Op-Ed | Rethinking Juvenile Correctional Education: From Fragmented Services to an Integrated Approach

On September 30, 2017, Prison Watch, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Taiwan Innocence Project, and the Judicial Reform Foundation jointly held  the2017 Policy Forum on Visits to Juvenile Detention Houses, Reform Schools, and Juvenile Reformatory Schools. One session, "Between 'Correction' and 'Education'?," asked what direction juvenile correctional education in Taiwan should take. To provide a point of reference for reform, another session introduced developments and practices in U.S. correctional education. This article is adapted from the report prepared for that session.

Practitioners in Taiwan disagree about what juvenile correctional education should look like. Taiwan historically had two types of institutions. Reform schools were staffed primarily by personnel from the correctional system and used a supplementary-education model. Juvenile reformatory schools employed both correctional and education personnel and, in principle, provided ordinary school education. After the Act of the Establishment of Juvenile Reformatory Schools and Enforcement of Education was enacted in 1997, the Ministry of Justice was authorized to convert reform schools gradually into juvenile reformatory schools within six years. Full conversion never occurred, however, because of budget constraints and studies suggesting that juvenile reformatory schools required substantially more resources without showing a corresponding reduction in recidivism. See the Ministry of Justice report evaluating full conversion of reform schools into juvenile reformatory schools prepared for the National Conference on Judicial Reform.

During Prison Watch's 2017 visits, we asked staff at both types of institutions about the issue. Some reform-school staff argued that their model had advantages: a single staff team stayed with students around the clock, and many juveniles entering the correctional system had already struggled in ordinary schools, so reproducing ordinary school education inside an institution was of limited value. They placed greater emphasis on character education. Some juvenile reformatory-school staff, by contrast, stressed the importance of bringing educators into the institution because educational personnel could challenge overly prison-like approaches to discipline and were better trained to address the special-education needs common among justice-involved youth. Staff in both systems nevertheless cautioned against expecting a correctional institution by itself to reduce recidivism, because the institution has limited influence over what happens after a young person leaves-and that is often when the real test begins.  

What should education inside a juvenile correctional institution actually accomplish? How can time in the institution genuinely help a young person rather than simply returning that person to the same circumstances after release? The 2017 National Conference on Judicial Reform considered these questions and recommended studying the creation of a "Juvenile Correctional Education Research Center" involving relevant ministries and agencies. The United States has comparable technical-assistance infrastructure whose work can also provide useful reference points.

An Integrated Approach: A Possible New Model for Juvenile Correctional Education

One U.S. resource is the National Technical Assistance Center for the Education of Neglected or Delinquent Children and Youth(NDTAC), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. NDTAC is not simply an academic research center. Its mission is to provide direct assistance to states, schools, communities, and parents seeking information on the education of children and youth who are neglected, delinquent, or at risk. The nonprofit research organization American Institutes for Researchoperated the center at the time discussed in this article. NDTAC also assisted in developing the 2014 U.S. Department of Education and Department of JusticeGuiding Principles for Providing High-Quality Education in Juvenile Justice Secure Care Settings. Its 2016 Transition Toolkit 3.0: Meeting the Educational Needs of Youth Exposed to the Juvenile Justice Systemdescribes how to address educational needs throughout a young person's path into, through, and out of the juvenile justice system. The lesson is that "correctional education" cannot simply mean adding "correction" to "education." Newer approaches emphasize an integrated systems model with several basic elements:   

1. Education in juvenile correctional institutions should integrate special education, vocational education, and social-emotional development.
   Taiwan's reform schools and juvenile reformatory schools already recognize, at least to some extent, the importance of special education and vocational education. Some reform-school personnel described juvenile reformatory schools as merely reproducing ordinary school education. Our visits suggested a more flexible picture: where enrollment is too small to maintain separate classes by grade, juvenile reformatory schools may use mixed-grade classrooms and adjust instruction to individual students' learning levels rather than rigidly following grade-level curricula.
   Compared with NDTAC's recommendations, the element receiving less attention in Taiwan is social-emotional competence: the ability to interact appropriately with others, communicate feelings, and regulate one's own behavior. Reform schools often describe character education as a strength, but the question is how to move beyond moral instruction and actually change thought and behavior. Juvenile reformatory schools have counseling teachers, in principle one for each class, which should create opportunities to develop social-emotional skills. Yet neither the curriculum nor the daily schedule shows that this objective is consistently treated as a priority.  
   Mingyang High School is relatively attentive to this area, but the schedules it provided to Prison Watch showed only two weekly hours of an "Interpersonal Relationships" course for first-year Classes A and B that clearly addressed social-emotional competence. Evidence-based programs have been developed elsewhere and could be adapted to local needs and evaluated in Taiwan. Resources have included the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices and the National Institute of Justice's CrimeSolutions.gov .  
   The daily schedule likewise contains no obvious time specifically devoted to students' social-emotional development:
   Time
   Schedule
   
   06:50
   Wake up and wash up
   
   07:10
   Tidy quarters and environment
   
   07:30
   Breakfast
   
   08:00-08:10
   Unlock cells and clean environment
   
   08:10-09:00
   Period 1 class
   
   09:00-09:05
   Period 1 break
   
   09:05-09:55
   Period 2 class
   
   09:55-10:00
   Period 2 break
   
   10:00-10:50
   Period 3 class
   
   10:50-10:55
   Period 3 break
   
   10:55-11:45
   Period 4 class
   
   11:45-11:50
   Period 4 break, escort to dining hall
   
   11:50-12:10
   Lunch
   
   12:10-13:40
   Lock-up and noon nap
   
   13:40-13:50
   Unlock cells
   
   13:50-14:40
   Period 5 class
   
   14:40-14:45
   Period 5 break
   
   14:45-15:35
   Period 6 class
   
   15:35-15:40
   Period 6 break
   
   15:40-16:30
   Period 7 class
   
   16:30-17:00
   Period 8 basic drill
   
   17:00-17:25
   Dinner, filling water bottles, showering, washing and drying clothes
   
   17:25-17:30
   Quiet meditation before roll call
   
   17:30
   Lock-up and roll call
   
   17:30-19:00
   Showering, washing clothes, watching television
   
   19:00-20:00
   Drying clothes, evening self-study
   
   20:00-21:00
   Watching television
   
   21:00-21:10
   Washing up and preparing for bed
   
   
   
   If social-emotional development were treated as a core priority, a daily schedule might instead look something like this:  
   time
   activities and accomplishments
   
   06:00
   Youth wake up, attend to personal needs, and complete dorm details
   
   6:30
   Morning check in, followed by breakfast and kitchen details. After details, youth return to the dorm, set daily goals, and prepare for school
   
   8:00
   School-classes typically total 300+ minutes per day
   
   11:30
   Group check in, lunch, kitchen details
   
   12:30
   School continues according to class schedule
   
   15:00
   School day ends. Youth return to the dorms and check in/process their day. Thirty minutes of free time is allowed
   
   17:00
   Youth prepare for dinner and kitchen details
   
   18:00
   Group meetings
   
   20:00
   Youth make phone calls, have free time activities, then shower and prepare for bed
   
   21:00
   Youth journal and process goals set during the morning
   
   21:30
   Lights out
   
   
   
   The table above shows a daily schedule from a U.S. juvenile justice program using the Missouri Model. During "check-in," young people share how they are doing physically, psychologically, and emotionally, identify goals, and encourage one another; the schedule includes two such periods each day. Daily group meetings likewise develop social-emotional competence by giving youth space to discuss their upbringing, future goals, and the roots of problematic behavior, as well as harm to victims, recurring behavioral problems, or tensions among peers.  
   Curriculum and scheduling are only part of the issue. Given the needs common among youth entering juvenile correctional institutions, social-emotional development cannot be the responsibility of a few specialized teachers. All staff who interact substantially with youth need relevant training. NDTAC has noted that some youth in U.S. juvenile justice settings have mental-health conditions such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and that many have experienced trauma, including abuse, neglect, and exposure to violence. Without training to recognize and respond to those conditions, behavior rooted in trauma or mental-health needs can be misread simply as deliberate defiance and handled inappropriately-as concerns raised by the death of Mai Hung-Kai at Taoyuan Reform School illustrate. Role modeling is also central to social-emotional learning: young people learn from the way adults treat them. Staff therefore need social-emotional skills of their own. A few hours of classroom training is not enough; those skills have to be practiced in real situations. A supervision or group-supervision model may help, with experienced staff coaching new personnel, observing or reviewing difficult situations, and holding regular meetings where newer staff can discuss cases and receive feedback.
   
2. Education planning must involve the family, not only the young person.
   Family participation is essential to helping young people develop successfully. NDTAC's Transition Toolkit recommends family involvement at every stage. Before entry, families should be invited to learn how the institution works, what rules apply, how progress will be evaluated, and how they can participate; where possible, they should also receive information about family-support groups. During placement, institutions should keep families informed and address family conditions that may affect reintegration, including through parenting or behavior-management programs, counseling, or therapy where needed. Before release, families should understand the young person's progress and how to support it. Gradually longer home visits-from hours to days-can help identify problems while support services are still readily available. Follow-up services should remain accessible after the young person returns home.  
   Taiwan already has a related concept in Article 64 of the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act , which provides for child-and-youth family treatment plans. Child-protection intervention is not supposed to focus only on the individual child; it also extends to the family. Yet justice-involved youth are often viewed only through their offending behavior, with the youth alone treated as the object of correction. That approach overlooks the possibility that healthy development may require rebuilding the family environment as well.
   
3. A transition plan should begin before institutional placement, incorporate community resources, and be adjusted continuously with successful reintegration as its goal.
   In Taiwan, "transition" often means little more than arranging educational continuity when a young person leaves an institution. The concept should be broader. A transition plan should connect the different stages of a young person's intervention from the beginning. At present, those stages are often fragmented: institutions work hard to stabilize a young person's behavior inside, but have difficulty structuring treatment around eventual return to the community. Once transition is understood as an overarching plan, the correctional institution becomes only one part of the process. Schools, treatment centers, community-based programs, prospective employers, and other resources should be considered from the outset. The institutions and community providers need enough information about one another to plan together. Youth should not be completely isolated from community resources while in custody. Before release, a young person might visit a future school so counseling, peer mentoring, and academic support can be arranged in advance, or participate in daytime internships or job shadowing to prepare for work. Stable housing should likewise be arranged before release.  
   
4. Transition planning and implementation require a case-management team that works across the institution and the community.
   A transition plan cannot be designed and carried out by correctional staff alone. NDTAC recommends a case-management team that can include a transition coordinator, institutional staff, community service providers, court and probation personnel, the young person, and family members. The transition coordinator should understand available resources, identify who needs to participate, and keep communication functioning across the team. Community providers should be brought in while the plan is being developed rather than after release. Institutional staff should remain involved long enough to understand whether interventions inside the institution actually helped outside it. And youth and families should be participants in the plan rather than merely its subjects. A young person who understands, agrees with, and ideally helps set the goals is far more likely to engage with the plan.  
   Elements of this integrated approach also appear in resolutions of the National Conference on Judicial Reform. One resolution recommended changing the structure of the Correctional Education Steering Committee to include the Judicial Yuan, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Ministry of Labor, and civil-society representatives, while strengthening research on correctional-education content and teaching materials. Existing rules required participation only from the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Education. The recommendation to add other agencies reflected a basic point: juvenile correctional education cannot be treated as the responsibility of only those two ministries.  
   Other National Conference recommendations likewise emphasize family and community resources and continuity between institutional and community services. They include studying family co-residence facilities, halfway arrangements, and diverse forms of treatment; implementing Article 68 of the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act to help eligible youth leaving reformatory schools obtain independent-living housing or subsidies; and asking the Taiwan After-Care Association to help young people aged 18 or older leaving correctional schools access halfway housing, vocational training, and employment matching. Taiwan may not be able to create a fully integrated case-management team immediately, but the Conference also called for juvenile probation officers to verify special needs before release and help arrange measures that support stability afterward. The explanation accompanying Resolution 5-5 of the Conference's Fifth Division provides more concrete suggestions. These measures can all be understood as steps toward an integrated approach to juvenile correctional education.
   

The Central Challenge for an Integrated Approach: How Can Good Collaboration Actually Work?

Any integrated approach to juvenile correctional education eventually confronts the same question: how can agencies collaborate well?  

Government agencies have long been accustomed to working in silos and defining problems by institutional jurisdiction. If an issue falls outside one agency's formal mandate, the response may simply be that nothing can be done. Consider the proposed juvenile correctional education research center: the Ministry of Justice may treat education as the Ministry of Education's responsibility, while the Ministry of Education may respond that the work is carried out inside correctional institutions it does not directly control. The issue is passed back and forth until nothing happens.  

Changing that pattern requires more than revising regulations, although legal review is an obvious first step. Civil servants and frontline practitioners also need to work out how cooperation will happen in practice. U.S. juvenile correctional education faces similar coordination problems, and part of NDTAC's role is to understand frontline conditions and offer practical guidance on collaboration. The broad approaches below provide useful reference points, but Taiwan still needs solutions adapted to its own institutional context.  

Approach 1: Set Shared Goals  

The young person-not each agency's separate task list-should be the center of the goal. Are we trying to reduce reoffending, rebuild family support, or establish stable education and employment? Correctional staff should not define success only as avoiding security incidents, nor educators only as stable academic performance inside the institution. Agencies should agree on the lasting change they want for the young person, then work backward to determine what each must do and how they need to cooperate. If outcomes are evaluated this way, even rule violations or an escape may sometimes be understood as part of an adjustment process rather than only as security failures. Security exists to create a safe environment in which change can occur; it should not become an end in itself.  

Approach 2: Build a System to Monitor and Record Progress  

If a young person's progress is a shared objective, different agencies also need a shared way to monitor and record it. Information about the youth's condition and whether particular interventions are working cannot remain inside a single unit. In practice, this means creating, documenting, and continually updating the transition plan and accumulating relevant information about treatment and performance. The National Conference on Judicial Reform described the idea as developing "a mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness of juvenile treatment," including periodic assessment and adjustment of treatment content and goals.  

Approach 3: Digitize and Standardize Records and Improve Information Sharing

Staff in different agencies need a sufficiently complete picture of the young person's circumstances to provide appropriate support. Shared creation and exchange of case records are therefore important. Juvenile correctional institutions still rely heavily on paper records, and formats differ among institutions, making cross-agency work harder. Records should be digitized and standardized to support information sharing and collaborative case management, while still protecting juvenile privacy.  

Approach 4: Understand Each Other's Roles

Effective collaboration also requires staff in different agencies to understand what their counterparts actually do and the constraints they face. Direct cooperation helps, but reciprocal visits among agencies can also build that understanding. Joint training may likewise help participants understand one another's professional assumptions and working methods.

※ This article was published on October 4, 2017 by PTS News Network (PNN)