Dispatches from Juvenile Hall Quotes

“The research has shown that to be effective, treatment and corrections practices must do the following: 1. Match the dosage to the determined risk level. 2. Separate low-, medium-, and high-risk offenders into their respective groups. 3. Be community-based whenever possible. 4. Use a cognitive behavioral approach. 5. Provide gender-specific services. 6. Build on youth and family strengths. Let’s take a closer look at these steps.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“There is nothing magical about effective intervention strategies. They are based on over forty years of evaluations of hundreds of programs.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“The directive of the need principle is utilizing the knowledge culled from risk assessment tools to develop programs that will be effective based on the key areas strongly associated with delinquent behavior.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“This focus on what is working, rather than on what is to blame, helps engage families in the interview process. Despite dysfunction, most families have the same emotional goals.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“The weakness in the tool lies more in getting accurate and thorough information from youths and their families than in the tool itself.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“The goal is to provide services that systematically reduce the identified risk.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“The Lane County, Oregon, juvenile cost avoidance model, for example, looks at costs to victims, law enforcement, the courts, the juvenile justice system, and treatment, and calculates an average cost per juvenile criminal referral. Reducing those referrals yields an “avoidance” of that financial impact.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“one recent calendar year, 1,653 first-time juvenile offenders were referred to the court. A total of 878 (53 percent) of these offenders didn’t commit another crime over the next 12 months, and 501 (30 percent) committed only 1 or 2 crimes, which accounted for 31 percent of the repeat offenses. Two hundred and seventy-four of those offenders (17 percent) committed at least 3 more crimes after the first, and accounted for an incredible 69 percent of repeat offenses, a tally of 1,470 documented crimes. If a jurisdiction can reduce the rate at which a juvenile becomes chronic, in theory it can prevent thousands of crimes. For example, if the above jurisdiction had a chronic rate of 20 percent instead of 17 percent, it would have meant more than 600 additional crimes in a single year. But if by using valid risk assessment tools it had been able to reduce the chronic group by 4 percentage points, the area would have had 600 fewer juvenile crimes in that year, which translates to a cost avoidance of over $2.5 million. The cost avoidance model is used in juvenile justice to financially quantify the impact of preventing crimes.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Roughly 7 percent of the general juvenile population is referred to the juvenile justice department for criminal behavior. Of all those referred, about 15 percent become chronic offenders, and they commit the great majority of juvenile crimes.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Oregon uses a state-wide tool that assesses risk level by studying criminal attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors; negative peer association; substance abuse; school issues; family management problems; and individual behavior. These are the key areas that have been shown to correlate to risk level.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“it is never too early or too late to work successfully with high-risk youths and families. There are cost-effective prevention and intervention strategies for this demographic at every stage of development, regardless of whether youths are in the general community, the juvenile justice system, or some other institutional setting. The important thing is to identify those at risk, determine the level of that risk, and provide a well-researched response that matches that risk level.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Tyrone graduated with honors, earning a B.S. in sociology with a minor in psychology. He then applied and was accepted to the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, and received the CALI Excellence for the Future Award for his work when he graduated. Instead of practicing law, Tyrone and Rene—his wife, whom he met in Bible study class as an undergraduate—established Higher M-Pact, a nonprofit organization that provides tutoring, job training, counseling, and recreational activities to inner city youths in one of the most violent housing projects in Kansas City. I know that this will sound weird, but in many ways my paralysis saved my life. Before that, I was floating through the only kind of life I had ever known. I didn’t have a lot of direction or purpose. All I knew is that I wanted a better life than I had ever experienced, but I didn’t know what that would look like. I could’ve stayed floating, but misery doesn’t just love company, it loves pain. I didn’t want to be in misery forever.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“You can have forty-nine failures, and one success makes up for them all.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“From then on, I wanted to be a police officer like her. What she did was really probation work. I never did become a police officer, but I did earn my master’s degree in social work, and my dream changed. I have always felt strongly that people need to be held accountable for their actions, but in a way that helps them not repeat the past.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“was a psychology major in college and I was debating whether or not to go to law school when my sixteen-year-old sister was killed by a guy playing with a handgun. He was twenty or twenty-one years old.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“do know that if I have kids, I won’t be the kind of parent that she was. My kid will always feel safe and feel wanted, even if he was an accident. I’ll also make sure that he never, ever goes hungry. I don’t care what I would have to do, who I would have to hurt, and what laws I would have to break. My kid won’t ever go hungry.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“But when Roger started work over three decades ago, it simply seemed natural to him to go into neighborhoods to engage teenagers, rather than expect them to find him. He developed a program in the elementary and middle schools that brought officers into the schools to give students the chance to get to know them, and vice versa.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Employees of the juvenile justice system tend to be offender driven, often focusing attention on helping kids and families get the skills they need to prevent crime. In this way we hope to keep the community safe. The focus is clearly not on the individual needs of victims. Stephanie’s primary contact with victims was a result of damage to their property.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“oftentimes teachers don’t realize what kids deal with. I think that they think kids come to school and that’s all they have to do. I don’t think they have any idea that Johnny’s getting possibly slapped around at home, or that Johnny’s having to hold a part-time job to help pay the bills because Mom’s the only one working, and Dad’s on disability, or Dad’s disappeared.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“you saw a kid who was abused or neglected, you knew that there was a really good possibility that you would see them as a delinquent later on.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“There were numerous opportunities to intervene in ways that research has shown to be effective, but instead he was moved through the system in a predictable pattern, without serious attention paid to his particular needs. He also lacked any effective advocates on his behalf.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Her story also illustrates what doesn’t work in juvenile justice: her gateway to delinquency opened not because she was abused and began running away but because she, an abused low-risk girl, was placed in a living situation with high-risk, sophisticated criminal offenders.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Rachel’s “moment” didn’t arrive from her questioning the violence that had damaged her own life. It came from watching herself get closer to her mother’s legacy of abandonment. And in that awareness, she birthed an intolerance of passing that pain on to her own children.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Before the sex abuse charges were brought against Rachel for abusing her brother, she was placed in a foster shelter, a residential treatment facility for youths who are victims of abuse. Rachel was placed in the shelter for reasons of protection and safety.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Jasmine’s story also highlights the important role that just one caring adult can have in the life of an at-risk child. The fact that the Touchstone program manager, Mike, was there for her was the crucial difference between relapse and sustained recovery.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“this book will contribute to the national conversation about policies that actually succeed in preventing juvenile crime, practices that help to create long-lasting change among young offenders and their families, and alterations that the juvenile justice system can make in order to become a better steward of public funds.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“To accomplish this, corrections responses must be balanced with rehabilitative treatment. Effective treatment must address the risk factors that place teens in increased jeopardy of delinquency. This includes drug treatment, education reinforcement, job readiness training, positive peer association, and personal skills building.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“Since there is no one cause of juvenile criminality, there is no single approach capable of addressing all the risk factors, while at the same time holding the offenders accountable. The solution is a balance between punitive corrections responses and effective treatment that addresses the multiple risk factors in these children’s and their families’ lives.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“many of the most popular, and costly, programs have been shown to increase juvenile crime.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

“juvenile justice policies has not relied on science or research regarding effective strategies for reducing delinquency, but instead has been influenced by two strikingly dissimilar and unrelated disciplines: adult corrections and child welfare.”
― John Aarons, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System