The Juvenile Justice System and Young Offenders' Mental Health

This report examines the juvenile justice system's approach to young offenders with mental health issues, highlighting the system's evolution from a rehabilitative to a more punitive stance. It discusses the challenges of providing mental health services, including inadequate resources, lack of training, and administrative capacity. The report emphasizes the need for integrated care models that involve families, community resources, and trained professionals, moving away from reliance on incarceration towards community-based alternatives. It also underscores the importance of redefining the role of juvenile justice to focus on identifying mental health needs and diverting young offenders to community resources, advocating for a systemic and collaborative care unit to improve outcomes for youth with mental health problems. The report references several studies and government reports to support its claims and recommendations.

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Youth offenders/ juvenile justice system, focus on young offenders with mental health issues.
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During the last decade, much reliance has been placed on the juvenile justice system for fulfilling
the demands of juvenile offenders having mental health problems. Owing to this rising
propensity, research is undertaken to explore the efficiency of different interventions and
approaches along with treatment programs having different levels of success. At the same time, it
is suggested by the present literature that as a result of internet-related problems involved for the
youth in system having mental health matters, there is a need for a dynamic system of care that is
capable of going beyond treatment.
Introduction: the juvenile justice system is at present facing the task of giving mental health
valuations and cure services to the young, particularly in view of plans on juvenile justice system
for doing so. In this regard, Garascia (2005) has pointed out that originally the juvenile justice
was a preventive and rehabilitative approach, which emphasize on the needs and rights of the
children as compared to give encouragement to them. Therefore, it needs to be mentioned that
the ultimate goal of juvenile justice system, according to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention Act, 1974 was to keep young persons away from formal, retributive processing that is
a part of adult justice system. They result, in turn, was the use of community-based programs
instead of the larger institutions. During 1980s and 90s, there was an interesting shift presence in
the treatment of juvenile offenders by the justice system. Before 1980s, juveniles were
considered as rehabilitative. But on account of a short-lived rise in forceful crime, the main goal
became the protection of the community. The consequence was that an approach was developed
by the juvenile justice system according to which punishment/criminalization perspective was
used over the rehabilitative/medicalization standpoint. In the same way, the education system
adopted zero-tolerance attitude, during the early 1990s, nearly half of US States revised their

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laws which allowed that juvenile offenders can be prosecuted simply in adult courts. Similarly,
more punitive laws were introduced for the purpose of dealing with adolescent crime.
Even if the youth involved in vicious as well as non-violent crimes at a lower rate, it is
mentioned by Harms (2002) that the number of young persons who were processed through the
system also surged significantly. For example, in 1960, nearly 1100 delinquency cases were
possessed each day, while in 2009, nearly 4000 pregnancy cases were handled by the juvenile
courts. Similarly in 2013 the number of delinquency cases processed daily was around 2900.
According to an estimate by the National Juvenile Justice Council, the number of these cases
went up by 30% between 1985 and 2009. At the same time there was a decrease of 9% between
1985 and 2013. More particularly the delinquency cases involving drug offenses, public order
offenses and person offenses increased while there was a decrease in property offenses. Between
1985 and 2013 the number of delinquency cases in which detention was involved reached its
peak in 2002. However, it decreased by 44% through 2013 and reached its lowest level since
1985. Therefore NJJC provides that despite the decrease in the number of delinquency cases in
which detention was involved, the proportion of cases detained was hired in 2013 (at 21%) as
compared to 1985 with 19%. Between 1985 and 2013, the chances that a delinquency case was
going to be in formerly handled also decreased significantly. Even if there was an intermediate
upsurge, 31% of all the delinquency cases caused adjudication or waiver to criminal court. This
was much similar to 1985 with 30% of all cases. In view of the situation, it can be said that some
efforts were being made in the last few years for decreasing the number of youth cases that were
being processed in the juvenile justice system. However, this can be achieved by processing the
cases in a more informal manner or shifting the cases to adult courts.

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At the same time, it has been noted by Trupin and Boesky (1999) in view of this shift, there are
several juvenile justice systems, who remain unequipped for dealing with the actual needs that
are present in case of the youth with mental health complaints. It has been living investigations
that have been conducted by the US Department of Justice that the mental health services for
youth that are typically offered by juvenile justice are generally inadequate or basic are
unavailable at all. In the same way, in the report of Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile
Justice (2011), it has been mentioned as the barriers present in providing adequate services for
this purpose include the lack of administrative capacity, insufficient resources, lack of training
and appropriate staffing. As a result of the lack of research in this field, along with insufficient
policy development, inadequate models of care and ineffective experience and training provided
to the staff along with inadequate practice, the juvenile correction personnel have to face
obstacles in their ability to offer satisfactory services to the young offenders with mental health
problems.
In view of the research conducted in this regard, it can be stated that recently, it has become clear
that although incarceration and detainment may be essential in case of small number of juveniles,
but generally they have more detrimental effects which include recidivism and continued
offending. In the same way, from the point of view of economic and long-standing benefit, the
alternatives based on community were considered to be more successful in case of rehabilitating
the youth. Even in case of the young persons who have committed violent and serious crimes.
For this purpose, it is required that an integrated system of care should interfere in cases of
juveniles in a collaborative manner for the purpose of fulfilling the interrelated requirements of
each individual youth. Apart from diagnosis, the youth who are present in the juvenile justice

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system need diverse stages of care. Therefore, rehabilitation needs an effective process of
screening and evaluation, along with various treatment options. The models of treatment have
proved to be more efficient when they include families and youth, trained professionals, and
when these programs are based on community and deal with the problem behaviors and lay
stress as a systemic unit. At the same time, it has also been revealed by the research that the
mental health requirements of delinquent youth, should be the joint responsibility of the
community. This requires the redefining of the role that displayed by the juvenile justice system.
This role needs to be narrow, concentrated and it should be aberration with wider community for
fulfilling the needs of offending youths who have mental health problems. In some states, the use
of Juvenile Crisis Intervention Teams can be considered as an initial step taken in this regard for
diverging and referring the young offenders to the resources that are present in the community.
At the same time, the initial role of juvenile justice system ought to be the identification of
mental health needs and diverging the young persons to community.
Therefore, it needs to be mentioned in the end that as against focusing the resources on the
creation of new interventions within the system, it has been indicated by the recent research that
steps like redefining the role of juvenile Justice, mental health education and child protection
system as a systemic and collaborated care unit can prove to be vigilant in rehabilitating the
youth offenders, particularly those with mental health problems.

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References
Garascia J.A. (2005) The price we are willing to pay for punitive justice in the juvenile justice
system: Mentally ill delinquents and their disproportionate share of the burden. Indiana
Law J.;80:489–515
Harms P. (2002) Detention in delinquency cases, 1989–1998. Off. Juv. Justice Delinquency
Prev. J. Fact. Sheet;1:1–2
Trupin E., Boesky L. (1999) Working Together for Change: Co-Occurring Mental Health and
Substance Use Disorders Among Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System: Cross
Training, Juvenile Justice, Mental Health, Substance Abuse. The National GAINS Center;
Delmar, NY, USA
Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice. (2006) Federal Advisory Committee on
Juvenile Justice Annual Report 2006. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention; Washington, DC, USA
Grisso T., Barnum R. (2000) Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument, Second Version: User
Manual and Technical Report. University of Massachusetts Medical School; Worcester,
MA, USA
Gottsman D., Schwarz S. (2011) Juvenile Justice in the U.S.: Facts for Policymakers. National
Center for Children in Poverty; New York, NY, USA
Colins L., Vermeiren R., Vreughenhil C., VandenBrink W., Doreleijers T., Broekaert E. (2010)
Psychiatric disorders in detained male adolescents: A systematic literature review. Can. J.
Psychiatry; 55:255–263

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