Juvenile Offenders in Adult Prisons, Week 1, Post #3

The observations of differences in treatment experiences reported by youth in adult prisons differed in many ways. Dr. Kupchik's research concluded that adult-facility respondents gave more favorable ratings to availability of institutional services. Dr. Kupchik's states that it was unexpected and interesting that adult-facility respondents report significantly greater availability than juvenile-facility respondents of an array of institutional services (Kupchik, 2007). The research suggested that respondents felt that they received good staff mentoring in juvenile facilities despite poor ratings for the availability of treatment and education services (Kupchik, 2007).

Concerns outlined in the article and from prior research identified problems and concerns by mixing youth populations with adults.Youth in adult facilities are much more likely than youth in juvenile facilities to be physically victimized and much less likely to receive helpful educational or counseling services (Kupchik, 2007).

Before reading this article, I would have thought that the respondents from the juvenile facilities would have rated a much higher level of availability of institutional services such as education, counseling, and treatment services. The reasons may be what research found in Arizona concerning our model of a juvenile correctional facility. The findings of the "failed" Arizona's implementation of a model juvenile correctional program was due in part for several reasons: the program faced political opposition to treating offenders; the maintenance of security interfered with treatment goals; treatment personnel did not receive sufficient training and traditionally authoritative relations between staff and juvenile inmates were too deeply entrenched in a correctional culture to be altered abruptly (Kupchik, 2007).

Research finding concerning the maturity of youth and their culpablitity have been a highly discussed topic over the last few decades. In the research of Steinberg, he suggests that a juvenile offender, owing to his or her developmental immaturity, should be viewed as less culpable than a comparable adult offender, but not as an actor who is without any responsibility for the crime (Steinberg, 2003). Society expects that a juvenile offender not be except from punishment, but I think that overall there is an expectation to try to rehabilitate a juvenile more than their adult counterpart.