a dramatic decrease In such commitments fromTABLE 2Status Offenders Commited to theReception and Classification CenterJanuary I - June 30, 1977Month Number of Total Number ofStutus Offenders CommitmentsJanuary 5 28February 9 54March 5 80April 0 62May 3 79June 0 122Total 22 4251974 to 1977, there was an equally significant reduction in such commit-ments in the first six months of 1977. During the first quarter of thisyear, 19 status offenders were committed to the Reception and Clas-sification Center. During the subsequent quarter, however, only threestatus offenders were committed -- all of them in May.If we can assume that the number of status offenders and delinquent(non-status) offenders remained relatively stable over the period from1974 to the present, then the result of dainstitutionalizing statusoffenders should be a dramatic reduction in the institutional populations.The Division of Youth Services' best estimates indicated that 38% of alljuveniles in training schools were status offenders 12 and other sourcesindicated that they were detained for up to twice as long as other incar-cerated youth.1 3 A conservative estimate of the effects of deinsti-tutionalizing status offenders might predict a cut in the institutionalpopulation by at least one half! That obviously did not happen inthis case, as shown in Table 3. Instead of a dramatic reduction inTABLE 3Institutional Populations on January I,1974-1977Year Total Delinquents Status Offenders1974 401 221 1801975 470 287 1831976 338 237 1011977 399 380 19the institutional population, the total number of children held thereremained about the same, while the number of delinquents increased andthe number of status offenders decreased.There are many possible explanations for this situation, includingan increase in overall delinquent behavior. Additional delinquentsmight now be placed in some of those slots which were previously occupiedby status offenders. According to police reports, however, reportedcriminal (and delinquent) activity remained almost constant during thisperiod. 14 An alternate explanation might be that part of those juvenileswho were previously institutionalized as status offenders are now beinginstitutionalized as delinquents. Some data is available fromthe courts and the police. Approximately forty (40%) percent of alljuvenile offenders processed by the Reception and Classification Centerwere officially charged with more than one offense. Furthermore, aninspection of a substantial number of court records revealed that inmost cases juveniles could be charged with additional offenses that arenot mentioned in petitions, commitment orders, or other official records.TABLE 4Delinquency Offenses of Status Offendersfor 1975 and 1977 In Three Courts*1975 1977 TotalNumber of Status Offenders 24 (27.9%) 3 (6.1%) 27with Delinquent BehaviorsMentioned in Case RecordsNumber of Status Offenders 62 (72.1%) 46 108with no Delinquent Behaviors (93.9%)Mentioned in Case RecordsTOTAL 86 49 135*January through June, b)oth yearsX2 = 9.26, p .01Table 4 indicates that there is a si-gnificant difference betweenstatus offenders in 1975 and 1977 in the propOrtiOn of case records whichreflected delinquent behaviors not officially charqed against these youth.( The data was obtained from a random sample of case records in threeof the State's largest juvenile courts.) This would seem to lendfurther support to the argument that the decrease in status offenderscoming from the courts is at least partly due to the court's applicationof a new label. As the number of status offender commitments to theReception and Classification Center decreased (Table I), the numberof delinquency cases processed by the courts increased, and their statusoffender cases decreased (Table 5). Whereas the courts previously hadTABLE 5Official Cases filed in Juvenile Courts1975-1977*1975 1977Status Offenders 1,348 605Delinquents 3,827 4,952*January through June for both years, 32 reporting courtsa choice in the labels which they chose to apply to juvenile offenderswhom they sent to training schools, the only way under the present lawto remove a troublesome youth from the community is to apply thedelinquency label.What happens to those troublesome youth to whom the delinquencylabel cannot be legally applied, i.e., true status offenders who couldhave been removed from the community before August 1, 1977? The largestjuvenile court in the state admits to keeping juvenile status offenderswho can no longer be sent to the training schools in its own detentionfacility, despite the fact that Act 509 requires juvenile statusoffenders to be released from all "secure" detention facilities afterAugust 1.1 Other courts are undoubtedly doing the same.ConclusionThe last wave of reform efforts in the juvenile justice systemresulted in an officially sanctioned plan to deinstitutionalize statusoffenders. While the data does on its surface indicate that suchdeinstitutionalization is now a fait accompli. it is highly improbablethat the majority of the youth who were the objects of this reformeffort are not presently incarcerated. First of all, many of thosejuvenile "status offenders" were really delinquent youth. Courts weresimply following a somewhat more humane policy in applying the less severelabel to them before sending them to the training schools. Now the onlycourse of action left is to label them as delinquents before incarceratingthem.Many of those youth who are true status offenders will probablybe placed on probation by those courts which have no alternative place-ments. The "catch 22" in Act 509 is a provision which defines a juvenile'sviolation of the conditions of probation as a delinquent act, thus re-opening the possibilities of incarceration for that juvenile. There is noevidence that the total number of institutionalized youth has decreasedas a result of the legal proscriptions against incarcerating statusoffenders, nor that conditions within the institutions have been improved.It would appear to be more fruitful to concentrate on making substantivechanges within the juvenile justice system than to dwell on proceduralchanges such as switching the labels which may be applied to juvenilessent to secure detention programs. We should not delude ourselvesinto believing that we have accomplished a major reform by preventing"status offenders" from being incarcerated. This type of "name game"is not likely to fool anyone.Using a framework for organizational analysis which moves latentfunctions from the periphery to the center, one realizes that juvenilecourts and juvenile training schools are being used as resources by otherorganizations which are more concerned with their problems of removingtroublesome youth from the community than with the attainment of objectivesset forth in the deinstitutionalization statutes. 16 Perhaps the mostfruitful way of approaching this problem would be to provide appropriatedecentralized services to both status offenders and delinquents. Thenthere would be fewer incentives for switching labels as a way of justi-fying our "helping" strategies.ReferencesI. Mark H. Levin and Rosemary C. Sarri, Juvenile Delinquency: A Com-parative Analysis of Legal Codes in the United States (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan, National Assessment of Juvenile Corrections,1974).2. William H. Sheridan, "Juveniles Who Commit Non-criminal Acts: WhyTreat in a Correctional System?" Federal Probation 31 (March,1967), 26-30.3. Paul Lerman, "Delinquents Without Crimes," in Law and Order: TheScales of Justice. ed., Abraham Blumberg (New Brunswick, N.J.:Transaction Books, 1973), 241-69.4. William B. Sanders, Juvenile Delinquency (New York: Prager Publishers,1976), 66.5. Peter H. Rosse, et al., "The Seriousness of Crimes: NormativeStructure and Individual Differences," American SociologicalReview 39 (April, 1974), 224-37.6. Sheridan, pp. 26-30.7. Public Law 93-415.8. The Juvenile in Need of Supervision Act of 1977, Arkansas JuvenileCode, Sec. 2.9. Ibid., Sec. 7.10. U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration,National Criminal Justice Informationand Statistics Service,Children in Custody. (December, 1977), p.8.I. Arkansas Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services, ProgramCoordination Section, Youth Services Planning, Comprehensive Long-range Master Plan for the Prevention. Treatment, and Control ofJuvenile Delinquency in Arkansas (September 30, 1976), 159-68.12. Ibid.24513. Lerman, 241-269.14. Arkansas Commission on Crime and Law Enforcement, "Annual Report,"Little Rock, 1976. (Mimeographed).15. Juvenile in Need of Supervision Act, Sec. 7.16. Charles Perrow, "Demystifying Organizations: in Rosemary C. Sarriand Yeheskel Hazenfeld (ed.), The Management of Human Services(New York: Columbia University Press, 1978) pp. 105-120.

The Deinstitutionalization of Juvenile Status Offenders: New Myths and Old Realities

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The Deinstitutionalization of Juvenile Status Offenders: New Myths and Old Realities

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