Children+in+DJJ



What losses do children in the Department of Juvenile Justice's custody experience?

My population is the children who are in youth detention centers. I chose this population because I have worked with many of these children and they suffer from grief and loss while they are incarcerated. These children lose their families, friends, neighbors, schools, teachers, coaches, and their community while they are incarcerated. I wanted to explore how these children deal with these losses and the effects that incarceration has on the children and the losses they suffer. There is not a lot of information on this population and how their incarceration affects them and how they deal with loss and grief.

This population needs to be studied more. There has been a lot of research on how incarceration affects adults and also how that incarceration affects their children, but there is little data on how children are affected when they are incarcerated and how their families are affected.


 * __Processes and Stressors__**

The loss that will be addressed is the loss of freedom.

A secondary loss could be the loss of having family around them. Another secondary loss is the loss of formal education.

Grief-related stressors 1. Sadness 2. Isolation 3. Fear

Life-oriented stressors 1. Choosing new friends 2. New rules to follow 3. No family around

Processes

Sadness-A child has just lost his/her freedom and is being placed in a facility, not a home. The child will become sad and will possibly cry or become angry at his/her situation. Isolation-A child is alone without family. A child will have to choose new people to surround him/herself with to make up for this loss. Fear-Child is afraid of what might come next. This could result is child crying or making rash decisions. New friends-Child will make choices about who to befriend to make him/her self safe. New rules-Child will have to learn rules of the facility to keep him/her self out of trouble. No Family-Child will be alone, isolated, and will become afraid of what is to come next.

**__Concepts from Class__**

These children also feel __disenfranchised loss__. This is a loss that society will not recognize as a real loss. The reason for this is that society looks at these children the same as they do adults in prison. Society feels that these children have deserved to lose what they call "rights" to certain things, such as seeing their family on a regular basis.

Children in DJJ also have complicated grief, especially for those who are in youth detention centers. They are usually from abused or neglected homes, have substance abuse issues, have been in gangs, and/or suffer from PTSD. Children placed in youth detention centers are more likely to suffer from PTSD than children who are not placed in them. Research has shown that children in placed in DJJ custody are eight times more likely to suffer from PTSD than children in the community.

Facts about children in the Juvenile Justice System 1. "Scared Straight" programs have been shown to be ineffective and can be harmful to some youth. 2. Almost two-thirds of referred to DJJ are first-time offenders. 3. Research has shown that being detained can actually make things worse for youth.



This is a pie chart to show the rate of referral by race and ethnicity. I thought that this data was interesting and wanted to include it.


 * __Resources__**

www.djj.state.fl.us

Dr. Sanger, Module 3 in Blazeview, 2012

www.AboutPinellaKids.org

Marianne Hennessey, MS., LPC, Julian D. Ford, PhD, Karen Mahoney, MA, Susan J. Ko, PhD, And Christine B. Siegfried, MSW. Trauma among Girls in the Juvenile Justice System. www.NCTSNet.org (2004).

There are not a lot of sources on children in DJJ when you are talking about loss and grief. The Florida DJJ system has some good data and have a good section on Myths and Facts of the DJJ system.