MUST PASS WITH AT LEAST 390 OUT OF 415 ON THIS ASSIGNMENT

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study

Background

· The criminal justice system provides services that ensure offenders do not participate in criminal activities when released into society.

· The system offers both direct punishment and rehabilitation services to the offenders (Donaldson, 2020).

· Rehabilitation provides a chance for individuals to learn about the cause of their problems, learn changes in behaviors, and eliminate the risk of committing a crime.

· Incarceration includes punishment as a way of correcting the offenders.

· Often, individuals taken through rehabilitation seem to show improved behaviors when released than those from incarceration.

Research Problem

My dissertation topic is Juvenile justice and rehabilitation versus punishment to reduce re-offending. This means that when juveniles offenders are introduced into the criminal justice system, the debate is whether or not they should automatically be sent to serve their punishment or should there be rehabilitative methods that can be taken to help keep them from re-offending. When juvenile offenders are introduced to the criminal justice system or have their first run-in with law enforcement, this is when they make their mark with law enforcement. This means that law enforcement officers have now determined how they are going to react to them and interact with them from here on out. Unfortunately, all juveniles do not have positive interactions with law enforcement which leads to my interest in this topic. For punishment, I plan to narrow this down to specific punishment such as juvenile incarceration. My problem statement would be that juvenile offenders are being punished to serve incarceration time as a juvenile instead of being offered rehabilitation methods.

Purpose Statement

· The research aims at identifying the difference that exists between juvenile rehabilitation and incarceration punishment among African-American offenders.

· African male youths face brutal incarnation punishment that includes spending a long time in correctional services (González, 2017).

· When the individuals are released back into society from incarceration punishment, most of them get involved in other criminal activities

· It is not enough to provide punishment to the offenders to prevent them from getting involved in criminal activities.

· To help prevent the offenders' recurrent situation, it is critical to introduce rehabilitative programs among the offenders than providing direct punishment.

Research Questions

1. What youth programs focus on deterring criminal behaviors of juvenile offenders?

2. What was the recidivism rate for juveniles that faced immediate punishment, compared to those that received delayed punishment?

3. What are the risk levels on recidivism with juvenile offenders? Which juveniles risk levels are more likely to recidivism?

My choice of interviewing as the data collection comes from having access to my study (African American Males and Juveniles). I would not ask them any embarrassing questions but more so questions that would address the reasoning behind their actions and their delinquent choices.

Conceptual or Theoretical Framework

· According to the punishment theories, offenders are taken through the incarceration process to discourage them from getting involved in criminal activities.

· Incarceration exists to punish the offenders because they deserve the punishment (Donaldson, 2020).

· When considering the impacts of punishment, it does not reflect its purpose in offenders' lives but introducing rehabilitative programs proves to be more beneficial.

Chapter 2: Research Plan

Research Design:

The research will mainly utilize the descriptive research design that mainly focuses on helping to find and answer the how, what, where and when the issue takes place. The research is focusing to identify such questions before moving on to try and find out the why at the end. The descriptive research design is appropriate because it will help make a right judgment that establishes a plan that will make sure that they do interact and make sure that they do come up with the proper plans. It is important to use the descriptive research design because it focuses on trying to understand the reasons between the juvenile rehabilitation and incarceration punishment among the African-American offenders. The design helps in building a proper plan that helps in getting the right answers that will help make sure that there is a direction of the research helping make sure that there are interactions and variances in the society which is vital for the research. The research will be focusing on the differences between the juvenile rehabilitation and incarceration whereby there is a major difference but there is something that is creating some inconsistencies in the society leading to major issues in the society.

Strengths

It is evident that the descriptive research depicts research methods such as surveys, observation and case studies to help with the collection of information. The research question is wide and it involves a social issue affecting or influencing the whole society in terms of social differences. The fact that the African Americans are at a disadvantage implies that the issue runs deep and thus it will be important to make sure that it is productive. The descriptive research is involving and it helps in getting to the bottom of the research question that makes it easier to improve their interactions. It is important to make sure that there is a direction of the research and it helps in focusing on the interactions which are vital in making sure that they do come up with the right plan which will help depict their interactions. It is important to come up with a right plan especially because it is focusing on a wider scale of research. According to Anastas (2019), the descriptive research focuses on answering the when, what, how and where questions in a research which establishes some form of interactions that are wide and help answer numerous aspects of the research. The focusing on the juvenile rehabilitation and the incarceration of the African Americans is dependent on the how, when, where, and what to help get the right insights into how it is become prevalent in the society.

Limitations

The descriptive research is limited to the theoretical approaches and not the statistical approach which might have to change the direction of the research. It is evident that the qualitative research method is tied to the theory part of the interactions and will only help to come up with the theory processes of the work and this limits the theory to that specific strategy and thus if the research is incorporating some features of statistics, it will stall the entire project. The absence of the statistical applications implies that there will be some biasness of the research that might not become evident since there is not right way to help prove it (Johnson, 2015). The research will stick to the simple justifications such as African Americans do not benefit from incarceration since they end up committing crimes but cannot be compared to the numbers or the frequency of the same problems among other communities in the country. Johnson explained that it is difficult to explain the causes of the phenomenon in the descriptive research design because it mostly does not handle the question why in the research (2015). The aspect is a major problem since understanding a problem might help in establishing a proper plan on how to outdo or get back to their previous strategies thus making it a major challenge in the utilizing of the research design.

Rationale

The rationale behind the descriptive research design is because the design helps in the proper exhaustion of the information to help get to the bottom of the issue at hand. It will be easier to apply and understand the differences between the two perspectives that include the juvenile rehabilitation and incarceration and then it becomes easier to establish a proper plan that will help make sure that they do lead to their right explanation. It is important to make the right decision which is vital to make sure that it is fitting the needs and social interactions of the research. The research question is in a social setting thus the utilization of the method is beneficial since it helps allows making phenomenon and methods in relation to the society instead of justification from numerical and hypothesis that might not be applicable or be involving to the actual interactions in the target population. The method allows the use of the surveys, case studies and observations that are all round methods especially when handling a wide research question. The research question is seeking to fit the problems of the African Americans in relation to committing crimes, the impacts of the incarceration and how the option of using the juvenile rehabilitation will be more relevant which is mainly dependent on the surveys and observations to help explain the way the problem is profound how to come to a solution.

Alignment

The descriptive research design is aligned to the research question because it is a social question and thus it is easier to integrate the research methods to get to the bottom of the question. It is important to make sure that there is a proper plan and strategy that is beneficial to the way that they do collect data. The utilization of the surveys will help collect a wider array of data covering all the needs of the consumers that are beneficial to the way that they do connect. It is important to understand that the advantage of the case studies also do help in provision of different cracks at the case study and helps make sure that there is a strategy that is beneficial to the way that they do communicate. It is important to understand that the investment in the descriptive design, it is easier to focus on the how, when, what, where part of the question which is wide and makes it easier to establish a proper plan towards collecting detailed information. The research question is relative to the way that the African Americans are leading their lives in a system that is not sufficiently addressing the issues of solving the criminal problem and thus the utilization of the descriptive design helps in proper detailing of the problem and the potential solutions.

Role of the Researcher

For my topic, African American male juveniles can be a very sensitive and touchy topic. This is a topic that still has ongoing issues and events happening till this day which is why I had to choose wisely with who I selected to do the interview on. I chose an individual in which I knew would not give a biased answer, would listen to the questions and give their honest feedback. I made sure that they understood the purpose of this interview and the reasoning behind my topic and where it stemmed from for me. 

Since everything has happened with COVID-19, having in person interviews is a lot harder especially when people have different scheduled and they are adjusting to what can be a new life for some. Some people are working from home permanently which made facetime a lot easier as the option to conduct the interview on. In order to make this interview process go smoothly, I ensured that we stayed on tasks to what the topic was about. By doing this, this allowed us to be able to have room to elaborate more on the questions if we wanted to.

Participant Selection

Issues of Trustworthiness