Juvenile Centres

Juvenile detention centers house kids up to age 18 who have committed offenses ranging from habitually running away to assault. Adolescents are sent there by juvenile judges, rather than adult courts. Although they are restrictive facilities, their purpose is not necessarily punitive. Rather, their focus is intervention and rehabilitation.Juvenile detention centers are secure facilities where the children are kept away from society,while there, juveniles pose no harm to society,themselves or fellow juvenile residents. These centers may house anywhere from 10 to more than 100 juveniles at any one time. Their architectural design can range from campus-like with little resemblance to a correctional facility to prison-like.

The staff there in Juvenile detention are charged with assisting adolescents with their educational needs, as well as helping them make positive changes in their lives. The juvenile detention center in Franklin County, Ohio, has seven full-time teachers who provide instruction in math, science, social studies among other subject like English and special education. In addition to the educators, the center has a superintendent, a manager, corrections officers, councilors and tutors. The purpose of these individuals is to ensure that the needs of the residents are met.

Another purpose of a juvenile detention center is to provide programs and remediation for the youths who are detained. Programs such as as individual and group counseling and optional religious services are offered. Girl Scouts, victim's awareness, family responsibilities, career planning and work programs are among the activities offered at the juvenile detention center in Guadalupe Parkway, San Jose, California.

The centres are helpful because they can help adolescents, even those who are repeat offenders, turn their lives around before they commit crimes as adults and wind up in prison. Well-run juvenile detention centers help adolescents develop insight, change their behavior and develop goals for themselves that they can pursue when they are released. The best-run centers have employees who can serve as role models, showing teens that they have choices in their lives.

The overall goal of a juvenile detention center is to educate and provide a safe space where teenagers can take a timeout to understand their behavior and make a positive changes for the rest of their lives.

Back in Kenya the story is at times different since the centres are often crowded and the food given is either not enough or dirty and moreover the kids are more ill treated. Sometimes the conditions of the homes are as bad as those of police cells. On a more positive note,some good centres indeed do exist since they have indeed changed the lives of children. One such centre is Nafisika which runs different programmes in Kenya.The centre is now the Dagoretti Rehabilitation Centre which rescues girls who were neglected by their families due to unplanned pregnancies.Today the centre houses 99 girls and it prepares girls for the real world before their realeased into the real world.

 

Reference : www.livestrong.com

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