Internships:
 A Taste of the Working World

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Lauren Knowlton

When searching for internships, Lauren Knowlton knew that juvenile justice was the route she wanted to take. “I used to want to be an elementary school teacher, and so I have always wanted to work with kids. Being into justice systems, it seemed natural to work these two things together.” She talked to Dr. Eichor about internship ideas and then went through the interview process that is required for all justice systems majors. In the end, Lauren chose to intern at the Bruce Normile Juvenile Justice Center in Kirksville, Missouri, where she saw the whole operation of the juvenile justice system.

The Juvenile Justice Center houses juveniles ages twelve to seventeen and has several areas, including an assessment unit and a detention unit. The assessment unit houses juveniles who are there on order of protective custody for short-term residency until a permanent home can be found. While working at this unit, Lauren’s main responsibilities were watching over the kids and helping them carry out their activities. She would watch over them during recreation time, help them during homework time, and eat dinner with them every night. After bedtime, she would do checks on the rooms every fifteen minutes to make sure they were in bed and were all right.

Lauren also worked in the detention unit, the area designated for juveniles who were being held on orders of detention for criminal activity. Here she spent a lot of time in the control room, watching the computers. All the doors were locked in the detention center, so Lauren would monitor who entered and left the facility. “The kids have less freedom here. They have classroom time and a little recreation time…The kids in detention get a smaller area to play and it’s a lot more confined…It’s more of a temporary thing. We brought their meals to them and they were allowed to sit in their day area and read.”

Lauren also went to the Department of Family Services as part of her internship. Here she observed family support meetings for parents and their children. “We would see how they were doing. They have set plans and the overall goal of the juvenile officers and the juvenile court is to eventually bring the kids back into the home, as long as it is in the best interest of the children.” Every couple of weeks, Lauren went with the Juvenile Officers on law day to sit in on the court cases of the different children. She also went on surprise home visits with the probation officers to make sure that the kids were where they were supposed to be, that they were on the right track, and that their home environment was safe.

Lauren admits that she was surprised about what it was like to work in a juvenile center. “I didn’t realize that it would be so much [disciplining]…I wanted to be able to develop more of a relationship with the kids. When you’re in that type of authority role, it’s really difficult because you want to be there to talk to them. But, as soon as they do something, you have to call them on it, so that was really hard. That was something that made me think twice about what I was looking for in a career.”

Though she is not completely ruling out working in juvenile justice later, after this internship Lauren thinks she might want to go into the investigative field. However, she was still glad she did the internship. “The best part was being able to talk to the kids and know that it was a positive thing for me to be there. You could tell that they were happy that I was there just to talk to them.”