Two New U.S. Approaches To Training Of Delinquents

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29770, 13 March 1962, Page 17

Two New U.S. Approaches To Training Of Delinquents

Group impact therapy and a special shortterm . training programme were two new American approaches to training delinquents described by Mrs C. T. Ford, principal of the Burwood Girls’ Training Centre, at a meeting of the Canterbury Association for Mental Health last evening.

With the group impact therapy, now being tried in Texas, several social workers build up a social relationship with the delinquent and the delinquent’s family. Formerly a single worker had dealt with the family group. It was too soon to assess the value of this method, said Mrs Ford.

*»>e second method was being tried at Highfield, an experimental institution financed by the Ford Foundation, which aimed at a shorter method of dealing with delinquents. Specially chosen boys were sent to do four months paid maintenance work at a mental hospital. In the evenings group therapy was organised. The success rate of this place was the same as at a nearby conventional institution at which boys served sentences of 18 months to two years. Boys who did not conform to the institution’s requirements, however, were sent to the other without hesitation, said Mrs Ford.

Intense interest and great energy were directed towards the problems of delinquency in the United States, within both the institutions and the community. While there was greater financial support, the growing numbers posed new problems. In many ways the institutions were similar to the New

Zealand ones, but placed more emphasis on school work and psychiatric aspects, said Mrs Ford.

Those on the west coast tended to be high-walled impersonal institutions at which the staff worked during the day. On the east coast there was a trend to open institutions made up of social units of varying size. At these the staff lived with the girls. Some of these were coeducational. said Mrs Ford. In one State it was found that delinquency dropped slightly when the newspapers co-operated by not publishing reports of delinquent acts. British institutions were smaller and had a good community atmosphere amongst the girls and the staff. Many were set up in old country homes in lovely surroundings, but had antiquated facilities. The distance that these were from the towns resulted in staff shortages. The classifying schools, to which the girls were sent from remand schools to await vacancies in the approved training schools, experienced most of the difficulties arising from the shortage of staff. Instead of staying a month, the girls sometimes had to stay for several and became very troublesome.

Mrs Ford also visited institutions in Thailand and Japan.

In Thailand there were not many actual delinquents. The training schools dealt with prostitutes who were picked up from the streets by the police without reference to any courts and sent for training. In Japan the institutions also dealt mainly with prostitutes, but there was a recent growth in the numbers of girls who had been active members of boys’ gangs. There was no problem of obtaining trained staff. If a post was advertised in Tokyo, several hundred people with university degrees would apply. said Mrs Ford. The Eastern institutions could not be easily compared with these in the West because of the different strength of the family unit and the different place of women in the community, said Mrs Ford.