Juvenile Reentry, Part II

Beat Intro
Voiceover
00:00	This is the Beat – a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest 
community policing topics facing our nation.

 Interview
TeNeane Bradford
00:09	Hello and welcome! My name is TeNeane Bradford and on behalf of the COPS 
Office I’d like to introduce you to Dr. David Altschuler, a principal research 
scientist with Johns Hopkins University and a national reentry expert. He’s here to 
talk with us today about juvenile reentry. This is Part 2 of the juvenile reentry 
series. It’s very, very interesting to hear about the different kinds of kids that are 
going out because, you’re right, there’s a lot of assumptions being made. So, in 
the interest of public safety, you mentioned it really is significant in how decisions 
are made. How can law enforcement be involved with juvenile reentry? What are 
some examples of how law enforcement can build strong, community-based 
partnerships to support effective reentry initiatives?  

Dr. David Altschuler
00:56	I think, without question, there is a role for law enforcement that can be very, 
very beneficial in this. Now, as I said earlier, there’s going to be some 
jurisdictions that, unless there is a problem that results, law enforcement may not 
become involved. Where there’s a system where the supervision, the post-release 
supervision, is being handled by a community aftercare worker, or by a probation 
or parole worker. It may well be that law enforcement, in the way we might think 
of it, may not really play a role unless there is a real serious problem that results. 
It seems to me that in many instances that’s not a very good way to proceed. 
Law enforcement can be brought in, in a very positive way, if it’s done with the 
right mindset. I think we have to be careful about this. One example I would give 
you is that we really need to break out of the stereotypical role of the law 
enforcement officer as the enforcer. I think we’ve got really good models in 
terms of what’s happening with community policing in a number of jurisdictions 
around the country. Also, something like where police departments or sheriff’s 
departments are involved in athletic leagues, they’re involved very proactively 
and constructively with young people. They don’t only get involved when there’s 
a problem, but they’re also involved in a major way when things are going well. 
It seems to me that that’s a really important relationship. The positive relationship 
that can develop between a law enforcement officer and a youngster who is 
coming out of a correctional facility or out of an out-of-home placement, who is 
involved in juvenile justice, can really take a very different turn if we don’t 
simply have law enforcement as the enforcer, as the “bad cop” who only gets 
involved when things go wrong. It seems to me that that’s really taking things in 
the wrong direction. Now, as I said, I think that there’s a good model with 
regards to what’s happening with community policing in a number of 
jurisdictions that would be useful for our thinking about how we can get law 
enforcement involved in reentry in a positive way and not merely when 
something is going wrong.

	The other thing is that, it seems to me (and this is really related), is that we really 
need to incorporate incentives and think about what motivates young people, not 
simply rely on consequences as a way to get them to be compliant. With specific 
respect to law enforcement, it seems to me, and this is consistent with what is 
happening in a number of jurisdictions in community policing, it’s not just law 
enforcement officers who are there when things are going badly and there needs 
to be a consequence, or there needs to be somebody there who is going to stop 
something that’s happening that’s not good. It seems to me that law 
enforcement, just like parole officers or community supervision officers and 
others, can get involved in very positive ways and not simply be there to be the 
person who is delivering the consequence or the sanction. The truth is that if the 
person who is going to get involved in the consequence is also the person who is 
going to get involved in the development of an incentive or a positive 
reinforcement, I think there’s a potential for them having a more powerful impact 
on the consequence side because they’ve developed a relationship and they’ve 
also worked with the young person in terms of providing incentives and 
motivation. Sometimes that relationship, between a law enforcement officer or 
any other worker or any other volunteer, and the young person, may do just the 
trick. I know when I was growing up guilt was an enormous motivator for me. I 
would feel just terrible if I did something badly and I was being held 
accountable by someone who I knew cared about me. If the person who is 
holding me accountable is the person who I don’t respect and I don’t think is 
really acting in my best interest, then I think it stands to reason that that person’s 
impact on you is not going to have a very positive effect.

	The last point that I’ll make about this is that it really seems to me that what 
we’re really trying to do with these young people is to have them internalize pro-
social behaviors and thinking. That doesn’t happen when all they learn is, “make 
sure you don’t screw up when somebody’s watching.” They have to develop the 
internal capacity and self regulation to be able to deal with temptation and 
negative influences. That means it’s not only going to be when somebody’s there 
watching you, you’re going to need to develop that. If what we train them is to 
behave when a law enforcement officer or somebody else is watching them, it 
seems to me, we’re actually teaching them the wrong lesson. That is not what we 
want them to learn. What we want them to learn is that there are going to be 
other reasons, besides behaving yourself ‘cause someone’s watching, to behave 
yourself. Otherwise, as soon as no one is looking and no one is watching, you’re 
going to go right back to where you were before. A lot of this, I think, is very 
common sense, but there’s things that develop over time where we tend to think 
in a different way that takes us away from common sense. It does seems to me 
that these are examples of the way that we can engage law enforcement in very 
positive ways, and it’s also an example of ways that I think law enforcement 
could actually have a very negative influence on what’s happening with young 
people and may make a situation a lot worse. We have to really be very careful 
about that.


TeNeane
06:27	That was very in-depth, and I think you’re so right on common sense. As we get 
older and we evolve, as we were all young people, we make things complex 
because life is complex. I think sometimes we neglect to think about how we pass 
that on. Just kind of concluding the interview, in future thinking, what are the 
resources, tangible or intangible, that are needed to bridge this gap? You’ve got 
really good models out there but then you have some gaps, and you talked about 
that, between law enforcement and juvenile justice practitioners responsible for 
implementing juvenile reentry initiative programs. How do we do that? How do 
we get them talking and playing at the table for the sake of planning for kids’ 
returns and having positive outcomes?


David
07:12	Sure. I think there’s a number of things we can do. For one thing, it’s not just 
about communication. A lot of times, we hear about creating partnerships and 
collaboration and we get stuck in the communication level. Communication is a 
necessary, but not sufficient, set of conditions to actually create a really good 
team and collaborative effort. It’s not simply about communicating. It’s about 
making sure we have a shared vision and we agree on what it is that ultimately 
we want to accomplish and how we’re going to do that. We could be 
communicating but we still may not be collaborating. We could be 
communicating but we may not be coordinating very well. It seems to me that we 
sometimes we get stuck on communication. There’s any number of places that 
I’ve worked where it seems like they’ve spent years and years and years on 
trying to figure out how to communicate and they never get past it. In fact, they 
never even really get communication down very well, so forget about actual 
coordination and collaboration. They’re really not talking about a shared vision 
and philosophy about what they want to accomplish and how they‘re going to 
accomplish it, ‘cause they’re getting stuck in how to do basic communication and 
they never get past that.
	
	The other thing that I would say is really, really important is to basically draw 
upon law enforcement officers, when we’re talking about the law enforcement 
piece, who have expertise, training, qualifications, specifically with adolescents. 
In the old days—and I’m sort of showing my age here—there were actually in 
police departments all over the country a lot of juvenile divisions. Very few of 
those are left. For all kinds of reasons, we abandoned that. It seems to me we 
need to go back to that. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an entire juvenile 
division within a police department; some of the police departments and law 
enforcement agencies are very, very small. It seems to me that we need 
somebody who has specialized training and understanding about what’s going on 
in terms of adolescent development. We know from a lot of really good research 
on neuroscience that there’s a lot of things going on with young people, 
especially in early and mid-aged adolescents, that if we don’t have a really good 
understanding about, we as adults misinterpret what it is that we’re seeing. It 
happens a lot. From a law enforcement point of view, it seems to me, if we can 
get at least an officer, if not potentially a group of them if the department is large 
enough, with training and background and qualification specifically around 
adolescents, that we’d be in a much better position to intervene in the most 
productive and constructive ways possible. It also seems to me that these law 
enforcement officers that are going to focus on adolescents sort of really need to 
have a great interest in young people and kids. Let’s face it, and this isn’t just 
about law enforcement officers, there are some people that just do not have the 
patience, the tolerance, and the interest in dealing with teenagers. They 
sometimes are a tad on the demanding side. It seems to me that, especially when 
we’re talking about people in positions of authority that they really need to 
understand and be open to interpreting what’s happening with what can be pretty 
impulsive and rebellious young people. Not because they pose a threat to public 
safety but because this is kind of the way their brains are hard-wired for a while. 
We’ve come to understand a lot more about that. I would urge that there be 
training and that there be expertise in dealing with adolescent development, not 
only among law enforcement folks but among all people who deal with children. 
It also seems to me that as a part of that, cultural competence is really, really key. 
I think we need to understand a lot about where these young people are coming 
from in terms of who their role models are. A lot of that is actually tied to race, 
ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. That needs to be built in and handled in 
a very compassionate and understanding way or inadvertently we’re going to be 
creating more and more problems for young people. We know that the transition 
to adulthood for young people, whether they’re involved with juvenile justice or 
not, is a very tough time. When you’ve got an added burden of the justice system 
that’s also intervening, we have to take special effort to make sure that we 
understand and don’t lose our own sensibilities about what it takes to deal with 
adolescents. From a law enforcement point of view, if we’ve got people who 
have training and they have an understanding in terms of how to intervene with 
young people and how to have the most potential beneficial impact on young 
people. We also have cross-training where we’ve got law enforcement people 
involved in teams dealing with some of the other folks with other specializations 
with an expertise on adolescents that are going to be in a much better position to 
much more positively and constructively impact these young people.


TeNeane
12:11	You have given enough to go one for a whole other couple of days regarding all 
that you’ve shared with us today and we are so appreciative, Dr. Altschuler, of 
your time and your expertise. We would like to think you on behalf of the COPS 
Office for your time today and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from you more in the 
near future. Thank you so much.


David
12:32	You’re quite welcome. Thank you. It’s been my pleasure.


Beat Exit
Voiceover: 	
12:35	The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS 
Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving 
grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, 
developing partnerships and solving problems.


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