It is becoming increasingly clear that diverting individuals from the juvenile justice system, which is consistent with public safety and still holds offenders accountable, is generally a best-practice concept. This can have a significant impact on public safety by increasing successful life outcomes for young people. A crime prevented is far better than a crime successfully adjudicated.
Having spent my career in the juvenile justice field and now serving as a Virginia state senator, I have gone through a complete metamorphosis in my thinking on how best to deal with juvenile delinquency. Throughout most of my career, my efforts involved laying out ground rules for youngsters on probation and holding them accountable to those expectations while trying to help them through counseling (individual, group and family), changes in their education platform or opportunities for placement in residential treatment environments.
Mostly, I was in the lesson-teaching business, which I now believe to be a simplistic and largely unhelpful approach to changing behavior and providing public safety. I should have been focused on providing them with skills and better capacity to deal with their circumstances.
[For more on this story by Sen. Dave Marsden, go to http://jjie.org/2017/09/27/get...s-worth-the-trouble/]
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