NCJ Number
79993
Date Published
Unknown
Length
42 pages
Annotation
The study assesses the effectiveness of seven programs designed to encourage deinstitutionalization of status offenders (DSO) by developing interagency service delivery systems.
Abstract
To obtain funds, the programs were required to establish service networks and community contacts. Each DOS network was expected to serve as the nucleus of a communitywide system of cooperation for reacting to status offenders' problems. Program success was gauged in terms of 'community-basedness' as measured by program practitioners' ability to develop community ties and by practitioners' efforts to influence local policies and resources. Using the individual practitioner as the unit of analysis, the effects of three sets of independent variables on the success criteria were explored: individual resources (training, experience, gender, race), organizational position (status and participation), and location in the interagency network of professional exchange. Integration into a network of professional exchange bore a clear relationship to community involvement in the four cases in which new interagency linkages had been formed specifically to carry out the activities of the DSO program, but not in the two cases in which DSO objectives were superimposed upon prior obligations and competing mandates. The impact of centrality in the network on practitioners' contact and activism was greater than any other single factor and more consistent than all of the individual or organizational variables except race. Integration into a professional network can be useful for establishing external linkages, but this is not the only mechanism through which community involvement is realized. Footnotes, about 60 references, and tables are supplied.