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30 Crime & Delinquency 5 (1984)

handle is hein.journals/cadq30 and id is 1 raw text is: Child Welfare, the Private Sector, and Community-Based Corrections Paul Lerman After more than a decade ofcarrying out a community-basedjuvenile correctional policy, it is useful to stand back and gain perspective on how this policy has been implemented. From national data the following facts about implementation are readily apparent: Implementation is strongly associated with private sector dominance; alternatives are linked to the child welfare system, as well as the juvenile correctional system; privately administered alternatives are heavily subsidized by federal and state public funds; the division of labor that has developed between the public andprivate correctional sectors is strongly associated with degree of offense seriousness, deviance diversity, and disproportionate number of females; and the utilization of private alternatives tends to vary by geographical regions. These facts are documented and the reasons why American implementation ofthis strategy has occurred with these characteristics is discussed. For the past 20-25 years there has been interest in the creation of alternatives to traditional juvenile institutional facilities. The idea of promoting community-based alternatives has been promoted at the national level by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1967), the National Commission on the Causes of Violence (1969), and the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals in Corrections (1973). In addition, community alternatives have been singled out as a preferential recommendation in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 and several standard-setting organizations. While diverse meanings have been attached to the concept community-based correc- tions (or community alternatives), there appears to be broad agreement that small size, access to the surrounding community, and insecure controls are minimal features of any definition (McCulloh, 1981). PAUL LERMAN: Distinguished Professor of Social Work and Sociology, School of Social Work, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. This article is an expanded version of a paper delivered at the 1983 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Denver, Colorado. CRIME & DELINQUENCY, Vol. 30 No. 1, January 1984 5-38 @ 1984 Sage Publications, Inc. 5 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.