Education in Juvenile Detention Centers
In New Jersey, the Juvenile Justice Commission’s mission is to provide students with secure facilities, residential community homes, and access to high quality education. According to The Official Website for The State of New Jersey, the JJC’s educational experience focuses on “student-centered learning environments grounded in rigor, relevance, relationships and real world problem solving applications.” The program is designed for students to continue and pursue a higher education; it aims to lead each student to obtain a high school diploma or GED and to enroll in a community college. The faculty at JJC believe that all students have the ability to learn when given a proper instructional environment and an equal opportunity.
According to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, the juvenile justice system developed during the 19th century. Prior to that, “youth of all ages and genders were often indiscriminately confined with hardened adult criminals and the mentally ill in large overcrowded and decrepit penal institutions,” simply because there were no other options for minors. Reformers Thomas Eddy and John Griscom organized the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, which opposed housing juveniles in adult facilities. This led to the establishment of the New York House of Refuge, the first institution to house troubled minors. With the increasing number of delinquent youth, Houses of Refuge suffered similar issues as the adult prisons — overcrowding and inadequate conditions. To avoid this, reformers organized a new institution with the main focus on education. Reform schools were developed, which would later become a large part of the juvenile justice system as youth correctional institutions.
Today, JJC’s education program is said to correspond with the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards, but it is difficult when the juvenile education system and public school system are not in agreement. Vice President of Advocates of Children for New Jersey Mary Coogan shares her experiences with the education system and discusses what could be done to improve it. She acknowledges that there is a lack of communication between detention centers and public schools. She says a major hindrance to a child’s education is transferring school records. Other contributions to the insufficient state of juvenile education systems include unqualified teachers and lack of familial and educational advocates for the children. If these matters were refined, the transition process in which a student returns to public school would be — what Coogan likes to call — seamless. Education systems in youth correctional institutions must be reformed in order to successfully reintegrate juveniles into society.
There is often a lack of communication between public schools and detention centers that make the transition between the two very difficult. Coogan says the knowledge of a child responsible for a crime is confidential. The information is not initially shared with the public to avoid scandal. With the public not being aware of a child’s offense, the child’s school is not notified. According to Coogan, the initial reason for a child’s absence is excused as sickness. A child can be removed from school and confined for a day or for months; how long a child is incarcerated is never definite. Because of this uncertainty and to protect the child, detention centers do not ask for the child’s school records right away. The transition back to public school upon release is not easy as well. JJC would contact the school or a parent regarding the child’s transfer records — what they completed in the facility. However, the school is not exactly welcoming to the student. They may accept a child into the district but might transfer them to an alternative school.
Special education statistics are high amongst juveniles, and teachers are poorly trained or are not trained at all in working with children with special needs or with behavioral problems. Because there is a vast age range for juveniles, JJC tries to assess a child’s educational level by testing them beforehand. But with so many students, the student to teacher ratio is high so older students, regardless of their educational level, might be placed with younger students to accommodate the few number of teachers. Coogan says there have been situations in which a 21 year old was taught in the same class as a 12 year old. She believes teachers in the juvenile education program should be certified in special education or have a background in social work or psychology.
Oftentimes, a child is incarcerated for a naive misdemeanor that could have been avoided if the child has a responsible adult or caretaker. In Coogan’s discoveries, many parents or guardians fail to bring their children to their assigned court date, so the child is automatically housed in a detention center. In addition, Coogan believes each student should have an educational surrogate, someone to teach and encourage learning. There tends to be a lack of familial and educational advocates that could advise good behavior and the importance of education in and out of centers.
The importance of providing a proper education that corresponds with the public school curriculum needs to be shared. Society is familiar with the public school system. What society is not familiar with is the education system in youth correctional facilities, how the program works, and the transition process. In terms of creative engagement, one way to share this to the public is compare what society knows to what it does not know. Society knows how public schools work, but it does not typically know how detention centers run. To convey this, we can use visual components such as pictures and videos that depict the different learning environments. To further explore the transition process to and from detention centers, it would be interesting for someone who has had that first-hand experience discuss it, whether in a live event or a documentary-style film.
The JJC believes that all students have the ability to learn when given an appropriate educational environment. However, as discovered through research and from Coogan, the poor condition of the education system in youth correctional facilities do not give students a fair chance. Therefore, the system must change in order to successfully reintegrate students into society.
