Haile, Amy Howie. 2000. STRATEGY CHANGE TO REDUCE JUVENILE CRIME: EVALUATION OF THE PINELLAS JUVENILE ASSESSMENT CENTER.

Abstract: This thesis describes an evaluation of the Pinellas Juvenile Assessment Center (PJAC) in Pinellas County, Florida during its first year of operation. The PJAC provided a secure centralize receiving facility for arrested youth with an immediate psychosocial assessment to determine appropriate community services for the youth and family. The purpose of this evaluation was to determine whether the implementation of the PJAC was meeting the goals of its stakeholders. Interviewed key informants defined these as increasing public safety, increasing access to services for youth and their families and decreasing criminal recidivism rates. This evaluation primarily used qualitative research methods of key informant interviews, participant observation, archival research and confidential surveys to determine that the PJAC was meeting its stakeholder’s goals. The evaluation results support the conclusion that by changing how arrested youth are “processed”, the Pinellas County stakeholders impacted juvenile crime and reduced recidivism. Recommendations to the PJAC Staff are included in this thesis. These are (1) to develop a formal relationship with a more experienced research institute to further examine the variables leading to a youth’s recidivism, (2) continue to collaborate with other juvenile assessment centers and advocate for the use each center reporting common data elements to allow comparison, (3) contact the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention regarding its Community Assessment Center initiative, and (4) continue meeting and discussing the PJAC with its stakeholders and target population. This thesis concludes with suggestions on how to conduct a follow-up evaluation focusing on the PJAC’s impact with individual youth and their families. The goal of this evaluation would be to identify the key factors influencing entry into the juvenile justice system as opposed to those youth that did not enter the system and for those youth that become involved with the juvenile justice system, it would identify the factors that strengthen the resilience not to return.