The effectiveness of these methods is traced especially to two things. One is their identification of family dynamics that create problems among the youth. The other is their removal of the youth from peer environments in which he is surrounded by other offenders. Pr esent policies remain abusive and counterproductive. Mendel says that by its own figures, the present system simply is not working, nor is it the only workable or available choice.
Institutional punishments create problems.
The report blames the juvenile justice system for investing too heavily in institutional punishments aimed at scaring youth out of becoming criminals by putting them around other delinquents or hardened adult convicts. Institutional conditions harm many youths. Youth become more likely to be victims or perpetrators of violence, including murder and sexual assault, under harsh institutional conditions. Additionally, minority youth are more likely to be victims of violence at the hands of the corrections officers, and their civil and human rights are routinely violated. Laws stiffening the punishments prosecutors could use against juvenile offenders were passed throughout the early 1990s after an unprecedented peak of juvenile violence that was touched off by the introduction of crack and other new drugs in American cities in the 1980s.