In Los Angeles County, California, the Probation Department is one of the largest bureaucratic organizations in the Unites States. Within this Department, there are adult and juvenile sectors. The juvenile sector is comprised of 3 juvenile hall facilities, and roughly about 23 residential treatment facilities, also referred to as camps, and lock down placements for juveniles with a vast array of social, and psychological issues. The facility that I attended was Central Juvenile Hall, which is located in East Los Angeles, California. Central Juvenile hall was established in 1912, and is the largest of the three probation juvenile halls (Department, 2016). It is also the main facility where there are specialized units that do not exist at any other facility. These units include the Enhances Specialized Unit (ESU). This unit houses juvenile’s females and males on opposite sides who are incapable of functioning in regular living unit. Some of the issues that they are challenged with stem from their aggressive and volatile behaviors (fighting, hitting other juveniles or staff), self-inflicting behaviors (scratching and cutting themselves), emotional deregulation, and other issues pertaining to social, psychological, challenges. The Enhanced Specialization Unit is so significant to this particular assignment because I was able to interview one of the Detention Services Officer (correctional officer) that works at Central and in this unit to gather insight into the law enforcement agency perspective, and to determine the individual perception, and perspective of the work that transpires in a juvenile justice system. In this paper a detailed interview with the detention services officer will be provided as a foundation in analyzing the experience of working in the juvenile justice system, and a comparison of the interview to this writers perceptions of working in the justice system will be made to scholarly literature learned in this course.
Interview with a Detention Services Officer
The challenge of conducting an interview with a person that works at a government agency is gaining access to enter into the facility. For this reason the interview was conducted at the beach, in downtown long beach. The beach was selected because I wanted an environment that was completely contrary and less stressful to adequately conduct and interview with the officer. After proposing, that the interview be held at the beach the officer graciously accepted. Four different aspects were discussed in this interview to gather an insight to officer perceptions of their jobs in relation to the duties, work environment, colleagues, and their future at the facility.
Duties of a Detention Services Officer
On July 6, 2016 at approximately 2:00pm, this writer met with Officer Banks. Officer Banks has worked at Central Juvenile Hall for 8 years. Seven and a half of those eight years, she has worked in the Enhanced Supervision Unit (ESU). Initially she was assigned to work with the regular female population, and after 5 months of being hired at the facility she was reassigned. When asked about her feelings of being reassigned, she expressed that she was angry because she had barely gotten to the facility before she was assigned to work with a difficult population. Interestingly, Officer Banks reassignment was contrary to the Officer capabilities of working in this difficult unit because any officer that worked in ESU was supposed to have a year of experience. Officer Banks expressed, “though the work was mentally draining, the best part of working in ESU was the team of officers that I worked with”. Officer Banks works with seven other ladies. One being a senior detention officer. Officer Banks works on the pm shift, which is 2pm to 10pm, and workdays are Tuesday through Saturday, with Sunday and Monday off. In ESU, the amount of staff assigned was in such vast numbers because this was considered a level unit. Level units are those unique where the juveniles are a 1:1, which is one minor to one staff (minor could be volatile and aggressive towards others, or harmful to themselves); small group (One officer to three minors); or a level 2(minor who has past suicidal ideation). Generally, with the amount of officers that work in the unit the issues and physical interventions that occur are not frequent on the Officer Banks shift, but it is a regular occurrence to come into work and have to read several physical and special incident reports about what has occurred on other shift or while the pm shift is off for two days.
In your opinion why do you think that there are so many other incidents on other shift and not your own? There are incidents on the other shift because of the lack of cohesion between the am and the relief shift. It is vital to the tone, and the completion of everyday tasks for everyone on the shift to be on one page. When there is division between the officers and the minors that we supervise recognize this, they feed off of it and use this knowledge as leverage to create chaos in the unit if the officers allow it. When I first started working here I was fortunate to have teams of women who are structured and know what their job entails, but I can see how other officers experience here can be challenging with working with so many personalities that clash with one another. Though there are rules and policies pertaining to the job that we are supposed to do, which is rehabilitation, with all of the leadership changes that occur and have occurred since I have been employed by this department I have seen Central during positive and negative times.
On a positive note, with the negativity and hostility of law enforcement agencies, officer safety is being recognized and inspected more closely. This effects the probation department because we work with some of the same population that the sheriffs and LAPD work with. With that being said, the methods, and the way that we conduct ourselves is held to a higher standard”. The organization has also created more trainings that can help officers to communicate more efficiently with one another and with the minors that we work with”. Collectively communication and team work are vital to the rehabilitative process for minors and the work environment for staff” Another challenge is the leadership at Central Juvenile Hall. The leadership are more worried about their next promotion and less about the staff that they supervise and the issues that they are facing with changing in policies and the justice system that are not conducive in helping them to perform their jobs in a safe and secure manner. This interviews displayed some positive and negative aspects about working as a detention services officer in Central juvenile hall. Hence, some of the information that was shares has provided this interviewer with valuable information about bureaucracy, politics, and attitude of some law enforcement officers.
Comparison and Contrasting Interview Information With Course Material
After the interview there was several conceptually and informative conclusions that this author was capable of comprehending. Health and ethnicity are two notions that have been applied to the interview that also correlate with the information that Officer Banks shared with me during the interview. The health of many of the juveniles upon entrance in ton the facility is very poor and displays Tue attitude and disparities that exist in the communities that they live in because of lack of resources, promiscuity, limited recognition of the dangers associated with their risky behavior. According to Wood (2009) “. More than half of black men in their early 30s who are high school dropouts have a prison record. With regard to black women, 1 of every 18 black females born today can expect to go to prison—6 times the rate for white women. Moreover, black women born today are 5 times more likely to go to prison in their”(p 13). Several of the minors that were discussed were female and in jail due to their promiscuity, aggressive behaviors, lack of parental figures, lack of respect of authority. More interestingly, the ethnicity of the young ladies was either Hispanic or African American. These two groups of individuals in juvenile hall have collectively displayed several adversaries that stem from minimal is not a lack of familial support and the ability to thrive. In addition, the most common crimes that are identified as being the cause of detained female minors are prostitution, drug use fighting, and the choice of people that they expect to associate themselves with. Along with the aforementioned invitation another contributing factor in parental incarceration. Approximately 25 % of the female juvenile population have or at one point had parents incarcerated, and have begin to follow in their mother’s and fathers foots steps. This shows a pattern of behavior and actions that replicate and justify the causes of repeat detentions and ultimately incarceration in prison.
The second concept is health. Common health conditions that juveniles displays include mental disorder that are caused by drug use, genetic contributory factors, and physiological factors. The population that is housed in ESU, have diverse histories that include generation mental disorder deficits that show why they come and continue to come back to juvenile hall often the juveniles feel more safe, taken care of, and provided for while detained. Food is provided, somewhere to sleep, showers, and clothing. When comparing the juvenile population to the adult population it can be determined that issues of safety and choice influence the actions of both groups. From this interview, a realistic insight of how juveniles are the victims and continuing catalyst to vicious cycles of crimes, detention, and emotional instability that serve as the root causes and influence on incarceration in adulthood. For this reason, rehabilitative efforts on a juvenile basis is vital to ameliorate the lives of misguided youth and to reduce the likelihood of incarceration in adulthood.
References
Wood, P. B. (2009). 21st Century Criminology:A Reference Handbook. (m. j. Miller, Ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications.
