Family Counseling as an Alternative to Legal Action for the Juvenile Status Offender

The problem of the juvenile status offender (JSO) continues to arouse the concern of professional and lay persons alike. Most problematic is the question of what constitutes an appropriate response to these so-called offenders. In the past these juveniles have been dealt with as a legal problem by the court system. This strategy of functionally categorizing the JSO with the more serious juvenile offenders is harmful to the juveniles and burdensome to society as well. The present paper describes an alternate response to the problem. The intervention is based on a psychological conception of the problem rather than a legal one. Specifically, family therapy is the core of the intervention strategy. An evaluation of this program is reported. It was found that juveniles treated under the new program were referred to the court system significantly less often than a similar sample obtained before the inception of the program.