Correctional Facility

A correctional facility is any residential facility with construction fixtures and/or staffing models designed to restrict the movements and activities of those placed in the facility. It is used for the placement of any juvenile adjudicated of having committed an offense, or, when applicable, of any other individual convicted of a criminal offense.

In October2000, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention administered the first-ever comprehensive census of juveniles in correctional facilities. The Juvenile Residential Facility Census determined that, on any given day, there are some 3,600 correctional facilities housing more than 110,000 juvenile offenders throughout the United States (Sickmund, 2002).

The basic characteristics of these 3,600 facilities—including their size, structure, security arrangements, type of programming, and ownership—are highly variable. Within a single State or jurisdiction, secure correctional programs may range from military-style boot camps to large, State-run training schools, to intimate family-style group homes.

Research has shown that the most effective secure corrections programs serve only a small number of participants and provide individualized services (Howell, 1998). Missouri, for example, has achieved “exceptional” reductions in juvenile recidivism by abolishing its State reform school and replacing it with a network of small group homes emphasizing personal attention and therapeutic treatment (Mendel, 2003).

Lipsey (1998) performed a meta-analysis of 83 studies of interventions with institutionalized juvenile offenders and found that “recidivism effect sizes for the different treatment types were most consistently positive for interpersonal skills interventions and teaching family homes.” Behavioral, community-based residential, and multiple service programs also appeared to reduce recidivism, but the small number of studies in each category makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions.

Large, congregate-care facilities, such as training schools and boot camps, have not proven especially effective at reducing recidivism (Howell, 1998). In the words of one juvenile justice expert, “virtually every study of recidivism among youth sentenced to juvenile training schools finds that at least 50 to 70 percent of offenders are arrested within 1 or 2 years after release” (Mendel, 2003).

Despite such statistics, most incarcerated youth are still sentenced to traditional training schools and other large correctional units housing 100 to 500 individuals. Many of these large, congregate-care facilities suffer from overcrowding and unsafe conditions. A national survey of juvenile detention and correction facilities conducted by Abt Associates in the early 1990s found that more than 75 percent of youth incarcerated nationwide are housed in facilities that violate Federal standards related to living space. Such crowded conditions are also associated with high rates of injury and suicidal acts (Parent, 1994).

Recent studies also show that many of the Nation's juvenile offenders are being kept in overcrowded, secure facilities even though they could be safely maintained in less secure settings. In 1999, only one fifth of all juvenile offenders had committed a violent felony offense, but 70 percent of these youth were held in locked facilities (as opposed to the staff-secure facilities favored in national accreditation standards).

In recent years, there has been a spate of media reports about the deteriorating conditions in “juvenile jails,” and Amnesty International, the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, and the American Bar Association have all called for significant reform of the country's juvenile correctional facilities (Hubner and Wolfson, 1999). Within the juvenile justice system, there has been a concomitant emphasis on the need for graduated sanctions and alternatives to detention that will keep juveniles out of secure facilities for as long as is safely possible (Howell and Lipsey, 2004)

References

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