Adolescents, who have to complete physical and mental development tasks and accomplish social demands in a rapidly changing society, are more likely to be tempted into delinquency due to conflicts and identity confusion than in any other time. Thus, i...
Adolescents, who have to complete physical and mental development tasks and accomplish social demands in a rapidly changing society, are more likely to be tempted into delinquency due to conflicts and identity confusion than in any other time. Thus, it is urgently necessary for intervention of a program or worker that can help the adolescents grow and develop healthily. However, not only the programs for general adolescents but also those for juvenile delinquents are currently not specialized in our country.
The programs for the juvenile delinquents in reformatories have not only a temporary effect on raising their lowered self-esteem but also the effect on reducing their repeated delinquency by influencing their ability of self-control that is helpful to control the impulse of delinquency in the long term. Therefore, these programs are also socially very important.
The purpose of this study was to measure what influence the intervention of the specialized programs for juvenile delinquents in reformatories has on their self-esteem. Regarding the way of intervention, group work was conducted in consideration of the characteristics of adolescence when influencing each other in peer groups is preferred to being advised by the older generation. As a result, this study showed effect on improving juvenile delinquents self-esteem. In particular, there was a significant change in school self-esteem and home self-esteem. In addition, smoking self-efficacy, which was examined to measure the change in ability to control smoking, one of the delinquencies, also showed improvement.
Based on these study results, for future applications in the field and subsequent studies, the conclusion is that first of all, group work as shown in this study should not simply be conducted one time, which means it is very important to help their improved self-esteem continue even after they return to home or society. Regarding the ways to do this, community resources such as schools, social welfare centers and consultation offices for adolescents will steadily develop systematic programs and provide open spaces for juvenile delinquents. Then, it is urgent above all to secure reformative social workers or professional counselling personnel for these programs to be implemented autonomically within reformatories.