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Vocational/Job Training for Delinquent Youth

Kevin Carlson
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Juvenile court officials can offer many different services and court ordered treatments

or detention, however with any of these punishments, the delinquent youth is removed from

school. The time that children are not at school directly impacts their chances for a successful

future. This is best told by The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJCP)

“Although we must hold youth who commit status offenses and delinquent acts responsible for

their behavior, we also need to provide them opportunities to learn skills that can help them

grow into productive, law-abiding citizens”. It is very important to insure that the youth knows

that they cannot commit crimes and get away with it, however they are just children and they

need to have a foundational education. Attending school is much more than just learning, the

students learn to interact with one another and how to deal with a whole variety of situations.

When a youth is not in attendance he or she will miss out on many different life skills that

everyone needs in order to be able to maintain a job and a career. Youth men and women

often become disconnected with the real world if they enter a residential facility for a period of

time. This only makes the feeling other them being different and extend from society stronger.

If a youth participates in an educational program about job possibilities it can help further help

them feel as if they can live in society as a “normal” person.

Job and Vocational training for delinquent youth is much different than many other

possible programs. A program that helps a delinquent youth continue his or her learning

process gives them a fair chances at exceling in society once they leave their program. These

programs do not look to help any certain type of delinquent youth. It does not matter what the

charge is against them or even what type of training or program they are doing. Job and

vocational training programs are often tagged on to residential or out-patient programs. This is
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due to the rehabilitation aspect, a delinquent youth still needs to address why they are at

where they are at and what behaviors got them there. So when juveniles are addressing the

issues that they have, they can also work on helping themselves in the future.

This is currently a big topic within the juvenile justice community as there is not very

many programs that work with job and vocational training. Having the option for youth to

attend some type of job training is not a new ideology at all. However it is very hard to set-up a

program like this, due to the stigma that a delinquent youth carries. Many companies and

employers are not going to want to hire and employ someone who has a past record. Especially

right after they finish the program or even allow them to work with the company when they are

still in the program.

The ideology and goal for job and vocational training for delinquent youths will vary

from program to program, and from employer to employer. Project CRAFT which is based

around all types of jobs within the construction industry offers a holistic approach. So for an

example this program still want to work on developing the whole person even though they are

not in a program for the crime that they have committed anymore. As each program will defer

from what they offer and what their methods will be, there is some similiarties when looking at

what has caused for job and vocation training opportunities to fail in the past.

In 2000 the U.S Department of Justice reported on several reasons for failure of job

training possibilities for delinquent youth. These being logistical and safety issues in detention,

lack of programmatic management, misperceptions of youth by employers and lack of

collaboration among workforce, social service, and justice agencies. These all can be easily seen
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as reasons why from the public view. There is no doubt that there is many issues with allowing

for someone who is in trouble with the law to go out and work. Flight risk are a reality when

allowing for a teen to leave the facility to learn or to go to work. However in a program instill in

the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, possible flight risk where discussed and they

did not think of it as a problem. They mentioned that the youth are often very nervous for

leaving the facility to go and work. For the aspect of failure being programmatic management

and misperceptions of employers, as discussed earlier it is difficult to find companies that

would be willing to have a program set up for the youth’s. There has to be able of planning and

collaboration to have a program in which there is training available or leaving the area to work.

Through the process of having a delinquent youth learning a job or vocational skill there

is many different theories that can be connected. However the social learning theory is very

prevalent. The social learning theory says that people learn from what is around them and

there is two different ways that they learn, differential association and differential

reinforcement. Differential association is when you learn values and behaviors associated with

crime. Differential reinforcement is the fact that rewards and punishments shape behavior. This

is often used to describe how someone gets into the crime scene themselves, such as being

around parents that took part in crime. However I am offering up the idea that this can be used

to learn the right way of doing things. Such as when a delinquent youth part takes in training

for a job or vocational training he or she can learning that working a job if the right way to

make money, as an example instead of selling drugs. If the program involves the youth going

out to actually work, the social learning theory can really be applied as they are hands on

learning how someone acts and actually does the work.

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Self-control theory can also be applied to job and vocational training for delinquent

youths. When in the programs that work on what they need to do to not re-offend the juveniles

are taught many different techniques to over-come desires. Which is all based around self-

control, and it will take a lot of self-control for the youths to keep a job or to further their

education. Waking up every morning and going to work can be a difficult things, and most

defiantly for a delinquent youth that most likely did not listen to anyone on what they should

do.

There is many different variations of possible schooling for the juveniles in some type of

facility. The counselors at these facilities will get in contact with the school that the delinquent

youth came from. This with dictate what the student needs to still accomplish and often his or

her test scores to see where they are academically. It is also not uncommon for the youth to be

sent homework or test that he or she is missing in the classes that they were enrolled in.

Education Portal is one of these online programs for youths, however this program can also

allow for testing in order to receive college credits in 33 different studies through the CLEP

exams. Here in Iowa there seems to very good communication between the correctional facility

and the school that the youth came from. The following quote is from the Iowa Department for

Education, and in the local delinquent application.

“The ____________ facility provides assurance and documentation, upon request, that
the following services are being made available, when and where applicable, to
neglected/delinquent residents at the facility:
1) Transition planning
2) Coordination of social, health, and other services
3) Business partnerships
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4) Parental involvement
5) Coordination with federal, state, and local programs
6) Coordination with juvenile justice programs
7) Work with probation officers
8) Individualized education programs
9) Alternative placements “
It is important to have all of these steps that Iowa offers when setting up an educational outlet

for a student that is not able to be in the school. The transitional planning and all of the other

steps that is offered are crucial to increase the chances that they youth will not commit crimes

again.

The goal is always to not have delinquent youths to grow up and be a lifelong criminals.

The Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections has a program called Skills for Work that is

instilled in its youth correctional facility. In this program the juveniles do a variety of manual

labor for various local government agencies. When working with these government agencies

their task include but are not limited to working landscaping, assisting in wildfire – prevention,

and helping out with the animals at the wildfire-refuge center. One of the workers at the

Arizona juvenile correctional facility is a big advocator for the program, and ones similar to it.

Branham has said “"It really teaches kids how to be successful in the real world” and “I want to

make sure the kids are also paying back for their incarceration.". Both of these quotes can

directly relate to the problems that we are having with juveniles. The juveniles are learning to

act and behave in the real world, when addressing the reason that they are in there. While still

being able to give back to the community. As mentioned before, Branham has spoken on the

issue of possible flight risk, it is here at the Arizona Juvenile Correctional facility where he has
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observed on how differently the juveniles typically act, than what it expected. If the youths are

nervous to go out and work when still being overlooked by the correctional facility, it can only

be imagined how out of place they feel when trying to get a job by themselves.

Also as mentioned previously Project CRAFT also has been a successful program for all of

those who are able to participate. This program still incorporates everything that many of

residential facilities discuss and focus on. The program focuses on a holistic approach that

combines career training and support services such as employability training, social skills

training, case management. There is a reason that this program works well, and this reasoning

is very evident. This program covers all aspects that cause for a juvenile to lack in. It helps set

them up with a job while insuring that they do not fall back to their old ways while providing all

of the services that they do.

Throughout the country there is juveniles that continue to be sent back to their home

without any new skills, and have fallen back in school. Job and Vocational training can hopefully

change this. The outcome for these programs is very reliant on the residential or out-patient

program that the juvenile is attending due to their crime. However hopefully more job and

vocational training programs will pop up, as them seem to work. Project CRAFT had nearly 300

members in a 4 year survey which resulted in a 26% recidivism rate. A job and vocational

program not only helps keep a juvenile from re-offending, it also benefits society. With more

youth men and women with jobs and making their own money, one could assume it would help

our society out greatly.

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Works Cited

Dustin Gardiner - Dec. 14, 2009 12:00 AMThe Arizona Republic. "Juvenile Offenders given Job
Training." Juvenile Offenders given Job Training.

Kirk, David S., and Robert J. Sampson. "Juvenile Arrest and Collateral Educational Damage in the
Transition to Adulthood." Sociology of Education. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 01 Jan.
2013.
Ocal. "Local Delinquent Application." (n.d.): n. pag. Iowa Department of Education. Web.

"Removing Juveniles from the Juvenile Justice System." Juvenile Justice & Youth Violence (n.d.): 88-
112. NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JUDGES.

"Vocational Training in Juvenile Detention: A Call for Action." Vocational Training in Juvenile
Detention: A Call for Action. - Free Online Library. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Youth Employment and Training Programs." Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention (1985): n. pag. U.S. Department of Justice. Web.