Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Mater of Arts in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2002. / The present study entails a statistical description of juvenile diversion in Durban, KwaZuIu-Natal. The handling and treatment of juvenile offenders remains a considerable problem to governments across the world. South Africa is no exception to the rule. In the past, thousands of teenagers who committed crime ended up in gaol and have been kept there for months - in most cases together with adult prisoners - awaiting their trial. Whenever they appeared in criminal courts they were seldom legally represented. For centuries, imprisonment and whipping of juvenile delinquents have been standard sentences handed down by the courts. Lately, diversion of juvenile offenders as an alternative form of dealing with problem youth outside the forma! justice system gained increased momentum. TTie National Institute for Crime Prevention and Reintegration of Offenders (NICRO) was established and instituted as a South African Prisoners Aid Association, charged with the treatment of juvenile offenders diverted to it by the Youth Court with the primary objective of successfully treating and reintegrating such offenders back into the community as worthwhile citizens. This study is based on a statistical analysis of 275 cases of diversion at NICRO's Durban office during a six-month period, namely 1 July to 31 December 2000, for which purposes a specially devised information schedule was developed and used as a data capturing instrument. The study aims were as follows: • To render a theoretical exposition of the nature and extent of juvenile justice in South Africa. • To render a theoretical exposition of juvenile diversion as an alternative to formal treatment and handling of juvenile offenders as well as the role of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and Reintegration of Offenders (NICRO) in this regard. • To provide statistical information regarding juveniles diverted to NICRO in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. Data show that - • Durban youth court diverted the largest number juvenile offenders to NICRO (69.45%). • Most diverted juvenile offenders resided at Umlazi (32.0%), just south of Durban. • Only 23 juveniles live| with either one or both their biological parents. • Sixty-one juveniles came from a four-child family. • In 30 cases investigated were the juvenile offenders a "first child" in the family. • Theft seems to be the most popular crime committed by most diverted juveniles (80.0%), followed by drug offences (7.0%). • Two-hundred and forty out of275 juveniles diverted to NICRO were in fact "accepted" for treatment and rehabilitation by this institute. • The fact that juveniles did not want to accept responsibility for their criminal actions was the most popular reason for not having been accepted by NICRO. • About 76.0% of the juveniles diverted to NICRO were accommodated under the Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES). • Just over two-thirds of the juveniles were from incomplete families. • In 48.0% of the cases was only one of the parents employed. Recommendations that were put forward are firmly based on statistical information forthcoming from this investigation.

No description available.

The purpose of the study was to explore juvenile offenders' perceptions of the counseling relationship. Eight juvenile offenders who were on probation under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court participated in the study. Using a phenomenological methodology, two interviews with each participant were conducted in order to obtain participants' full descriptions of the phenomenon of the counseling relationship. The main research question was: What are juvenile offenders' perceptions of the counseling relationship? Sub-questions were: (a) What are the themes and qualities that account for how feelings and thoughts connected to the counseling relationship are aroused?, (b) What are the underlying conditions that account for juvenile offenders' perceptions of the counseling relationship?, (c) What are the universal structures (e.g. time, space, bodily concerns, physical substance, causality, relation to self or others ) that precipitate feelings and thoughts about the experience of the counseling relationship?, and (d) What are the unique qualities of the experience that facilitate a description of the "counseling relationship" as it is experienced by juvenile offenders? Participants' descriptions provided a range of descriptions that were summarized in three thematic categories: Themes Related to Participants, Themes Related to Counselors, and Themes Related to the Process of Counseling Relationships. In addition, a composite textural-structural description of participants' experiences provided a holistic description of the phenomenon as lived by participants. Participants' experiences provided a greater depth of understanding of the counseling relationship with this challenging population from the perspective of juvenile offenders. Implications for juvenile offender counselors and counselor educators are discussed. Implications for phenomenological methodology are also discussed.

The family serves as the primary socializing institution and a key predictor for the involvement of deviant activities for youths (Hoeve et al., 2011). Bonds between parent and child serve many purposes such as providing healthy attachment necessary to living a life without crime. Without bonds and feelings of love, deviant behaviors may ensue in children. The current study examined the impact of parental warmth on the prediction of desistance from crime among serious juvenile offenders using a cross sectional design. The sample of 14 to 17-year-old male and female offenders (N =1354) was composed primarily of ethnic minority youths. Results indicate that maternal warmth is a significant predictor for desistance across total, income and aggressive offending. However, paternal warmth is found to be a significant predictor for the income offending variety type only. These finding highlight the need for added supports for parents of juvenile offenders throughout the rehabilitation process. Advocacy, community resources and training efforts are needed to promote healthy parental/guardian relationships which will in return help juvenile offenders become successful desisters in the community. Additional research is needed to explore the changing dynamics of the family in society today as its impact on desistance from crime.

The aim of our study is to explore the thoughts and beliefs held by the professionals who work with the sentence youth service for young offenders, and how they feel about the same. How is the sentence youth service perceived from a professional perspective? How does the concurrence look like between the police, the social services and the prosecutor, when it comes to young offenders? What kind of difficulties/challenges do the professionals see in the possibility to effect the sentence youth service? The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consists of seven semi-structured interviews with two police officers, four social workers and one prosecutor. The results of our study indicate that youth service is a good sentence for young first-time offenders; the study also indicates that concurrence between the different professions is a success factor; furthermore the study revealed that it was very difficult finding adequate working places.

This thesis examines risk as it applies to children and youth. Specifically, this thesis examines the way that risk enables the governance of child and youth populations. The central argument of this thesis will be that risk creates the maltreated child as a potential delinquent. There is a vast body of literature which has examined a perceived relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile offending. On this basis, a high level of risk has been ascribed to the maltreated child in terms of their potential to engage in criminal and antisocial behaviour. This argument is positioned as a claim of truth, with the truth being that maltreated children are more likely to engage in juvenile delinquency than nonmaltreated children. It is this concept and this truth claim which forms the catalyst for the investigation in this thesis. The underlying assumptions of this thesis are derived from a governmental framework, based on the work of Foucault (1991). This states that the mentality of government comprises of three main factors, political rationalities, governmental programmes and technologies of government (Rose and Miller, 1992). This thesis argues that positivism can be understood as a political rationality, that legislation can be viewed as a governmental programme and that statistics can be conceptualised as a technology of government. Overall, the results of these three analyses combine to demonstrate the powerful ways in which risk is used to position the maltreated child as a potential delinquent. Consequently, it is established that risk is crucial to the ways in which children and youth find themselves targets of governance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-60).

No description available.

The treatment of juvenile offenders was the subject of much discussion and controversy in the first half of the nineteenth century and, from 1840 onwards, there was a vociferous campaign to ban imprisonment for children and to establish schools for delinquents where the emphasis was on moral reformation and rehabilitation rather than retribution. In 1854, as a result of the Reformatory Schools Act, juvenile reformatories became part of the criminal justice system and for the next three decades they were regarded by the Home Office as the key element in the fight against juvenile crime. Nevertheless, historians pay little attention to juvenile reformatories and there is little specific literature on individual institutions or the experience of reformatory inmates. This thesis, however, examines three Protestant reformatories for boys in Lancashire and attempts both to evaluate the reformatory system in the nineteenth century and to develop a greater understanding of the character and nature of the institutions themselves. The thesis examines the impact of the juvenile reform movement on social policy and legislation, particularly the contribution made by philanthropy and the developing, pivotal role of the institution. It considers the different methods used to establish reformatories and examines the origins of the schools in the study. It discusses the ethos and regime which developed in the institutions prior to 1880 and considers the effect on management methods of the powerful alliance formed by reformatory managers and Home Office officials. This is supplemented and illustrated using profiles of fifty inmates in two institutions. The thesis then examines changes in Home Office policy after 1880 and assesses the effect of these on reformatory practice at a local level. Finally it evaluates the role played by reformatories in Lancashire where twenty five per cent of such institutions were situated at the turn of the century. The thesis concludes that the reformatory system was an upper and middle-class response to the problem of juvenile delinquency, which was associated almost exclusively with the urban working class. It also suggests that, in spite of their name, individual reformatories were concerned primarily with training and rehabilitation rather than moral reformation. In addition the evidence indicates that, although the reformatory scheme was discredited elsewhere in the late nineteenth century, reformatory schools continued to play an important part in juvenile justice in Lancashire. These institutions continued to thrive because the majority of inmates did not commit further crime and magistrates believed that they gave value for money. This examination of nineteenth-century solutions to the problem of juvenile crime also illustrates that the present debate about delinquency is hardly novel and that current strategies were first tried out a hundred and fifty years ago.

No description available.