Children and youth in correctional institutions are extremely vulnerable. They come most often from disadvantaged families, and in many cases, they have experienced trauma or victimization before reaching the correctional institutions. The official role of the correctional institutions is to rehabilitate young delinquents (Davidson-Arad, Benbenisthy & Golan, 2009). Once in the care of the state, they should be protected from further victimization, and helped to overcome their traumas, so as to be reintegrated into the society successfully, and to become healthy and active members of their communities. However, in many cases, correctional institutions become the settings for new forms of abuses, by both peers and the staff. Physical and sexual abuses are common in correctional institutions, despite the fact that youth should be safe in these facilities. In lack of strict regulation in this respect, and easy methods of reporting cases of abuse, the youth will continue to be victimized in correctional institutions. This denies young people in these institutions, their fundamental right to safety and protection by the state, and it is also counterproductive, because it continues the cycle of violence which created the conditions for incarceration in the first place.
The juvenile justice system is responsible with ensuring the well-being of young offenders. According to the United States Standard Minimum Rules, “the objective of training and treatment of juveniles placed in institutions is to provide care, protection, education and vocational skills, with a view to assisting them to assume socially constructive and productive roles in society” ( Davidson-Arad, Benbenishty & Golan, 2009, p. 260). However, these regulations and goals are unrealistic, given the fact that child abuse is a sad reality of correctional institutions. Research studies have intensely researched the victimization of juveniles in out of home settings, where the state becomes responsible for the children’s well-being (Davidson-Arad & Golan 2007). However, the victimization of children in correctional facilities has been rarely approached with the same interest by researchers and remains a rather understudied topic (Davidson –Arad & Golan, 2007).
Correctional institutions tend to be more likely to become settings where victimization takes place due to the repeating cycle of violence, which brings youth with child trauma in a position of asserting control over the other children, and repeating the behavior that they have learned from their parents. Child abuse in any form further leads to violent behavior and misconduct further in life. De Lisi et al (2010) showed that, “there is also considerable evidence that various forms of violence, abuse, depravity, and suffering that occur in early life environments engender maladaptive and antisocial behaviors across contexts including periods of confinement” (De Lisi et al. 2010, p.108). Violence and abuse which take place in the family home, and is conducted by the parents is particularly dangerous. In trying to discover how juvenile inmates with a record of child abuse adapt to life in confinement, the researchers analyzed the data from a cohort of 813 serious delinquents who were committed to the California Youth Authority over a period of 2 years (1997-1999). The authors found that inmates who had suffered from abuse in childhood had a higher score of irritability and anger (De Lisi et al. 2010). Therefore a cycle of violence, as presented by De Lisi et al., (2010) makes the children of abused parents, more likely to abuse other children as well.
Furthermore, the staff’s role in the perpetration of abuse in correctional institutions is paramount. In a study conducted in Israel by Favidson-Arad & Golan (2007), the authors looked at 201 residents throughout the correctional facilities for youth in Israel, from which 105were girls and 96 were boys. The authors used the adapted California School Climate Survey to find out how the children rate the experiences in correctional institutions. The authors found that victimization by both peers and staff occurs in both light and aggravated form. Verbal violence was reported by three-quarters of the teens, while physical violence was reported in 10 percent of the cases. Approximately one third of the inmates reported sexual harassment by peers (Davidson-Arad & Golan, 2007). As the researchers show, the role of the staff in the victimization of the youth is also extremely concerning, and reflects a grim reality.
While the staff should protect the youth, which have been placed in their care, in many cases (approximatively one third of the cases), the staff is responsible for at least minor victimization of the children. Davidson-Arad (2005) showed that there is a great discrepancy between the perception of youth victimization by the staff, and the perception of the children themselves. As the author explained, the more severe the form of correction that the youth receive, the more chances there are that the staff are abusive towards them. Thus, the findings also show that the greatest disparity in the reporting of staff abuse was in the closed facilities, because “the inmates in the closed facilities reported considerably more staff abuse than those in both the diagnostic facilities and the hostels”(Davidson-Arad 2005, p.555). The author thus found that, regardless of the type of a correctional institution, the youth is not protected sufficiently against victimisation by either peers or staff, and that , while victimization by peers is less frequent in closed institutions due to increased surveillance, victimization by the staff is also more frequent in these institutions.
The perception of the staff’s treatment is extremely important in the rehabilitation of youth, because young people need to develop a positive relationship with authorities, and to develop trust in grownups, particularly when it comes to the representatives of the state. However, the perception of victimization, either accurate or not, as revealed in the above studies, shows that youths feel unsafe in the presence of correctional facility staff. As Kupchick & Snyder (2009) showed in their research, by using two different research models, namely the deprivation model and the imported model, it becomes apparent that these two levels of measurement are interactive. One of the models explains violence in correctional facilities as caused by the inmates’ characteristics, whereas the other explains is as a result of facility characteristics (Kupchick & Snyder 2009).
Furthermore, as shown above, sexual abuse is also extremely common in correctional facilities of all types. Research has shown that age is strongly correlated with sexual victimization. Felson, Cundiff & Painter-Davis (2012) examined the role of age in the likeliness of becoming the victim of sexual abuse in prison. As Felson, Cundiff & Painter-Davis (2012) showed, male inmates of all ages tend to assault younger men. The study conducted by these researchers’ data collected in 8 years of study using the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The authors used the logistic regression model in order to examine the effect of the age of both the victim and the offender, on the likelihood of the offense being a sexual assault, rather than a physical one ( Felson, Cundiff & Painter-Davis 2012). The authors found that younger offenders are more at risk to become the victims of sexual assault than older inmates. Sexual offenders tend to target younger victims, whereas no such age correlation seems to exist in the case of physical assault (Felson, Cundiff & Painter-Davis 2012). Furthermore, the staff is also involved in many of the cases of sexual abuse which take place in correctional institutions. In their study, (Davidson-Arad, Benbenishty & Golan, 2009) found that, in many cases they investigated, not only the staff did not manage to protect youngsters, but they were also sexually abusive towards them.
Therefore, as shown above, a variety of factors such as previous trauma and age difference, predict that physical and sexual violence is likely to occur in juvenile correctional institutions, despite the fact that these should be safe and positive environments, where youth could be helped to reintegrate in the society. In many cases, the staff is ultimately responsible for the abuses which take place, either by ignoring it, encouraging it, taking active part in it, or simply, by being insufficiently prepared to approach the young people under their protection. In order for the youth to take advantage of the time spent in correctional institutions, more efforts should be made in order to ensure their safety and well-being, and training and monitoring the staff is a first step in this respect.
References
Davidson-Arad, B., (2005).Observed violence, abuse, and risk behaviors in juvenile correctional facilities: comparison of inmate and staff reports. Children and Youth Services Review 27: 547-559.
Davidson-Arad, B., Benbenishty, R. & Golan, M., (2009). Comparison of violence and abuse in juvenile correctional facilities and schools. Journal and Interpersonal Violence 24(2): 259-279.
Davidson-Arad B. & Golan, M.,(2007). Victimization of juveniles in out-of-home placement: juvenile correctional facilities. British Journal of Social Work 37:1007-1025.
DeLisi, M. et. al, (2010). The cycle of violence between bars: traumatization and institutional misconduct among juvenile delinquents in American. Youth and Juven
Felson, R., Cundiff, P. & Painter-Davis, N., (2012). Age and sexual assault in correctional facilities: a blocked opportunity approach. American Society of Criminology. Criminology 50(4): 887-911.
Flores, G. (2013). Staff here let you get down: the cultivation and co-optation of violence in a California Juvenile detention center. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 39(1): 221-241.
Kupchik, A. & Snyder, B. (2009). The impact of juvenile inmates’ perceptions and facility characteristics on victimization in juvenile correctional facilities. The Prison Journal 89(3):265-285.
