An Intern's Experience at the Department of Juvenile Justice

The internship experience described herein began with the start of the fall 2006 semester. The intern, a Sociology and Psychology double major at Coastal Carolina University, participated in an unpaid, 100 hour internship for the Horry County Department of Juvenile Justice. As a part of this internship, the intern participated in the School-Based Arbitration Program. This included 21 hours of training to serve as a volunteer arbitrator. The remainder of the internship hours were spent in the Department of Juvenile Justice Office in Conway, SC.

Prior to this experience, the intern had minimal knowledge of the juvenile justice system, mostly stemming from her part-time job in an attorney's office. The intern chose the Department of Juvenile Justice as her internship site for this reason. Being a double major, the intern has struggled with which educational direction would best fit her career goals. The intern plans to attend graduate school following the completion of her degrees at Coastal, but has had difficulties in determining the type of program to enter.

As a part of the internship experience, the intern read pertinent literature, including two books and at least three articles that were analyzed by the intern. One book read mostly dealt with school shootings. Although the topic is interesting and relevant to current events, the intern had difficulties related this book to her internship experiences, as she did not encounter such severe cases. However, the intern did encounter many violent cases, and was able to identify similarities between the school shootings and other violent events. The concept the intern gained from reading this book that was most applicable to her intern experience was the idea that increasing communication in schools is a necessary step toward reducing violent crimes. Through the arbitration program the intern was made aware of many communication problems stemming from the schools.

Although most of the other concepts of this book were more relevant to school shootings, the intern did find other information in the book useful. Descriptions of school shooters, which included background history, habits, family history, age, etc., had many commonalities with the reports read by the intern in the DJJ office. The intern found it interesting and challenging to apply theories described in the book to juveniles that she encountered. From her analyses it appears that some of the theories from the book could be applied to other violent juvenile crimes beyond school shootings.

In addition to reading this book, the intern also read and reviewed a manual on good probation practice. This guide appeared to be more applicable to the internship. Although the intern felt that the guide might be too general for most probation officers working in South Carolina, she felt that she benefited from reading it. The manual helped the intern to better grasp the concepts behind juvenile probation and explain some confusing procedures. The intern particularly enjoyed reading the section of this guide that discussed diversion programs. She found it interesting to read the stated purpose of these programs as described at the federal level. Since the intern had spent a lot of time at the DJJ office filling out forms and reading files, she also found it interesting to look through the sample forms and instruments from other states that were in an appendix at the back of this guide.

Other pertinent literature that the intern read included articles on juvenile competency, violence in the home and the perceived fairness of the disturbing schools law. The article on the disturbing schools law was directly related to the intern's work in the arbitration program.