The effectiveness of Bhisho child and youth care Centre youth in conflict with the law rehabilitation programs

Youth in conflict with the law is seemingly becoming a significant problem in South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape where youth engage in risk-taking activities, such as anti-social behaviour and criminal acts. This study builds on factors contributing to youth delinquency such as negative behaviours of parents, dysfunctional families, high crime rate in communities, poor self-concept, low literacy level, poor socio-economic status and no sense of belonging. Against this backdrop there are programmes put in place as a form of rehabilitation for the youth in an effort to eliminate from amongst them, recidivism that conflicts with the law. However, little importance has been given to the challenges faced when implementing such programmes, such as illiteracy, rebellion, deviance and lack of resilience among youth. This context informed the study’s aim to explore the effectiveness of the rehabilitation programmes at the Bhisho Child and Youth Care Centre. To achieve this aim, the study employed the qualitative research approach to explore the rehabilitation programmes. Data was collected through 20 semi-structured interviews with purposively sampled participants (children/youth and personnel from the centre) ranging from those who perpetrated the heavier crimes to those who perpetrated the least crimes. Collected data was analysed through thematic analysis whereby tape recordings were transcribed, sorted and interpreted under themes that show common cause or commonalities among the research participants. The main findings show that the programmes offered to the youth are effective and play an important role in curbing their criminal behaviour. The acts of the study recommend that the personnel at the Bhisho Child and Youth Care Centre be equipped with more developmental services which can enable them to produce more effectiveness to the programmes offered by the centre.Thesis (MSoc) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 202