The Death Of The Prison System

It was a warm August night in Baltimore when police found the bodies of three teenage boys gunned down outside a playground. One of the teens was Franklin Morris a seventeen-year-old frequently suspend from school and left to his own vices. His mother concerned about the direction he was heading reached out for help. A counselor suggested a deterrence program aimed a scaring him straight. At fourteen years old Franklin was featured on the A&E network show Scared Straight.(Cable) A television show that follows around trouble juveniles while they tour and experience the hardened criminal world of prisons, hoping to deter them from the prison system. The show portrayed him as a young man with no boundaries and lack of respect towards the community and his parents. Within three years after the program, Franklin was right back on the street with a more hardened attitude. What could have prevented him from succumbing to a violent life on the streets? And how do we prevent others from ending up in the same situation.

Franklin is just an example of the thousands of youths that are victims of homicide each year. Recent data from the Center for disease control suggests that homicide is the second leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24 years old, which is an average of thirteen youths are killed every day. An even more alarming are the fifty-four thousand that are currently confined. (CDC, 2016) The scared straight program was not a success in Franklin 's case, this was the importance of evidence-based practice start to become more relevant.

In the Social work podcast, we get a good understanding of what Evidence-Based Practice entails. The guest Danielle Parrish states that evidence-based practice is ‘‘the conscientious, ex...

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... The NASW code of ethics towards evidence based practice suggests “ Having set guidelines could present benchmarks for providers to see what has been tried, what has worked, and what treatments should be the next course of action.”.("Code of Ethics National Association of Social Workers", 2016) In other words it is important the social worker doesn’t neglect their own personal experiences when working on a treatment program.

In conclusion it is important to take in cultural, religious values into account when reaching a solution using evidence based research. Sometimes the intervention that is working on a macro level isn’t going to work in a smaller community setting. There are many factors that come into play when working with juveniles. The social worker must not only look at the scientific findings but factors within the family, school, community as well.