Here We Go Again - The Child Savers

By EDWARD PABON

INTRODUCTION One of the major current fads in criminal

and juvenile justice programming is diversion of offenders from the justice systems. Diver- sion has become very much part of the lan- guage of the justice process during the last decade. A number of observers have noted earlier the virtual explosion of such programs upon the scene. The level of interest in diver- sion has not, however, been matched by de- tailed knowledge of what actually occurs under the name. There is much disagreement about the nature of diversion as a process, discrepancies in the use of key terminology, and a good deal of other confusion about diversion. A related observation that has been offered widely is that almost nothing is known about the impact, if any, of these varied efforts all proceeding under the name of diversion. Elliott and Blanchard have observed:

While there seems to be widepsread agree- ment about the desireability [sic] of diverting youth from the juvenile justice system and a sizeable [sic] mobilization of federal, state and local resoiirces for the development of community diversion programs, there is as yet

Author’s Address: Edward Pabon, Director Prevention Division St. Agnes Home and

School for Children Route 340 Sparkill, New York 10976

no systematic evaluation of the consequences of diverting youth compared to simply releas- ing them or maintaining them in the justice system. The little research which has ad- dressed this question has focused exclusively upon a comparison of the recidivism rates with no attention to other postulated “effects” of this processing practice on youth. I

Given major impetus by the 1967 Presi- dent’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice and reinforced and emphasized by the 1973 Law Enforcement Assistance Administration sponsored Na- tional Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, attempts have been made to encourage judicious non- intervention as an alternative to processing youth into the juvenile justice system. This approach appears to be, at least in theory, opposite to the child-saving philosophy of an earlier generation, and it has found practical expression in a wide variety of activities.

Contemporary programs of delinquency control/treatment can be traced to the enter- prising reforms of the child savers who, at the end of the nineteenth century, helped to create special judicial and correctional in- stitutions for the labeling, processing, and management of troublesome youth. Child saving was a conservative and romantic movement with the essential preoccupation of the recognition and control of youthful deviance. It was not so much a break with the past as an affirmation of faith in traditional

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EDWARD PABON

institutions. Parental authority, education at home, and the virtues of rural life were em- phasized because they were in decline at this time. The child-saving movement was, in part, a crusade which, through emphasizing the dependence of the social order on the proper socialization of youngsters, implicitly elevated the nuclear family and, more espe- cially, the role of women as stalwarts of the family. The child savers were prohibitionists, in a general sense, who believed that social progress depended on efficient law enforce- ment and strict supervision of children’s lei- sure. The movement brought attention to and, thus, invented new categories of youth- ful misbehavior which had been previously unappreciated or had been dealt with on an informal basis.

In 1967 the President’s Commission ad- vised that the juvenile justice system had largely failed. A crucial criticism was that contact with the juvenile justice system was potentially more harmful to youths than no contact at all. The theorists, drawing upon the popular labeling theory approach, viewed interactions of youth with the system as stig- matizing and perhaps generating more severe criminal activity. The Commission’s major recommendation was that whenever possible youths should avoid juvenile justice proces- sing and that alternatives should be developed outside of the existing system. Proponents of diversion reflect the growing awareness that the system, as practiced in America, has fall- en far short of early expectations. An earlier era had seen t h e juvenile courts as a mechanism for diverting youth from full ex- posure to the criminal justice system. Half a century later the diversion emphasis had shifted and processing by the juvenile justice system had itself come to be viewed as poten- tially harmful and to be avoided whenever possible.

Diversion is associated with the movement away from incarceration of juveniles in cor- rectional institutions and the ostracism upon release, receiving impetus from the same pressures that account for the immense popu- larity of alternatives to incarceration and

community-based treatment. One of the most popularly advocated and widely known program concept is the youth service bureau. The concept was almost casually introduced in 1967 by the President’s Commission, which recommended that such bureaus be established in the community to provide and coordinate programs and services for delin- quents and nondelinquents. Other ap- proaches to the handling of juvenile without resorting to juvenile justice processing have included school-based programs, public ad- ministrative boards on the welfare model, neighborhood juvenile conference commit- tees, and community organizations4

The contemporary rhetoric and recom- mendations favoring diversion found legisla- tive expression in the recently enacted Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. While the legislation did not resolve the conceptual confusion that the term has caused, it did provide for a level of federal responsibility which juvenile justice as a whole badly needed. As the 1974 legislation pointed o u t

States and local communities which experi- ence directly the devastating failures of the juvenile justice system do not presently have sufficient technical expertise or adequate re- sources to deal comprehensively with the problem of juvenile delinquency, and exist- ing Federal programs have not provided the direction, coordination, resources and lead- ership to meet the crisis of d e l i n q ~ e n c y . ~

NEW DIVERSION Before and after the Juvenile Court Act of

1899, police and later probation officers and judges had engaged in screening, sentence leniency, and diversion. The existence of traditional diversion as a time honored prac- tice of legal authorities accounts for much of the present confusion over the term diversion. Faced with a dispositional dilemma, they counseled, warned and released, dismissed cases, threatened, kept an eye on a youth, suspended prosecution, referred to commu- nity service agmcies, and so on. The new diversion has provided officials with specific, usually formal programs to divert a youth to.

42 Juvenile Justice I February, 1977

HERE WE Go AGAIN - THE CHILD SAVERS

Traditional diversion is being replaced, co- opted, andlor expanded by the more formal programmatic emphasis of new diversion.

The definitional understanding of the con- cept is further compounded when one begins to view the practical implementation of the new diversion. The negative aspect of the critique of juvenile justice as an institution one should be divertedfrom has been inter- preted as a positive critique implying that the system should engage in diversion to some- thing - often a program staffed andlor con- trolled by the same system. Caught in web of definitional variations, the concept is further blurred as to the new diversion in terms oftrue or minimum diversion. True diversion has been defined as the processeslprograms de- veloped to turn aside a juvenile from further processing by the official juvenile justice sys- tem to a program outside the system. New diversion has also been defined as minimiza- tion of penetration whereby juvenile justice personnel attempt to reduce the intensity and degree of processing even though juvenile- system contact is maintained.

Whatever form the process of diversion takes, the implications are the same - diver- sion to something. It is interesting to note the enthusiasm with which the new diversion has been received by agents of the system. The enormous amount of federal dollars poured into the new diversion has not been ignored by child welfareljuvenile justice practitioners.

PROGRAM IMPACT A nation-wide survey of youth service

bureaus conducted by the California Youth Authority noted that it is impossible to prove that any significant number of youths have been diverted from the juvenile justice system by such programs. The contribution of youth service bureaus to reported declines in juvenile arrests and referrals to court, the re- port states, is virtually ~nmeasurable .~

Gibbons and Blake have reviewed a number of diversion programs that have been subjected to evaluation of some kind. The studies summarized in that assessment in- clude Project Crossroads in Washington,

D.C.; Alternate Routes in Orange County, California; 601 Project in Sacramento County, California; and the Pivotal Ingre- dients of Police Juvenile Diversion Programs Project in Los Angeles County. They also reviewed the Pre-Trial Intervention and Di- version Project in Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa, California; an evaluation of two diversion projects by Elliott and Blanchard; and a study of diversion programs employing volunteers, one in Denver and the other in the Midwest8

~

“The main conclusion to be drawn from these studies collectively is that no firm statements are in order regarding the im- pact of diversion on juveniles. These evalu- ation studies were plagued with serious re- search methodology problems. Clearly, there is insufficient evidence in the nine studies examined by Gibbons and Blake for one to have much confidence in diversion arguments and contentions.”

The main conclusion to be drawn from these studies collectively is that no firm state- ments are in order regarding the impact of diversion on juveniles. These evaluation studies were plagued with serious research methodology problems. Clearly, there is in- sufficient evidence in the nine studies examined by Gibbons and Blake for one to have much confidence in diversion argu- ments and contentions.

WIDEN THE NETS The‘advocates of diversion in the Presi-

dent’s Crime Commission Report generally based their arguments upon labeling theory. Contact and processing of a juvenile by the juvenile system was viewed as potentially stigmatizing and to be avoided whenever pos- sible. The gist ofthe labeling theory approach is that the conferring of labels is stigmatizing and potentially harmful to the individual. Practitioners have interpreted labeling theory to mean the avoidance of official labels. It is

February, 1977 I Juvenile Justice 43

EDWARD PABON

not at all clear, however, that informal pro- cesses and unofficial labels are less stigmatiz- ing for the juveniles in question. If indeed informal processes and programs are as stig- matizing as more formal experiences, diver- sion as true diversion or minimization of penetration is certainly of doubtful value.

Existing research, beset with methodologi- cal problems, has not demonstrated that doing something (treatment, services) is necessarily better than doing nothing. The research findings, although impressionistic, do indicate greater numbers and types of juveniles contacted by agents of social control after the implementation of diversion pro- grams. Gibbons and Blake indicate that “to date it appears that diversion, in practice, frequently has had the effect of widening the nets, rather than effecting true diversion. The police are employing diversion as an alterna- tive action where formerly they would simply counsel and release a youngster. Diversion, growing out of the sociologist’s recommenda- tions of ‘radical nonintervention,’ ‘benign neglect,’ or ‘judicious nonintervention,’ have become perverted in practice into a stratagem that swells the population of acted-upon of- fenders. ”9

Cressey and McDermott, in a study of juvenile diversion for the National Assess- ment of Juvenile Corrections, report that if true diversion consists of removal of offenders from the purview of juvenile justice, then little true diversion exists. Most of the juvenile justice system representatives they interviewed tended to identify various action programs as diversion if they kept juveniles out of the official bureaucracy or reduced the stigma attached to traditional processing. l o

In one Eastern metropolitan area of the United States, a fiscal crisis has curtailed the expansion and growth of the private, non- profit child welfare agencies which have tradi- tionally provided the services to the city’s troubled youngsters. With the exclusive availability of federal funds in this area, the child welfare agencies have turned their atten- tion to securing funds for so-called juvenile diversion programs under their auspices.

However, priority for intake appears to in- volve the traditional sources of referrals for these agencies, such as the local public child welfare agency, the schools, and the local community agencies. It is obvious that mil- lions of federal dollars are being expended to widen the net without severely effecting the flow of juvenile justice clients.

CONCLUSION It is useful to remember that reforms ini-

tiated at the turn of the century also began by creating an alternative community-based re- sponse to the traditional system of social con- trol. During the next seventy-five years, we have been creating a modern juvenile controlltreatment system to regulate the con- duct and character of America’s youth. We have accomplished this while believing that we were primarily engaged in saving or re- habilitating youths. Net widening appears to occur mainly at the level of decisions con- cerning the needs of what would be consid- ered status offenders; hence, more youths are drawn into the system. Because past evidence indicates that this category of youth is most likely to be detained, to remain in detention longer, and to be institutionalized in state institutions for a greater length of stay; it is possible that programs operated under new sponsorship and titles may recreate tradi- tional, costly examples of restraining institu- tions.

FOOTNOTES ‘Delbert Elliott and Fletcher Blanchard, “An lmpact

Study of Two Diversion Projects” (Paper presented at the American Psychological Association meetings, Chicago, 1975). p. 2.

2Edwin Lement, Instead of Court: Diversion in Juvenile Justice (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Mental Health, 1971).

”nthony Platt, “The Rise of the Child Saving Move- ment A Study in Social Policy and Correctional Re- form,” The Annals 381 (January, 1969) :21-38.

4Lement, Instead of Court. SRobert McDermott and Andrew Rutherford, “Juvenile

Diversion, Vol. I, Final Report, Phase 1,” National Evaluation Program (University of Minneosta, 1976).

61bid., p. 10.

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HERE WE Go AGAIN - THE CHILD SAVERS

’William Underwood, A National Study of Youth Ser- vice Bureaus (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Youth Develop- ment and Delinquency Prevention Administration, 1972).

*Don C. Gibbons and Gerald F. Blake, “Evaluating the Impact of Juvenile Diversion Programs,” National Criminal Justice Educational Development Project (Portland State University, Oregon, 1976).

91bid., p. 5. ‘ODonald R. Cressey and Robert A. McDermott, “Diver-

sion from the Juvenile Justice Systems” (A report ofthe National Assessment of Juvenile Corrections, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of- fice, 1973).

February, 1977 I Juvenile Justice 45