CUNY Brooklyn College Youth Incarceration Discussion
Writing Assignment
State legislatures continue to seek budget-friendly alternatives to the incarceration of juveniles. The legislatures, however, want to ensure their money is being well spent. To that end, you have been asked to rate the effectiveness of a local or national organization/non-profit organization/after-school program that is based on the prevention or rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.
These programs can be intervention-based, in that they attempt to prevent delinquency, or they can be rehabilitative, in that they seek to rehabilitate offenders. Many community-oriented diversion programs have websites that provide more than enough information for you to complete this assignment. One common program in Texas schools is DARE or Drug Abuse Resistance Education.
As a final alternative, the federal government measures the effectiveness of many such programs and publishes the results online. Some questions to consider as you complete this assignment are: What is the intended population? What standard are you using to measure the effectiveness? Why do you think it is effective and worthy of continued funding? Why is this a better alternative than incarceration? Is this approach too soft on crime?
