Implementing an Arts Program to Help Curb Juvenile Delinquency and Reduce Recidivism

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Background

The environments in which children grow up have direct impacts on their behavior and characters. Children from low income neighborhoods and rural areas are more prone to delinquent behaviors if they do not have a positive outlet. Fortunately, creative and performing arts can be used to create a positive outlet to children. Incidentally, music, art, drama, and dance are positive preoccupation ventures that can positively engage children and hence help foster social correctness and reduce loneliness among them. This program will focus in initiating and implementing creative and performing art as way of preventing children from engaging in delinquency behaviors. This program will be conducted in Anderson in South Carolina. Its success will be replicated in different other areas including outside the state. The program will be titled, MADD, which is an acronym for music, art, drama, and dance. These four were selected to allow the children the freedom to choose an area where they will be most comfortable. Children who are interested in music will be provided with relevant instruments in addition to doing vocals. On the other hand, art will encompass drawing, painting, and photography while dance will infuse tap, hip hop and yoga. Although yoga is not part of dance, it will be selected because of its physical attribution. Drama will also equip the children with production and acting skills. Thus, there will be at least something for everyone.

Implementation

The program will be primarily implemented through art. Different fields of art like music, theater, cinema, dance, and visual arts will be put to use. However, irrespective of the type of art selected, it will not be implemented in isolation. The main objective is to integrate that program with society. Therefore, the pieces of art will be customized to rhyme with society needs of the targeted children and the adolescents. For instance, the Anderson area is synonymous with hip hop music, which will significantly be used to integrate them into society (Abraham et al., 2021). The program will also be implemented by engaging as many stakeholders as possible, especially the local community.

Importance of Art

The significant role played by art in general in society cannot be underestimated. Students who are engaged in various forms of art record better outcomes in academics. Moreover, art is a form of expression that children use to let out their emotions. Negative emotions can thus be identified and addressed before they turn into something dangerous in children. It must also be noted that the expression of art requires a mastery of different sets of skills. Therefore, these children end up getting equipped with new skills that also play a significant role in enhancing their creativities. Art also helps children struggling with depression or trauma to deal with them effectively.

Art Therapies and Art-Based Programs

When art programs are used as therapies, their main concern is usually to heal. For the program to effectively act as a therapy it will target two categories of children; those at risk of being delinquent and the justice involved ones. These programs are designed to help participants tackle rage, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and delinquency. They can be introduced at different stages of the juvenile justice system to assist the children achieve their goals (Ma & Ren, 2018). The dispensation of this program will, however, require the services of a specialist who fully understands the children’s psychological needs.

Major Milestones

This program will be expected to run for five year. It will be dived into three phases, and the success of one phase will determine the decision to initiate and progress with the subsequent one. The first phase will be to create an art center in Anderson. This center will be equipped with all the MADD enhancing resources. It will mainly target children from low income neighborhoods, the homeless, school dropouts. School going children will also be enlisted into the program. The children will be allowed to participate in areas that they feel most comfortable in. if this program succeed, it will be extended to schools in the area. Plans will be made to ensure that it is entrenched into the curriculum. As it spreads beyond Anderson, sports events will be organized across the state to evaluate its effectiveness.

Creation of an Activity Center

The program will run for five years. After putting all the structures in place, an Arts Center will be opened in Anderson within the first two months of the program’s timeline. This center will host all the activities included in MADD. It is expected that within the first month after joining the program, children would have identified their main areas of interest. The attendees will be allowed to switch programs at will as long as it helps them keep engaged and busy.

Mandatory Art Classes

This will be the most difficult phase of the project as it will require the collaboration of different actors. Ordinarily, the Anderson-based Art Center will be used as a pilot project. Since it will not be economically practical to build art centers in all neighborhoods in the United States, the program can be further executed by infusing it into the school curriculum (An et al., 2020). Therefore, efforts will be made to persuade the District schools in Anderson to adapt to the program by making the MADD activities part of its curricula. To ensure its seriousness, it will be made compulsory that accreditation will only be issued to learners who have undertaken any of the MADD programs.

State Sports Events

As the program continue to gain popularity, it will be important to consolidate its activities through sporting events, which will be organized periodically. The first event will take place two years into the start of the program. This is an event that will be poised to bring into board severally industry players including psychologists, law enforcement officers, psychologists, parents, and the students themselves. Such events will be used to take stock of the gains made over time and identify areas of improvement. The outcomes of these sporting events will inform the policy makers on different aspects of the program.

External Influences

The implementation and operationalization of the project will be influenced by several factors, both internally and externally. Internal influences will include the availability of funds and other resources and human resources. On the other hand, the external influences will be mainly political, economic, and social factors. Incidentally, since the program will touch the state’s juvenile justice system, the political factors at play cannot be ignored. The effectiveness of the program will require the existence of conducive laws and policies for support (Zhong et al., 2021). In addition, since this is a massive program that is resource intensive, it will be important to also consider the economic factors and their influence on the availability and affordability of such resources. The identified social influences that will affect that enrolment of children to the program will revolve around income levels, education, and housing. In some poor households, children engage in various income generating activities to augment what their parents produce. Incidentally, this might not leave them with ample time to take part in the program. On the other hand, households where parents are educated are more likely to understand the important roles played by arts in the physical and cognitive health of a child. Hence, such families will most likely enroll their children into the program. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of poor household. When it comes to housing, families living in congested neighborhoods might not have ample spaces where their children can practice such art forms as dancing for instance.

Ethical Considerations

Although the program is touted to be an exemplary one, there are several ethical concerns that must be taken into consideration, especially given the fact that the program targets children and adolescents, many of whom have not attained the age of eighteen. Some of the enrollees to this program will be delinquents. These are children who are harshly judged by society and sometimes condemned (Poama & Lever, 2018). By mobilizing them into a program, the rest might misconstrue it as an act of abating criminal activities by providing homage to law breakers. Moreover, participation in such a program requires participants to sign consent forms. However, most of them are underage, making it illegal for them to sign. Worse still, some of them do not know their parents to do it on their behalf nor just have uncaring parents.

Budget Estimates

These are just budget estimates and are prone to change depending on the market dynamics.

Costs include:
- A commercial center
- Hiring trainers, administrative staff
- Purchasing equipment
- Marketing costs
Annual budget estimate arrived at through cost risk model approach
Total estimated budget will be $2,654,134

References

Abraham, F., Bormans, Y., Konings, J., & Roeger, W. (2021). Price-cost margins and fixed costs. CEPR Discussion Paper. Web.

An, Q., Wang, P., Emrouznejad, A., & Hu, J. (2020). Fixed cost allocation based on the principle of efficiency invariance in two-stage systems. European Journal of Operational Research, 283(2), 662-675.

Hellman, N. (2021). Discussion of ‘Accounting for intangible assets: suggested solutions. Accounting and Business Research, 1-10.

Ma, J., & Ren, H. (2018). The impact of variable cost on a dynamic Cournot–Stackelberg game with two decision-making stages.Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, 62, 184-201. Web.

Poama, A., & Lever, A. (2018). The Routledge handbook of ethics and public policy. Taylor & Francis. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 5(2), 102-108.

Zhong, H., Lin, Y., & Yip, T. L. (2021). A quantitative liability risk assessment of oil spills in oil ports: the case of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Maritime Policy & Management, 1-19.

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