Destructuring, Privatization, and the Promise of Juvenile Diversion: Compromising Community-Based Corrections

During the 1970s, a consensus emerged that juvenile deinstitutionalization and diversion offered great promise for lowering recidivism. However, critics charged that community-based programs had failed to achieve their stated objectives and that diversion actually “widened the net” of social control. The present research examined the impact of “restructuring” by analyzing data on the national growth and distribution of open facilities in the United States. The study found that a bifurcated system has developed, in which public facilities are primarily responsible for institutionalized corrections while the private sector administers the majority of open-environment programs. The ramifications of this system and specific constitutional issues regarding the privatization of corrections are discussed.