Federal policy toward delinquent youth: Legislative and programmatic milestones from Kennedy to Ford, 1960--1976.
Rosenberg, Heidi Matiyow
2008
Abstract
The 1960s brought a dramatic change in American approaches to meeting the challenges of juvenile delinquency as the federal government took on delinquency prevention at the highest level - the executive branch. During the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, federal policymakers engaged in juvenile delinquency program development that alternately focused on institutionally-based social reform, secondary prevention through community-based diversion programs, and improvements in the functioning of the juvenile justice system. Throughout these efforts, disputes over the degree to which federal policymakers should influence the development of local programs, and questions about how schools and other socializing institutions contributed to delinquency, influenced the directions such policies took. Despite this history of the federal government's involvement in this area, the story of federal antidelinquency legislative and programmatic planning has not been fully explored. This dissertation adds to our understanding by constructing a case study of federal policy regarding the problems of delinquent youth during the 1960s and 70s. My work investigates how federal policymakers conceptualized the problems of delinquent youth, and how the emerging influence of social science research in the delinquency field affected the policymaking process. My study is anchored by an analysis of the three major juvenile delinquency legislative packages enacted during this era: the 1961 Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act; the 1968 Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act; and the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. Using Congressional records and archival documents from the Presidential libraries and collections of the administrations I examine, I construct a more comprehensive narrative of federal involvement in juvenile delinquency policy and programming. While other scholars have discussed early federal antidelinquency initiatives as they related to broader youth policy developments, no study has focused specifically on federal programs for delinquent youth. This study reveals conceptual and programmatic shifts in federal delinquency policy from an early focus on broad social reform to one that concentrated on the post-arrest processing of juvenile offenders, and analyzes how federal agencies' programmatic foci and jurisdictional limitations shaped the evolution of delinquency policy during this era.Subjects
Delinquency Policy Delinquent Education And Delinquency Federal Policy Ford, Gerald R. Johnson, Lyndon B. Juvenile Delinquency Kennedy, John F. Legislative Milestones Nixon, Richard M. Programmatic Schools And Delinquency Toward Youth Policy
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