You have acquired your dream position as the Chief Probation Officer for the Juvenile Probation Office for your county and state.On your road to this dream position as the Chief Juvenile Probation Officer you have supervised hundreds of juveniles in their efforts to find their way to adulthood. During this journey, you realize that you have enjoyed successes and agonized about your "not so successful" probationers.Now, you have been asked to address the State Conference for Supporting Juveniles to Adulthood and have decided to get some ideas from your contemporaries within the Juvenile Justice System.

The officials at the conference have sent you this guidance for your presentation:

"Parental sources of self-control are cited as the most influential in establishing and reinforcing self-control in a child. This is so powerful that it is more influential than biological artifacts such as genetic predispositions that can lower one's ability to display self-control and delay gratification. Self-control theory has become widely tested and built-upon by additional theorists, and like a few theories, it has become a source for policy and program development. Your task in this speech is to consider programs and policies that can improve self-control.Also remember that a criticism of the self-control theory is that as adults, it is already too late to instill levels of self-control that will inhibit criminality. Explain during your speech if you agree with this premise that it is too late? Also the audience would like to hear what you think should be done with the adults in the systems and if they are a lost cause"

The Probation Office for which you work has a blogging board, where people can post their thoughts and then have a discussion concerning posts with other probation officers both juvenile and adult probation officers. What you have decided to do, is to write a main posting about what you intend to say during your presentation and then ask fellow probation officers for comments and responses. One thing that you must remember is that since you are an AIU Graduate and have fifteen years of service as a juvenile probation officer, you are considered to be an expert in the field. Everything that you say on your posting must be accurate and be backed up by other experts within the field, so researching your comments is vital to maintaining your credibility as an expert on the topic.