Abstract
Four well-known delinquency intervention and prevention programs remain both publicly and politically popular regardless of a large body of evidence-based research revealing their ineffectiveness in promoting a lasting desistance from youth violence and crime. Scared straight programs, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), youth boot camps, and secure large-scale, custodial juvenile correctional facilities overemphasize offender “risk management and maintenance” as opposed to individual, group-based, and/or collective well-being. This article will identify the values that these current and dominant community-centered youth justice initiatives reflect, and it will explain how these values further (or forestall) offender desistance. Viable, evidence-based alternatives consistent with the value orientation of therapeutic and restorative programming will also be evaluated. The article concludes by examining the efficacy of this alternative normative agenda to foster successful desistance from juvenile delinquency and crime.
Keywords
The earliest attempts to develop social control mechanisms for youth can be traced to the end of the 19th century with the child-saving movement, which was an effort by philanthropists and social reformers to alleviate the miseries of urban life resulting from the structural inequalities of unregulated capitalism (Platt, 1969/2009). However, the possibly well-intentioned rhetoric of the child savers was really masking the development of a class-based system of harsh punishment, which deprived impoverished youth of due process while enhancing the role the state played in the everyday lives of the working class (Platt, 1969/2009). The underlying motivation of the child-saving movement was to promote White middle-class moral values, which were threatened by a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex urban life of the working classes during the industrialization at the turn the century (Platt, 1969/2009). Therefore, child savers sought to properly socialize and nurture government control over the movements and actions of working-class urban youth through the development of a juvenile justice system that would decide what was in the best interest of the child and society via new forms of control, restraint, and punishment (Platt, 1969/2009).
The child-saving movement was also an “attempt to regulate deviant behaviors of working-class men and women, using ‘panics’ to either establish new or re-instate fragile, social norms” (Evans, Davies, & Rich, 2008, p. 119). The movement directly affected the children of the urban poor by recasting them as “sick,” “maladjusted,” “unsocialized,” “pathological,” or “troublesome” youth, who needed to be confined “for their own good” (Platt, 1969/2009, p. 177). Thus, delinquent youth were stigmatized as dangerous “others” in the political rhetoric during the movement (Mills, 1943). This political rhetoric thrived under a media-influenced moral panic, which demanded the immediate control of what was perceived to be an unmanageable problem with juvenile delinquency and crime (Platt, 1969/2009).
Over time, media-based “child saving” techniques have continued to be used to manufacture biased and misguided opinions about the need to regulate dangerous youth. For example, rhetoric from John J. DiIulio, William Bennett, John Walters, and William Bratton overstressed the reports being publicized by the mass media in the 1990s of youth “wilding” and the growing legions of juvenile “superpredators” (Bennett, DiIulio, & Walters, 1996; Welch, 2011, pp. 216-217). These characterizations of inner city juvenile offenders as being criminogenic, valueless, and “new threats to public safety” received constant and sustained media coverage (Welch, 2011, p. 216). As a result, minority urban youth were targeted as threats to society, while racial and economic inequalities were reinforced by the state legislatures’ ever-increasing “get tough” responses to the perceived panic over youth crime (Welch, 2011). Indeed, the moral panic, as driven by media framing of adolescent offending, served to unify a frightened public and public officials in a stance against marginalized “folk-devils,” which threatened the normative standards and values of an older generation (Cohen, 1972; Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2008). The reach of this media-based and publicly re-enacted moral panic now even extends to school disciplinary policy (Sellers, 2013) and immigration policy (Trull & Arrigo, in press).
Media-driven outrage over a social problem tends to mobilize popular support for policy responses that will serve as “quick-fix, punitive solutions” to the threat of future crime and violence (Finckenauer, 1982; Hirschfield, 2008, p. 85). As such, punitive-oriented prevention and intervention approaches for juvenile delinquency and crime were implemented with the intent of subduing juvenile offending by displacing public fear and redirecting it through consequentialist forms of programs and institutional responses, such as Scared Straight, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), youth boot camps, and secure juvenile correctional facilities focused more on custodial management rather than rehabilitative goals. Consequentialism refers to an ethical approach in which actions and decisions are prioritized according to interest-balancing, means/ends calculations, and/or cost–benefit analyses (Arrigo, Bersot, & Sellers, 2011). While the intentions of policy makers who supported these “get tough” approaches to youth crime may have been deemed well-intentioned at the time of their implementation (Lipsey, Howell, Kelly, Chapman, & Carver, 2010), years of evaluative research have found them ineffective and left wanting (Lipsey, 2009; Lipsey & Cullen, 2007; Lipsey et al., 2010; MacKenzie, Wilson, & Kider, 2001; Pan & Bai, 2009; Petrosino, Turpin-Petrosino, Hollis-Peel, & Lavenberg, 2013). Regardless of the empirical findings of well-designed evaluation studies, which have ruled these prevention and intervention programs ineffective, these “get tough” approaches to juveniles remain popular among political power brokers, who largely dismiss evaluation evidence in favor of continued use of punitive policies and practices in the juvenile justice system (Birkeland, Murphy-Graham, & Weiss, 2005; Lipsey et al., 2010).
This article will review the extant research on popular juvenile prevention and intervention programs with regard to their effectiveness. In addition, the values that these “get tough” youth justice initiatives reflect ethically will be identified, and how these values further (or forestall) offender desistance will be explained. Viable evidence-based alternatives consistent with the value orientation of therapeutic and restorative programming will also be evaluated. Finally, the efficacy of this alternative normative agenda to foster successful desistance from juvenile delinquency and crime will be examined via an ethical and cultural critique.
Review of Punitive Juvenile Programs
During the 1990s, many state legislatures embraced the get-tough penal harm movement, which ushered in several juvenile prevention and intervention programs with the aim of appeasing “just deserts” advocates, while abandoning programming that reflected the traditional rehabilitative mission of the juvenile justice system (Bishop, 2006; Lipsey et al., 2010). The underlying theoretical rationales for “get tough” punitive policies toward juvenile offending are rooted in deterrence and rational choice theories, which draw from classical criminological and economic theory (Cullen & Jonson, 2012; Lipsey et al., 2010). Under deterrence theory, swift, certain, and severe sanctions are expected to reduce delinquency and crime, both specifically for the individual offender and generally for the vicariously observing public (Cullen & Jonson, 2012). Basically, fear of severe punishment is expected to suppress delinquency and deter youth from breaking the law (Cullen & Jonson, 2012; Lundman, 2001). Similarly, rational choice theory hypothesizes that perceived certainty and severity of shame, embarrassment, and legal sanction may deter potential delinquents if they engage in a cost–benefit analysis (Cornish & Clarke, 1986). Thus, by applying Jeremy Bentham’s hedonistic calculus to mechanisms of deterrence theory, rational choice theory assumes that delinquents are rational agents who weigh the costs and benefits of engaging in delinquency before committing the act (Grasmick & Bursik, 1990). Thus, punitive juvenile programs value coercion, control, discipline, and retribution to suppress delinquency by utilizing mechanisms of fear.
Given the often political nature of crime control policy, one must avoid emotionally charged rhetoric in such considerations, and instead, give careful thought to empirical research when making recommendations for change. Thus, it is necessary to review the empirical findings of evaluation studies with regard to the effectiveness of the above-mentioned “get tough” variants while taking into consideration the evidence-based research on effective rehabilitative and restorative alternatives (see Lipsey et al., 2010). The ensuing review of research findings will lay the groundwork for an ethical and cultural critique of the resilience of these punitive programs in the midst of efforts to return to rehabilitation and expand restorative justice approaches to juvenile offending.
Scared Straight
In 1975, inmates serving life sentences in New Jersey’s Rahway prison began a program to educate at-risk youths about the consequences of incarceration through an aggressive presentation that brutally depicted life in adult prisons and often entailed exaggerated stories of rape, assault, murder, and suicide (Finckenauer, 1982; Petrosino, Turpin-Petrosino, & Buehler, 2003). Inmates, who initially engaged in a counselor role, soon resorted to threats and intimidation in an effort to terrify these youth to the point that they would avoid breaking the law for fear of these projected realities becoming their own (Finckenauer, 1982; Petrosino et al., 2003; Petrosino et al., 2013). By May 1979, more than 13,000 juveniles attended the program a Rahway prison (Lundman, 2001). This program gained instant popular public support and media attention after the 1979 documentary titled “Scared Straight” aired (Petrosino et al., 2003).
The initial program claimed a 94% success rate (Finckenauer, 1982); however, subsequent evaluations concluded that participants in Scared Straight programs are more likely to be arrested than their control group counterparts (Finckenauer, 1982; Lundman, 2001; Petrosino et al., 2003; Petrosino et al., 2013). For instance, Finckenauer (1982) found that 41% of those who attended Scared Straight were arrested for new offenses, while only 11% of the control group offended. Moreover, the program participants committed more serious offenses and exhibited more favorable attitudes toward crime (Finckenauer, 1982). Meta-analytic investigations of numerous evaluative studies found that Scared Straight does not deter youth from crime but actually has harmful criminogenic effects on youthful participants (Petrosino et al., 2003; Petrosino et al., 2013).
Indeed, Petrosino et al. (2003) concluded, “Criminological interventions, when they cause harm, are not just toxic to the participants. They result in increased misery to ordinary citizens that come from the ‘extra’ criminal victimization they create when compared to just doing nothing at all” (p. 59). Still, in light of these empirical findings, Scared Straight programs and their derivatives remain in use in numerous jurisdictions in the United States and abroad (Petrosino et al., 2003; Petrosino et al., 2013). Recently, the Arts and Entertainment (A&E) television station has reintroduced this ineffective program to the public via the popular weekly series titled “Beyond Scared Straight” and has become the highest rated show in A&E’s history (Denhart, 2011; Petrosino et al., 2013). The show also subjects at-risk youth to boot camp regimens. Of course, this sensationalized reality television program largely ignores the scientific evidence against it, and instead, deceptively depicts a successful experience for at-risk youth (Petrosino et al., 2013).
D.A.R.E
From the 1960s to the 1980s, the government and media framed the association between youth culture, drugs, and drug trafficking as a major threat to the safety and educational missions of schools (Simon, 2007). The crime-related politics behind the war on drugs shifted the crime control efforts of drug policy from the street corner to the schoolyards (Stinchcomb, Bazemore, & Riestenberg, 2006). As a result, the D.A.R.E. program was initially implemented in 1983 through the joint sponsorship of the Los Angeles Police Department and a local school district in an effort to teach students how to refuse drugs, overcome peer pressure, and improve psychosocial behavior, such as social skills, self-esteem, and attitudes toward drug use (Pan & Bai, 2009). The program is usually taught by a uniformed police officer for elementary and junior high school students (Pan & Bai, 2009). By 2010, roughly 36 million school children around the world participated in D.A.R.E., with more than 72% of American school districts and 44 countries utilizing the program (Pan & Bai, 2009).
Meta-analyses conducted to assess the effectiveness of D.A.R.E. have found that the program largely fails to deter long-term adolescent drug use behaviors, which is the primary mission of D.A.R.E. (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994; Pan & Bai, 2009; Rosenbaum, 2007; West & O’Neal, 2004). While there has been some evidence to suggest that D.A.R.E. has been able to increase knowledge about drugs and social skills, and fosters positive relationships between juveniles and police officers, the fact remains that it is ineffective at reducing self-reported drug use among its participants (Birkeland et al., 2005; Pan & Bai, 2009). The arguments that focus on how D.A.R.E. fosters better relationships between youth and police officers appear to be nothing more than ex post rationalizations resulting in parents, school administrators, and politicians continuing to support a program that fails at its main goal simply because it is a “feel-good” program (Birkeland et al., 2005; Lynam et al., 1999; Singh et al., 2011). More recently, D.A.R.E. has been modified to focus more on decision-making processes and protective factors, such as bonding, family, school, and community; however, recent studies reveal mixed evidence in regard to the effectiveness of the new D.A.R.E. curriculum; further evaluation is recommended (Singh et al., 2011).
Youth Boot Camps
Juvenile correctional boot camps, as a form of shock incarceration, are military-style short-term institutions, which subject youthful offenders to a regimen of drills, discipline, routine, hard labor, and military decorum (Mackenzie et al., 2001a; Mackenzie et al., 2001b). Boot camps became popular in the 1980s and have remained so regardless of disappointing evaluations of their effectiveness (Lipsey, 2009, 2010; MacKenzie & Souryal, 1994; Wilson, MacKenzie, & Mitchell, 2005). In fact, research finds them ineffective for adults as well, regardless of whether emphasis is placed on military-style discipline or treatment-oriented programs (Mackenzie et al., 2001a; Wilson et al., 2005). Boot camps using this paramilitary regimen are actually found to increase recidivism rates by 8% when compared with other discipline-oriented programs (Lipsey, 2009; Lipsey et al., 2010).
The “drill sergeants,” or boot camp staff, impose immense physical and psychological stress during the breakdown process to eventually build them back up in hopes of producing positive changes in behavior and attitudes (Mackenzie et al., 2001a). While research has found that juvenile inmates perceive their boot camp environment as more therapeutic than traditional juvenile correctional facilities, the same research has also found that the potential physical, emotional, and psychological abuse that may occur in boot camp environments is especially detrimental to youth with a history of abuse and family violence (MacKenzie et al., 2001a). Thus, boot camps exacerbate antisocial attitudes, anxiety, and depression for adolescents who have endured abuse and violence at home (MacKenzie et al., 2001a). While boot camps remain popular among policy makers, correctional officers, and the general public (Meade & Steiner, 2010), some states have closed boot camps perhaps in reaction to political pressure from complaints of abuse or documented deaths, such as the case of Martin Lee Anderson in Florida. Martin was a 14-year-old boy who was suffocated when boot camp staff used ammonia capsules, while punching him, because he would not continue to run due to exhaustion (Roberts, 2008). Still, as of 2009, 11 states continue to operate juvenile boot camps, while numerous privately run juvenile boot camps exist and states may contract with them (Meade & Steiner, 2010).
Secure Custodial Juvenile Correctional Facilities
More than 66,000 youthful offenders reside in 2,111 juvenile justice facilities in the United States (Hockenberry, Sickmund, & Sladky, 2013). Large-scale, secure, custodial juvenile correctional facilities tend to be where the more serious juvenile offenders are sent and become invisible because they are now “out of sight, out of mind” (Currie, 1998; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). This “away syndrome” is an approach that discourages finding alternatives to incarceration and surfaces when the system has given up on troubled youth because of frustration (Currie, 1998). These correctional facilities are often overcrowded, and concerns with custody functions typically outweigh treatment opportunities and the effective delivery of rehabilitative services (Roush & McMillen, 2000; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). As a result, these facilities are becoming more institutional-type settings, where fences, razor wire, and guards are more prevalent than treatment providers (Lipsey et al., 2010).
When secure juvenile correctional facilities lack treatment integrity or adequate treatment programming, they have very high recidivism rates (Blackburn, Mullings, Marquart, & Trulson, 2007; Lipsey et al., 2010; Lowenkamp, Makarios, Latessa, Lemke, & Smith, 2010; Trulson, Marquart, Mullings, & Caeti, 2007). Many studies on recidivism among institutionalized delinquents find that a lack of appropriately tailored treatment programming and trained, high-quality staff will yield no better recidivism rates than merely warehousing the youths as they pass the time (Lowenkamp et al., 2010). Therefore, when juvenile correctional facilities only focus on custody, control, and order maintenance, the only behavior modification that may occur is the enhancement of favorable attitudes toward crime and violence as juveniles adapt to delinquent subcultures within these facilities to survive and avoid exploitation or victimization (Palacios, 2009). MacKenzie et al. (2001a) found that youths in these traditional facilities had higher levels of anxiety and depression than youths in boot camps, which does not help to improve their chances of living a productive life outside of incarceration.
Viable Rehabilitative and Restorative Programs
Rehabilitation, as a correctional focus, entails using various forms of treatment and services in an effort to restore the offender to a pro-social status as a productive member of society (Cullen, 2005). Rehabilitation operates under the assumption that the correctional system should provide services to offenders to improve their lives (Cullen & Jonson, 2012). Recent research focused on determining “what works” have found that certain rehabilitation programs can effectively reform offenders and reduce their recidivism if implemented properly (Cullen, 2005; Cullen & Gendreau, 2001; Cullen & Jonson, 2012; Lipsey et al., 2010). Thus, interventions that embody therapeutic philosophies, such as restorative, skill building, counseling, and multiple coordinated services are more effective than deterrence-based programs that embrace philosophies of control, coercion, and discipline (Lipsey, 2009; Lipsey et al., 2010). A few evidence-based programs include (a) Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), (b) Family Functional Therapy (FFT), (c) Multisystemic Therapy (MST), and (d) Good Lives Model (GLM).
CBT involves exercises and instruction designed to modify the dysfunctional thinking patterns displayed by delinquent youth (Lipsey & Cullen, 2007). Meta-analyses have found that CBT programs, whether brand-name or generic, are highly effective interventions for reducing recidivism among juveniles (Landenberger & Lipsey, 2005; Lipsey et al., 2010). FFT is a short-term, family-based therapy for delinquent youth and their family, which is designed to improve within-family attributions, family communication, parenting skills, and social support while lessening dysfunctional patterns of behavior (Lipsey et al., 2010). FFT and other generic family counseling programs have proven to be highly effective at reducing recidivism if properly matched to the needs of the offender (Lipsey, 2009; Lipsey et al., 2010). MST is an intensive family- and community-based treatment that addresses multiple causes of juvenile antisocial behavior by seeking to improve a youth’s functioning at home, school, and in the community, and it also has positive effects on reducing juvenile recidivism rates (Lipsey et al., 2010). GLM is a strengths-based model of offender rehabilitation that complements the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) model (Andrews & Bonta, 2010), by incorporating RNR principles while also expanding the scope of rehabilitation beyond an emphasis on risk factors (Ward, Fox, & Garber, 2014; Ward & Maruna, 2007). Instead, GLM seeks to identify the offender’s primary human goods (e.g., experiences, states of being, and activities that individuals strive for to gain fulfillment and happiness), which are associated with higher levels of well-being, and then tailor a good lives intervention plan to aid the offender in acquiring primary human goods in pro-social ways, while simultaneously addressing criminogenic needs that might block the attainment of such goods (Ward et al., 2014; Ward & Maruna, 2007). GLM naturally aligns with restorative justice ideas and practices because of its sensitivity to relationships, agency, and the community (Laws & Ward, 2011; Ward et al., 2014).
Restorative justice (RJ) is a form of mediated reconciliation, whereby a process of conflict resolution is established by engaging all injured parties in discussion and negotiation (Van Ness & Heetderks Strong, 2007; Zehr & Toews, 2004). RJ programs seek to repair the harm done and address the reasons for the offense, while also promoting reconciliatory sanctions that are salubrious for the victim(s), offender(s), and other involved parties (Zehr, 2002). Reductions in recidivism are seen as a by-product, because RJ is done primarily because it is the right thing to do (Zehr, 2002). Three main principles are used to guide RJ practices: accountability, competency development, and public safety (Bazemore & Day, 1996; Center for Restorative Justice and Mediation, 1996).
When an individual commits an offense, they incur an obligation to individual victims, as well as the community (Zehr, 2002). Accountability for the offender means accepting responsibility for the offense and working to repair the harm caused by her actions (Center for Restorative Justice and Mediation, 1996). Competency development is aimed at the improvement of offenders’ lives through RJ practices. An offender should exit an RJ intervention as a more capable and self-reformed citizen than when she entered (Ward & Maruna, 2007; Zehr, 2002). Competency is not simply the lack of negative behavior, but includes providing resources to offenders so they may make measurable gains in educational, vocational, social, civic, and other areas to enhance their capacity to function as productive citizens, while undergoing moral repair and improving personal well-being (Bazemore & Day, 1996; Ward et al., 2014). Public safety is the final principle. The aim of this principle is to facilitate and cultivate new relationships with victims, schools, employers, community groups, and social agencies to strengthen the community’s capacity to prevent and control crime. Without active participation from the community, crime control is impossible (Zehr, 2002). Restoration allows for the harm to be repaired and for relationships within the community to be rebuilt just as the theory of reintegrative shaming endorses (Braithwaite, 1989).
Some effective RJ programs include (a) community conference models, (b) victim–offender conferences (VOC), and (c) family group conferences (FGC; Zehr, 2002). Bradshaw and Roseborough (2005) assessed the effectiveness of VOC and discovered that 11 of the 15 studies that they examined found reductions in recidivism. A meta-analysis also found that participation in victim–offender mediation lead to a lower likelihood of re-offense (Nugent, Williams, & Umbreit, 2004). Several other studies revealed that juveniles who successfully complete a FGC are less likely to reoffend in a 2-year follow-up, when compared with the control group (McGarrell, 2001; McGarrell & Hipple, 2007; McGarrell, Olivares, Crawford, & Kroovand, 2000). Indeed, after New Zealand revolutionized its juvenile justice system in 1989 to use restorative justice mediation programming, especially FGC, as the primary response to juvenile delinquency and crime, there has been a two thirds decline in juvenile offending (Mulligan, 2009; Zehr, 2002). RJ practices also allow juveniles an opportunity to repair the harm they have done to themselves, as well as help offenders, their families, and the community identify social, environmental, and psychological problems in need of intervention (e.g., anger management issues, substance abuse, evidence of neglect, physical abuse, or sexual abuse, etc.; Walgrave, 2004; Ward et al., 2014).
A Concluding Ethical and Cultural Critique
Given the findings from evidence-based research, it may appear perplexing as to why policy makers, end users, and the public continue to support punitive, deterrence-based programs for juvenile offenders. Numerous studies on public opinion have found that a majority of the public tend to favor rehabilitation over punishment when asked; however, the average citizen may not truly be able to understand the nuanced philosophical and practical differences that distinguish the two, and see no contradiction in simultaneously supporting them both (Bishop, 2006). Perhaps it is the reluctance of criminologists to engage themselves in public debate, and as a result, they relinquish that debate to politicians and other power brokers. In so doing, they deprive the public of knowledge that may influence social action and change (Ferrell et al., 2008; Pratt, 2009). Thus, some scholars have called for a “public criminology” (see Loader & Sparks, 2010).
The theoretical tenets underpinning “get tough” programs suggest that delinquency is a conscious product of free will. Thus, juvenile offenders should be treated as rational agents who knowingly and purposefully broke the law and must suffer the consequences as responsible individuals. Such logic neglects to account for developmental immaturity, lack of cognitive development, or related social and emotional deficits, which may impair a juvenile’s decision-making. Indeed, empirical research suggests that deficiencies in psychosocial development among juveniles are caused by their impulsivity, reliance on peer acceptance, lack of autonomy, inability to extricate themselves from criminogenic environments, and poor judgment in relation to future consequences (see Sellers & Arrigo, 2009). But can we completely reduce the complexity of adolescence and human nature to an atomized rational choice (Ferrell et al., 2008), in which a culture of control (Garland, 2001) is expected to single-handedly contain and manage social problems? Evidence-based research suggests we cannot.
This focus on individual agency and accountability is also compatible with neoliberal political-economic values that suggest individual success or failure is to be blamed solely on the individual, while possible deterministic forces (e.g., sociological, psychological, and biological factors) are overlooked (Harvey, 2005). Moreover, punitive responses to failure (e.g., delinquency and crime) reinforce an ethic of consequentialism to govern individual action and decisions (Williams & Arrigo, 2012). As such, normative behavior is expected to result from the threat and fear of consequence rather than rightness of action or soundness of character.
Change presents a unique opportunity for people. The hyper-reality 1 of our ever-changing world has outpaced peoples’ ability to situate themselves with the evolving values and standards of human decency appropriate for the times. In fact, this phenomenon leaves most in fear of change because newer, uncharted paths are ambiguous and may cause individuals to question the past commonly held value systems. However, juvenile justice reform does not appear so ambiguous in light of current research efforts. Yet, we must overcome the tendency to be overwhelmed by the complexity of systemic problems and instead embrace change and challenging political structures, rather than hold tight to often antiquated beliefs that stand as hallmarks of past conservative views of child-saving and perpetuate existing paradigms. Of course, efforts for change may be further thwarted by the manipulation and commodification of the perceived realities of punitive crime control programs for consumer consumption (e.g., the “Beyond Scared Straight” reality show). Such market-based media effects cultivate anxiety, fear, and even pleasure, while attempting to manufacture tacit consent among the public to maintain status quo social and political conditions (Ferrell et al., 2008). And more profoundly, this is the problem of how to manage risk without marginalizing juvenile identities (Arrigo, 2013).
Rehabilitative and restorative justice approaches to juvenile offending embody a relational ethic of care and a virtue-based philosophy whereby interventions are meant to repair and restore a youth’s moral character, and equip her with the ability to make virtuous decisions that are not governed by fear of consequence or obligation to duty (Arrigo et al., 2011). These approaches to delinquency prevention and intervention are essential when compared with punitive alternatives, yet they may hold even more promise if they were to be utilized in tandem (Cullen & Jonson, 2012; McNeill, 2009; Ward et al., 2014). Both rehabilitation and restorative justice focus on improving the offender, reducing recidivism, and increasing public safety, so combining these practices may help achieve these goals more effectively (Cullen & Jonson, 2012; Ward et al., 2014). When examined macrologically as a societal problem in which everyone is harmed by such punitiveness, this ethic of care and virtue-based philosophy necessitates a response to such “totalizing confinement” (Arrigo, 2013; Arrigo et al., 2011).
For example, the inclusion of mental health professionals, as an additional community representative in a RJ conference, may allow the professional to recognize therapeutic needs of the offender or victim and tie them to services within the community (e.g., substance abuse treatment, anger management, CBT, FFT, MST, GLM) to promote offender competency development, victim recovery, and public safety (Cullen & Jonson, 2012; Walgrave, 2004). By coupling restorative justice conferencing with another rehabilitative intervention (e.g., CBT, FFT, MST, or GLM) that shares the same major tenets, facilitators may increase the likelihood of successful reentry and desistance from juvenile delinquency and crime while using evidence-based practices (Cullen & Jonson, 2012; Ward et al., 2014).