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Three Systems for Youth in Trouble: An Analysis of Interrelationships Between Child Welfare, Mental Health and Juvenile Justice

NCJ Number
224997
Author(s)
Paul Lerman Ph.D.
Date Published
February 1981
Length
58 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the relationship between the juvenile justice system and two social systems: mental health and child welfare, and their interest in youth in trouble.
Abstract
Since the early 1900s, both the child welfare and mental health systems have been interested participants in societal efforts to prevent or remediate juvenile delinquency for a long time. The interest in delinquency prevention and problem reduction is reflected in Federal legislation pertaining to each system. This paper presents an overview of these three systems: juvenile justice, mental health, and child welfare from both a historical perspective and their current functions and the interrelationships between the three. The reasons for focusing on the relationship between the three systems are (1) historically, each system’s interest in youth was guided by an interest in preventing or reducing a portion of the delinquency problem, (2) since the early 1960s, the institutional and outpatient populations of the mental health and child welfare systems have increasingly displayed deviant behaviors that meet the jurisdictional criteria of the juvenile court system, and (3) by treating all three systems as functionally related to the problem of “youth in trouble,” it is possible to understand long-term trends in juvenile care, control, and treatment activities from a broader, intersystem perspective. The paper attempts to document these assertions and provides a provisional assessment of the current functions, activities, and utilization patterns of the three related youth in trouble systems. References