REPORTING ON VIOLENCE
John Reid and Mark Eddy, Oregon Social Learning Center, Eugene Oregon. "Can We Afford to Prevent Violence? Can We Afford Not To?" Paper prepared for the University of California Policy Seminar Crime Project, 1996.
California's three-strikes law has been estimated to reduce crime by 21 percent, at an annual cost of $5.5 billion. For less than a billion dollars, graduation incentives for youth and parent training programs can double that crime reduction, based on studies of current early intervention programs for youth.
People under the age of 20 are almost 10 times more likely to be victims of crime than persons over the age of 65. Groups at the highest risk of becoming victims - teenagers - are not the ones who generally express the greatest fear of crime.
In California, juvenile crime peaked in 1974, decreased through 1987 and has been increasing since but has not returned to the 1974 level. The increase and decrease follow the proportion of juveniles in California's population. It is likely that juvenile crime will continue to increase, given the projected future increase in California's juvenile population. Research also indicates that violent arrest rates might be increasing because of gang activity and the availability of firearms.
In California, the population of 11- to 17-year-olds - the ages of juveniles responsible for 99 percent of juvenile arrests - is projected to grow from 2.9 million in 1993 to 3.9 million in 2004. If arrest rates stay the same, the number of arrests for violent crime is estimated to increase from 21,590 juvenile arrests in 1993 to more than 35,000 juvenile violent arrests by 2004.
A minority of juveniles commit most of the offenses. In Orange County, between 8 percent and 12 percent of offenders account for 60 percent of juvenile and subsequent adult crime. In Los Angeles County, research shows similar results. These repeat offenders are arrested between 4 and 14 times during criminal careers. The younger the arrestee, the greater likelihood of subsequent arrests. However, most individuals arrested as juveniles will not be arrested as adults. A large portion of arrested adults were not arrested as juveniles. The majority of juveniles who do commit crimes will commit only one or two offenses. The experience of being arrested, spending a night in detention and facing their parents and a judge are enough to keep them from offending again.
Risk factors identified with juvenile crime include failure in school, family problems (history of criminal activity, sexual or physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, lack of parental control over a child), substance abuse (alcohol, other drugs), pattern behaviors (running away, stealing) and conduct problems (not outgrowing aggressiveness by early adolescence), gang membership and gun possession.
Guns were owned by 83 percent of juveniles in detention, compared with 22 percent of high school students. Juveniles in detention paid $50 or less for the guns, while students paid $50 to $100. Most of both groups said they carried a gun for protection. The firearms of choice were large caliber revolvers and large caliber semiautomatic handguns. Of those in detention, 63 percent reported committing crimes with guns; 40 percent had obtained a gun specifically for use in a crime. These data were obtained in interviews by National Institute of Justice researchers in large urban high schools and detention facilities in four states, including California.
Dr. Patricia Chamberlain
Clinical Director
Oregon Social Learning Center
207 East 5th Avenue, Suite 202
Eugene, Oregon 97401
541-485-2711
e-mail: pattic@oslc.org
Oregon Social Learning Center
Case study information derived from interviews with Dr. Patricia Chamberlain and from "Models of Community Treatment for Serious Juvenile Offenders," by Dr. Patricia Chamberlain and Dr. Kevin Moore, Oregon Social Learning Center.
Group programs for young adolescent delinquents have been shown to increase a child's antisocial behaviors, mainly because youth who associate with other deviant youth get into trouble. The Oregon Social Learning Center, a private nonprofit clinical and research organization which has been operating in Eugene for the last 25 years, developed a program in which one severely troubled youth was placed with two specially trained foster parents for four to 12 months. Since 1983, 150 teenagers have participated in the program. The program has been shown to be more effective and costs less than keeping an adolescent in a group home or jailed in a detention center.
Foster parents are trained to establish clear rules, apply discipline such as work chores and learn how to respond without anger to antisocial behavior. During treatment, the adolescent and his or her parents - biological, stepparents and foster alike - receive ongoing psychological counseling. A case manager supervises the entire program and meets with parents weekly. Parents and teachers can call the case manager for crisis intervention or psychiatric services any time of day or night. Parents are telephoned every day to obtain information on the youth's behavior.
In 1991, 40 adolescents were randomly assigned to the Treatment Foster Care (TFC) program, and 40 were randomly assigned to a group care program. The boys, ranging in age from 12 to 17 years, had, on average, 13 arrests each before joining the study. Half had committed at least one crime against a person. In group care, boys lived with 6 to 15 others who had similar histories of delinquency.
The Treatment Foster Care program seems incredibly labor intensive, but it costs less than keeping a juvenile in a group home or in juvenile jail, known as detention. After 12 months, youth in the Treatment Foster Care program had cost the state 70 percent of what it had cost the state to incarcerate them before entering the program, while those in group care cost the state 150 percent of what it had cost the state to incarcerate them before they entered the program. By 18 months, TFC children cost the state 143 percent less than standard group care children. At six months, 12 months, and two years after leaving the program, the TFC teens were arrested 50 percent less often than group care teens. The current total cost of six months of TFC per teenager is $10,808. Group care boys reported that they spent an average of 79 minutes per day unsupervised, while TFC boys reported an average of 12 minutes per day unsupervised.
The following is the story of one boy in the TFC program. Eddie, 14, had been in group care since age 7, when he was removed from his home. From the time he was a baby until age 6, Eddie had been sexually and physically abused by his father. One day, after his mother took the children and fled from his father, Eddie brutally attacked his 3-year-old brother. His mother, overwhelmed by her own circumstances, asked Oregon's Child Welfare Agency for assistance. He was placed in foster care.
Eddie lived in five foster homes in six months. Attempts to put him in long-term residential care, including adoption, failed. He was eventually put in a county detention facility, where he had been for eight months. He felt people hated him and were out to get him, he felt isolated from his peers, his moods swung erratically, he was impulsive, he was obsessed with violent material, he had angry outbursts that included physical attacks on others, he had sleep problems and he made inappropriate sexual comments. He had been charged with three counts of assault. Despite normal intelligence, Eddie had not attended public schools since the first grade.
In preparation for Eddie's placement, staff provided training for a foster parent, explained to Eddie how the system worked, introduced him to his therapist, obtained psychiatric consultation to review medication, set up school planning and consultation and initiated contact with Eddie's mother. After Eddie joined his foster family, family therapy with Eddie and his mother began. He had regular home visits, as well as psychiatric evaluation and medication management, school consultation and recreational activities that emphasized teaching him social skills to improve relationships with his peers.
During the first three months, Eddie had several crises in which he would become extremely angry and verbally abusive. He ran away for two to three hours at a time. The staff and parents applied consequences every time he broke a rule. In cases of extreme anger, he was put in detention for 24 hours. His individual therapist helped him understand that his outbursts were triggered by his feelings of failure, for which he had zero tolerance, and thoughts that others viewed him negatively. After six months, Eddie began to believe that his TFC family and staff valued and cared about him.
Eddie had problems in school at first. He began with one period a day and eventually moved to a full day of school. When Eddie was disruptive - swearing at teachers and students, running in and out of the classroom, refusing to move or be quiet - the school called the case manager, who removed him. During the summer, he received tutoring and attended a soccer camp. By the following January, he no longer swore in school and would not hang out with delinquent peers because he felt they would get him into trouble.
After 17 months, Eddie was able to be reunited with his mother. His aftercare program included continuing social skills training, individual and family therapy, his mother becoming involved in a support group for parents (she was eventually invited to become a paid parent advocate) and ongoing psychiatric medication management. Eventually, Eddie no longer needed his prescription of lithium and halidol.