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What's “New” About the Balanced Approach?
Author(s) -
Bazemore Gordon
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
juvenile and family court journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.155
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1755-6988
pISSN - 0161-7109
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-6988.1997.tb00761.x
Subject(s) - juvenile , economic justice , retributive justice , consistency (knowledge bases) , punitive damages , intervention (counseling) , statute , quality (philosophy) , law , sociology , political science , psychology , computer science , ecology , epistemology , biology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , psychiatry
Over the past decade, many juvenile justice professionals became familiar with the “Balanced Approach as a new mission for juvenile probation. In recent months, a number of jurisdictions have adopted the Balanced Approach, by statute or policy, as the mission for their juvenile courts and juvenile justice systems. However, a great deal of misunderstanding persists about the meaning and practical differences between the Balanced Approach and other intervention models. While both quality and consistency of implementation of “balanced” policy and practice vary widely, some juvenile justice managers are using this new mission as a tool or “roadmap” for comprehensive re‐structuring of juvenile justice systems and agencies. This paper argues that when viewed as a guide to systemic, rather than programmatic, reform, the Balanced Approach can be clearly distinguished from both the traditional individual treatment and the new retributive/punitive juvenile justice missions. Six critical differences between the Balanced Approach and these missions are described.