Community Alternatives to Incarceration in Juvenile Justice: Behavior Change in the Short Term and Long Term

• In Event: Issues in Juvenile Corrections: Declining Numbers, Community Alternatives, Privatization, and Visitation

Abstract

Through a qualitative analysis of the Community Intensive Supervision Program (CISP), a neighborhood-based treatment program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my research examines the design and operations of contemporary community-based alternatives to incarceration in juvenile justice. I draw on 20 in-depth interviews conducted with youth committed by the court to CISP, as well as archival and observational evidence, to analyze how youth view the program’s attempts at changing their behavior. This paper explores the ways in which community alternatives both reproduce and reconfigure the juvenile court’s role in the lives of disadvantaged youth.

Author

• Michael Schlossman, William Paterson University of New Jersey