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6
Preventing Reoffending
A core function of the juvenile justice system is to prevent reoffending by adolescents
who have committed acts that would be considered crimes if committed by adults. Even if the
court is an active partner in the broad prevention activities of the community, it will retain the
primary responsibility for responding to adolescents who were not prevented from engaging in
illegal behavior. Whether imposing sanctions or providing services, the court will continue to
determine the type and intensity of interventions for the adolescents and families that come
before it.
Whether the court can reduce reoffending depends on its ability to accomplish two
interrelated tasks. Effectiveness lies in the system's ability to (a) intervene with the right
adolescent offenders and (b) use the right type and amount of intervention. Achieving this ideal,
or at least moving toward it, requires the court to examine its methods for assessing adolescents
at different points of contact with the system, its thresholds and approaches for intervening in
their lives, and how court resources and practices can promote the core task of preventing
reoffending.
As explained in Chapter 5, consideration of the unique capacities and needs of
adolescents is a necessary starting point for designing a theoretically coherent, just, and effective
juvenile justice system. It is thus appropriate to consider how knowledge about adolescent
development can be applied to the prevention of reoffending. In this chapter, we consider how
efforts to keep juvenile offenders from continuing criminal activity might be extended and
refined by consideration of advancing knowledge regarding adolescent development.
GENERAL RISK AND SERIOUS ADOLESCENT OFFENDING
Intervening with adolescent offenders to prevent continued offending would be a
relatively straightforward task if one could identify those who would be chronic, serious, and/or
violent offenders early in their offending careers and correct the factors that were most
influential in producing this pattern of behavior. As noted in Chapter 1, however, this amounts
to predicting and intervening to stop a relatively rare event; serious, violent, chronic adolescent
offenders are a small proportion of the general adolescent offending population. This group is
both proportionately and numerically quite small, and when the focus is restricted to the most
serious delinquent offenders, for example, the chronically violent offender, it is exceedingly
small (Snyder, 1998). In addition, the markers that differentiate this group cleanly at the start of
1
their offending careers are rather limited in their predictive power.
1 The term "risk marker" is used throughout this section This is in keeping with the distinction made by Kraemer
and colleagues (1997), in which a marker has a documented association with a later outcome, and a factor has
substantiation that the observed association with the later outcome is causal (i.e., changing the risk factor has been
shown to reduce the likelihood of the outcome). Overwhelmingly, the research on risk for future delinquency has
demonstrated the presence of risk markers, with much less evidence that these risk indicators are risk factors related
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The power of a risk marker to predict future arrest or the impact of an intervention to
reduce the likelihood of future arrest is often depicted in terms of an "effect size." An effect size
is a metric that can be compared across multiple studies; it indicates how much impact a
particular risk variable or intervention has on whether an individual is arrested. It is useful for
comparing results across studies because, unlike indicators of statistical significance, it is less
affected by the size of the samples examined. In the studies of interventions considered later in
the chapter, the effect size indicates the average observed difference in arrest rate between a
treated group and a comparison group. If a study indicates that a treated group has an arrest rate
of 25 percent and the comparison group has an arrest rate of 35 percent, that intervention has an
effect size of .10, a 10 percent lower rate of rearrest. Effect sizes across multiple studies are
examined using a technique called meta-analysis, which uses regression approaches to identify
aspects of programs that are related to larger or smaller effect sizes among the pool of studies
examined.
Over the years, a number of studies have examined risk markers for or predictors of
serious delinquency, chronic offending, and violent delinquency. Several excellent summaries of
that literature exist (Lipsey and Derzon, 1998; Hawkins et al., 1998, Biglan et al., 2004;
Farrington and Welsh, 2007). Lipsey and Derzon (1998, p. 88), using meta-analytic techniques,
identified 793 effect sizes from 66 reports of 34 independent studies, and Hawkins and
colleagues (1998) identified 39 studies and provided a substantive summary of the identified risk
markers. Summarizing the rather voluminous findings from these reviews in a short space is a
difficult task. For an overview, see Table 6-1.
This table shows the largest effect sizes for particular risk markers at different ages. As
the table shows, the identified risk markers cut across a number of developmental domains,
including prior offending and aggression, as well as peer, family, and school factors. Hawkins
and colleagues (1998) also found significant risk markers in all of the developmental domains
they examined: individual, family, school, peer, and community. To illustrate their findings, we
summarize risk markers from the area of the family: "Within the family, living with a criminal
parent or parents, harsh discipline, physical abuse and neglect, poor family management
practices, low levels of parent involvement with the child, high levels of family conflict, parental
attitudes favorable to violence, and separation from family have all been linked to later violence"
(Hawkins et al., 1998). We can draw several important conclusions from the results presented in
these and other reviews.
First, there is no single risk marker that is very strongly associated with serious
delinquency. As is true of other problem behaviors, there are multiple risk markers drawn from
multiple domains, each of which, alone, is only modestly related to these outcomes. In other
words, there is no single solution on which to focus efforts to prevent serious delinquency. This
behavior pattern appears to come about from the accumulation of risk across many domains
(Lipsey and Derzon, 1998; Hawkins et al., 1998; Biglan et al., 2004; Farrington and Welsh,
2007; Howell, 2009).
Second, risk for serious delinquency is generated across multiple developmental stages
from infancy through childhood and into adolescence, with risk markers at each stage making
contributions to the origins of serious delinquency. Although early risk markers have a role to
play, they are clearly not determinative of these outcomes. However, early risk markers are
predictive of the development of new risk markers for delinquency at subsequent ages. For
to later delinquency. The literature uses these terms loosely and interchangeably. The wording used here is
believed to be reflective of the general state of the literature, and further specific distinctions would be distracting.
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example, risk indicators during early childhood, such as increased aggression and hyperactivity,
are predictive of peer rejection and either peer isolation or attachment to delinquent peers; both
of these place a child at increased risk for delinquent behavior during puberty and adolescence
(Biglan et al., 2004).
Third, there is no evidence that there are unique risk markers associated with serious
delinquency, chronic delinquency, or violent delinquency. The risk markers listed in Table 6-1
and the illustrative family risk markers from the Hawkins and colleagues (1998) review quoted
above have been linked to general delinquency, conduct disorder, substance use, and a host of
other adolescent problem behaviors, as well as to serious delinquency (Biglan et al., 2004;
Catalano and Hawkins, 1996; Farrington, 1989; Lorion et al., 1987; Yoshikawa, 1994).
Other studies of risk markers for serious delinquency reached similar conclusions. Porter
and colleagues (1999) used data from the three projects of the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention's Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency in
Denver, Pittsburgh, and Rochester. They compared three groups--nonoffenders, general but
nonviolent delinquents, and violent delinquents--on 19 risk markers representing 7 domains--
community, family structural characteristics, parent-child relations, school, peers, individual, and
problem behaviors. They conclude that "there is not a different set of risk factors for serious
violent offenders . . . [but] the serious violent offenders have greater deficits, or more extreme
scores, on many of these risk factors as compared to general delinquents [and] are also more
likely to experience risk in multiple domains" (Porter et al., 1999, p. 15). More recently,
Esbensen and colleagues (2010) examined risk markers for serious delinquency in a sample of
5,935 eighth graders drawn from 11 different communities throughout the United States. They
compared nonoffenders to nonviolent offenders and to serious violent offenders across 18 risk
markers. In general, level of risk increased from nonoffenders to nonviolent offenders to violent
offenders, but the differences appeared to be a matter of degree rather than kind. Similar results
were also found when examining a high-risk sample of adolescents from Los Angeles
(MacDonald et al., 2009). Once again, frequent and violent offenders differed from nonviolent
and low-rate offenders, not in the presence of certain risk markers, but rather in that frequent and
violent offenders had higher than average values across their baseline assessment of risk markers
for delinquency, such as delinquent peers, family criminality, and substance use.
Few studies directly compare serious delinquents to both general delinquents and
nonoffenders. Among those that do, however, the weight of the available evidence suggests that
serious delinquents are influenced by the same risk markers and developmental processes as
other youth. Some preliminary evidence of associations between neuropsychological or
physiological indicators and serious adolescent offending exists (e.g., Cauffman, Steinberg, and
Piquero, 2005), but there is no body of evidence of which we are aware to indicate that serious
delinquents are qualitatively different from other delinquents who are involved in the juvenile
justice system. They do commit more offenses and some more violent offenses, but that is
because they appear to experience a greater accumulation of risk markers in comparison to
others. But the individual risk markers that they experience, such as, impulsivity and risk-taking,
family distress, school failure, and peer influence, are, by and large, similar to those experienced
by all youth caught up in delinquent behavior and in the juvenile justice system. More serious
offenders may well experience more powerful and prevalent environmental influences, such as
neighborhood disorder or deviant peer involvement, and these in turn may exacerbate existing
intraindividual vulnerabilities for involvement in antisocial behavior. The processes by which
these contextual and individual risk characteristics interact to increase the risk of criminal
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involvement, however, appear more similar than different among serious, nonserious, and
nonoffending adolescents.
It is important to note that the findings summarized above and in Table 6-1 are inherently
limited, in light of new, possible risk markers that might be examined if this type of research
were done today. When the referenced studies were conducted, there was little awareness of the
wide range of biological, neuropsychological, or psychosocial variables that might be considered
as highly relevant to adolescent development. Examination of these new constructs of interest
might elucidate powerful interactions or moderated effects that simply were not imagined as
relevant when the reviewed studies were conducted.
These findings are nonetheless relevant for developing strategies for assessing and
intervening with adolescent offenders. First, there is currently no clearly applicable approach for
identifying the adolescent offender who will go on to commit the most horrific and troubling
crimes. Hindsight often makes it seem like these adolescents must be readily detectable, but
foresight for doing so has not been found (Mulvey et al., 2010). Adolescent offenders differ on a
gradient of risk for future offending, with no distinct set of risk markers associated with the most
serious and chronic offending, and approaches that use this general framework for risk have the
most solid empirical basis. In addition, the risk markers associated with future offending, either
serious and chronic or not, cover a broad array of personal and social features and differ with
developmental period. This means that interventions limited to just one "key" factor during a
limited period of development are likely to have an equally limited sustained impact on
reoffending.
This does not mean that secondary prevention efforts to reduce involvement in antisocial
activities and future offending are for naught. Multiple effective prevention strategies for
working with troubled and troubling youth have been shown to have positive effects (Office of
the Surgeon General, 2001). The implication of the above findings about the limited specificity
of risk markers is that interventions of this sort will have only so much usefulness forestalling
future offending, despite notable positive effects. Without the ability to identify the most serious
juvenile offenders cleanly, prevention efforts will necessarily enroll and treat a proportion of
adolescents who would otherwise have had a trouble-free adolescence in the absence of the
intervention and will overlook another proportion who will become serious, chronic, or violent
adolescents at a later developmental stage. The challenge of assessing adolescent offenders
regarding the most reasonable level and type of intervention once they have come to the attention
of the juvenile justice system remains unsolved.
ASSESSING RISK OF FUTURE CRIME AND NEED FOR SERVICE INTERVENTION
Many areas of health and social service practice have come to rely more on actuarial
methods for screening and assessing individuals. These methods include checklists to identify
particular problems for further assessment and structured protocols to determine the severity of a
problem (e.g., screens for depression in primary care practices [Zuckerbrot et al., 2007],
instruments for assessing intimate partner or sexual violence [Rabin et al., 2009; Basile et al.,
2007]). In some instances, structured instruments are used to assess the readiness of an
individual to leave a restrictive environment or to identify potentially high-risk individuals if
grave outcomes, such as imminent serious violence, might be avoided by admission into an
institutional environment. Structured risk assessments have even made their way into court
deliberations about the imposition of specialized laws, such as violent sexual predator statutes.
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Actuarial or structured professional judgment measures have also become more
commonplace throughout the juvenile justice system. Detention screening instruments are now
often used to determine an adolescent's risk of failing to appear in court or of committing
another criminal act if released into the community. In addition, screening instruments for
mental disorders have become a standard instrument used at detention intake to identify
adolescents with incipient mental health problems (Desai et al., 2006). Finally, beginning in the
1980s, instruments for assessing the risk of reoffending by adjudicated adolescent offenders have
also permeated practice in many locales, as a way for communities to establish a consensus about
the appropriate threshold for sending an adolescent to institutional placement (Baird et al., 1984;
Wiebush et al., 1995). Many locales have developed slightly modified versions of early
structured approaches, and a limited number of these have been validated and received
widespread distribution (Howell, 2003a). Researchers continue to refine assessment instruments
by exploring innovative algorithms for identifying subgroups of offenders with differing levels
of risk for reoffending (Grann and Langstrom, 2007; Walters, 2011; Yang et al., 2010), and
focusing on predicting reoffending in special populations of juvenile offenders (e.g., juvenile sex
offenders) (Prentky and Righthand, 2003). Several initiatives (e.g., MacArthur Foundation
Models for Change) have promoted the use of structured instruments as a method to increase
juvenile justice efficiency and effectiveness by limiting institutional placement to adolescents
who are most likely to reoffend and investing intervention resources in those adolescents for
whom they will make the most difference.
Newer juvenile assessment instruments consider not only risk of reoffending, but also
attempt to identify the needs of the adolescent that might be addressed with interventions. The
intent of these instruments is to go beyond calculating a single score of how likely a juvenile
might be to reoffend, and acknowledge that risk of reoffending is not a fixed attribute of the
adolescent, but rather a partially contextually dependent estimate that might be lowered by
particular interventions, monitoring in the community, or changes in life situation. Newer
structured risk/need instruments include an assessment of potential protective factors or
treatment needs that might be considered when planning interventions (Andrews and Bonta,
1995; Wiebush et al., 1995; Dembo et al., 1996; Hoge et al., 1996), as well as an assessment of
the adolescent's likely responsivity to interventions for these identified needs (Kennedy, 2000).
In line with the review of the risk marker literature cited above, most risk/need
instruments include an array of factors to consider, covering such considerations as prior
offending history, family history of criminality, school performance, current peer associations,
and antisocial attitudes. Based on the level of overall risk, an adolescent could be considered for
more or less intensive services (e.g., institutional placement or community supervision). If
appropriate dynamic risk factors for offending could be identified and assessed adequately,
interventions for a particular adolescent could then be based on the number and type of dynamic
factors related to continued offending. For example, an adolescent with high antisocial attitudes
and levels of offending could be considered a good candidate for cognitive interventions aimed
at altering these attitudes or promoting positive social skills, or an adolescent with a drug and
alcohol problem might be considered a candidate for positive community adjustment if these
issues can be addressed effectively. These methods, if built into an ongoing system of
readministration and monitoring of services, hold considerable promise for assessing whether an
adolescent offender has received appropriate services and whether intermediate goals of the
interventions have been met.
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Methods for integrating the findings from structured risk/need assessments with case
management planning and implementation have been developed (e.g., Bonta, 2002), but the
effectiveness of these strategies is untested. The development of risk/need instruments is instead
at an early stage of sorting out whether it has identified the dynamic predictors of risk most
associated with offending and the needs that will really make a difference if they are the targets
of intervention (Baird, 2009). The groundwork for a more systematic assessment of risk and
needs in juvenile offenders has been laid, but there is considerable work to be done on further
development of instruments and application of these instruments to improve practice.
Risk/need assessment instruments perform well for assigning adolescent offenders to
groups with different likelihoods of future offending, and the predictive accuracy of these
approaches has increased as refinements have been developed (Andrews et al., 2006; Howell,
2009). The proportion of youths screened who will be classified high, medium, or low risk will
vary depending on the sample examined and the cutoffs deemed acceptable in each locale. The
use of risk/need assessment instruments in the earlier phases of juvenile justice involvement will
gain most of their predictive power from identifying "true negatives"--adolescents who have a
low probability of continued offending. Across studies of adolescents on probation, the
correlation between risk assessment scores and involvement in subsequent criminal offending are
between .25 and .30 (Schwalbe, 2004, 2008a), with slightly higher associations (r = .41 for
general delinquency) reported for the use of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management
Inventory in some studies (Andrews et al., 2006). Even given the modesty of these associations,
these instruments do provide adequate guidance for the important task of identifying adolescent
offenders who warrant more intensive intervention or supervision and those who should be
diverted from intervention programs (Borum and Verhaagen, 2006; Grisso et al., 2005; Latessa,
2004; DeComo and Wiebush, 2005; Gottfredson and Moriarty, 2006a; Wiebush, 2002).
The introduction of risk/need assessment is a significant shift in how juvenile justice
conceptualizes the potential impact of court involvement. This approach implies a more
dynamic view of juvenile justice involvement, looking at both static and dynamic factors that
might be relevant to reoffending. It reflects a shift in thinking more generally among service
providers about the need to move from predicting risk to managing risk in certain populations,
like individuals with mental illness who are involved in violence (Mulvey and Lidz, 1998;
Douglas and Skeem, 2005). It is also congruent with the risk, need, and responsivity (RNR)
approach taken in correctional rehabilitation (Andrews and Bonta, 2010; Skeem et al., 2011).
This orientation puts less stock in determining categories of offenders and places greater
emphasis on the malleable factors that might contribute to continued criminal involvement.
Such an orientation opens up the possibility for probation staff or the court to match
adolescents more effectively with specialized treatment providers and for the court to monitor
the provision of appropriate services. This latter task is rarely done effectively by the courts and
represents perhaps the most fundamental payoff from advances in the assessment of adolescent
offenders. Valid methods exist for assessing the risk of reoffending and intervention needs; the
current challenge is to incorporate these effectively into standard court and probation practice.
Integrating these instruments effectively into routine practice requires clarification of the
mechanisms related to community service provision, reoffending, and subsequent systems
involvement. In both research and practice, a variety of outcomes are often considered when
determining the ideas of "risk" and "need" as well as the connection between these two concepts.
Some instruments are developed to indicate the risk of being returned to a particular institutional
setting during program involvement; others are developed to indicate the risk of rearrest or the
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general risk for multiple possible negative outcomes (e.g., dropping out of school) in some time
period after program involvement. Moreover, the nexus of the particular need assessed (e.g.,
mental health disorder) and future offending is often more assumed than demonstrated (Grisso,
2008). Instruments thus often indicate risk markers that might or might not be appropriate foci
for intervention or the need for services that might or might not actually reduce the likelihood of
reoffending for that adolescent.
It is worth noting that the most commonly used instruments are developed with rearrest
or reconviction as the only relevant outcomes. These instruments thus provide estimates of the
likelihood of detection, apprehension, and prosecution for illegal acts, not involvement in illegal
activity. Given the well-documented patterns of selective law enforcement, gender differences in
processing, and disproportionate minority contact, this means that risk/need instruments might be
conflating risk with the ongoing biases in the juvenile justice system and enforcing the status quo
in juvenile justice processing. The potential for the application of risk/need assessments to
propagate system inequities seems to exist, although there is no available research that
documents whether this possibility actually occurs.
Limited research on racial/ethnic and gender differences in risk/need and screening
instruments has indicated different proportions of risk classifications and different patterns of
problem identification by race/ethnicity and gender, as well as differential rates of rearrest and
service involvement (Baglivio and Jackowski, 2012; Desai et al., 2012; Onifade et al., 2009;
Schwalbe et al., 2006, 2007; Vincent et al., 2008, 2011). The amount and type of bias in
assessment and processing in the juvenile justice system connected with the use of these
instruments, however, has not been adequately documented. This research is a high priority,
since the application of these instruments has become (and will become even more) widespread.
While the application of risk/need and screening instruments is a clear improvement over
unfettered discretion, there is a long way to go in determining the unintended, and possibly
harmful, effects connected with their use.
Putting these instruments into practice thus requires a collaborative process in which
practice professionals, researchers, and policy makers/administrators come to a consensus about
the reasons for adoption of risk/need instruments as well as the procedures and expectations
regarding the use of these instruments (Howell, 2009). Effective use of structured screening and
assessment procedures implies changes beyond simply the agreement to endorse the use of a
previously developed measure. The process of integrating risk/need principles involves an
ongoing examination of how courts process adolescents with different risk profiles and
monitoring of how dispositions and interventions fit the risk profile of adolescents coming to
different decision points in the juvenile justice system (Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, 1996; National Conference of State Legislatures, 1996; Howell,
2009). By monitoring the appropriateness of the court actions taken and the interventions
provided, a local juvenile justice system can implement a system of graduated sanctions,
assigning more intensive interventions to the most serious adolescent offenders with the most
cumulative risk.
There are two benefits of developing systems of risk/needs assessment at critical points in
the juvenile justice system. First, the introduction of these methods reduces idiosyncratic
decision making, increasing the uniformity of juvenile justice practice. Unstructured decision
making introduces individual biases and contextual influences that generally lower the overall
accuracy of judgments about future behavior (Dawes et al., 1989). Having juvenile justice
personnel follow a protocol for decision making reduces the variability in these determinations
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and increases the overall rate of sound decisions in the process. The use of actuarial instruments,
however, can be seen as formulaic and clinically vacuous when confronted with the complexities
of a particular adolescent's life situation (Mulvey, 2005). It is therefore recommended that
overrides to the determination reached by the instrument alone be permitted, but that the
proportion of cases that can qualify for such an override be limited to a set proportion of cases
and that the procedures for documenting these are clear (Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, 1995a). If implemented carefully, systematic consideration of relevant
risk/need variables should produce more consistency than would unstructured professional
judgment, while allowing adequate flexibility.
In addition, making focused improvements in accuracy at specific points in juvenile
justice processing can have ripple effects. Evidence from the Juvenile Detention Alternatives
project indicates that many locales have seen this type of payoff in detention decision making:
they have lowered the overall rate of detention as well as the rate of detaining minority
adolescents after implementing a structured decision-making protocol at this single point in
juvenile justice processing (Mendel, 2009). Limiting system involvement among adolescent
offenders is often considered an indicator of progress in and of itself..
There is a commonly held belief among juvenile justice professionals that further
systems penetration is associated with increasingly negative outcomes (National Research
Council and Institute of Medicine, 2001). Research on adult incarceration identifies an
iatrogenic effect from prison confinement, resulting mainly from postrelease obstacles in
housing, employment, and family relationships (Nagin et al., 2009; Cullen et al., 2011; Vieraitis
et al., 2007). The limited research on juvenile processing indicates a small, and somewhat
inconsistent, negative effect from juvenile justice system processing compared with diversion at
the point of initial referral (Gatti, Tremblay, and Vitaro, 2009; Huizinga et al., 2003; Petrosino,
Turpin-Petrosino, and Guckenburg, 2010). There is not a convincing body of research, however,
demonstrating that increasing penetration across the points of juvenile justice system processing
significantly increases offending beyond what might be attributable to individual risk
characteristics. This type of research is extremely difficult to do, given the strong selection
effects that have to be accounted for. It is, however, an important area for future investigation.
Second, the introduction of risk/need assessments can maximize the impact of resource
investment by targeting resources to the risk level of the juvenile offender. The impact of both
institutional and community-based programs generally varies with the risk level of the
adolescent. Higher risk adolescents show larger reductions in reoffending, while lower risk
offenders show only modest positive effects or even negative effects--such as increased
recidivism in some instances (Greenwood, 2008; Lowenkamp and Latessa, 2005c). These
findings could well be the result of high-risk offenders having the most room for improvement in
their levels of offending, whereas interventions for lower risk offenders are disrupting potentially
positive developmental experiences or exposing them to antisocial peers (Smith et al., 2009).
Whatever the specific mechanism, the appropriate focusing of more intense (and costly)
interventions on higher risk adolescents produces a greater reduction in subsequent offending
and limits the negative effects on less serious offenders from unwarranted intensive interventions
(Howell, 2009; Aos et al., 2004).
The use of structured risk/need assessment at the initial stages of court processing can
produce a substantial benefit. Over half of the adolescents seen at the initial phases of juvenile
justice processing system do not have further involvement with it (54 percent of males and 73
percent of females) (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). Structured instruments can be especially
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useful for identifying low-risk adolescents who are unlikely to reappear in the court system and
releasing these adolescents outright or referring them to appropriate diversionary services.
Relying on inferential clinical judgment about the need for further intervention with an
adolescent inevitably leaves this judgment open to the market demands of diversionary service
providers to generate referrals or the potential overreaching of court personnel on issues that
might not be best addressed in the juvenile justice system.
Improved risk/need assessment is not a panacea but a key component of a more informed
and targeted juvenile justice system. The potential of these approaches lies in the juvenile justice
system's ability to obtain reliable assessments, ensure that the information is used in decision
making, and track the outcomes of interventions (Mulvey and Iselin, 2008). Making risk/need
assessment a functional component of juvenile court practice thus takes professional
commitment, adequate data systems, accurate information about service provision, and a
reorientation of judges and court personnel about the mission of the juvenile court.
Although the broad potential of risk/needs assessment lies in its role as a component of a
data-informed juvenile court system, there is currently little empirical work to support the
widespread use of risk/need instruments beyond the face-valid argument for their use. There are
numerous reports documenting the adoption of these instruments (Vincent, 2011), but a striking
lack of evidence regarding the effects of such instruments on the types of services received by
adolescent offenders or the impact of altered service provision patterns on institutional or
community adjustment (Chung et al., 2007). Studies of the introduction of risk/need instruments
or other structured decision-making approaches in juvenile justice have been largely restricted to
assessments of how well received and implemented these approaches have been among
practitioners. It is possible, however, that these assessment forms become a part of the
adolescent's court file in many locales, with little impact on the types of services provided.
Implementation and outcome research is needed on whether and how information
generated in screens or assessments is translated into receipt of appropriate services and, if so,
whether these services tend to reduce criminal behavior or increase community adjustment for
juvenile offenders. Risk/need assessment is the first necessary step to achieving the overall goal
of a more rational juvenile justice system. As pointed out earlier, however, it is important to
remember that much of the literature tests the accuracy of these instruments by asking whether
they predict future arrest of continued system involvement. As a result, these instruments and
approaches can be seen as effectively predicting future system response to an adolescent
offender as well as the future offending behavior of that adolescent. Given that disproportionate
minority contact seems to be an enduring feature of the juvenile justice system and that mental
health service involvement for adolescents shows consistent race/ethnicity differences, it is
imperative that future research in this area sort out the possible racial/ethnic biases connected
with the use of any risk/need assessment strategy. Mere tests of accuracy regarding these
approaches could reinforce a system of inequity in service provision and sanctions; careful
examination of patterns of service provision and community adjustment are needed to determine
the benefits and limits of risk/need assessment., Finding out how to make these instruments
contribute to a larger vision of effective and fair service involvement is a key challenge for future
applied research.
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EVIDENCE-BASED SERVICES FOR JUVENILE OFFENDERS
Academics and practitioners have pursued a number of related activities over the last two
decades that have enriched understanding of what interventions work with juvenile offenders.
Most notably, evidence about the effectiveness of interventions programs with adolescent
offenders has expanded in scope and strength. Numerous controlled trials of interventions have
been completed, producing several documented approaches with convincing evidence of reduced
offending for treated adolescents. Meta-analyses of existing data about interventions with
adolescent offenders have been conducted, highlighting both the relative impact of interventions
and the characteristics of the interventions with notable and consistent effects. In addition,
several groups have established criteria for demonstrating effectiveness of an intervention and
provided easily accessible information to practitioners and policy makers about what programs
meet these standards. State funding agencies and legislatures have become knowledgeable about
the idea of evidence-based practices and have attempted to create a policy context to support
such activities. These developments have pushed the field toward better informed and focused
practice, although considerable challenges lie ahead for creating integrated and effective service
systems for juvenile offenders.
Program Effectiveness Research
Clinical trials of interventions with adolescent offenders over the past 25 years have
become increasingly sophisticated scientifically and, as a result, more convincing in their claims
that interventions can actually produce sizeable reductions in criminal involvement of
adolescents. Recent research on interventions with juvenile offenders has, in general, been more
rigorous than previous work in documenting the adolescents treated, the interventions tested, and
the effects of treatment involvement. The general ethos that "nothing works" has clearly been
supplanted by the belief that many things do work.
Several programs for adolescent offenders with demonstrated effectiveness have been
identified (Office of the Surgeon General, 2001; Greenwood, 2008).2 The most commonly
recognized and often cited approaches include functional family therapy (FFT) (Alexander and
Parsons, 1973; Barton et al., 1985; Alexander et al., 2000), multisystemic therapy (MST)
(Henggeler et al., 1998; Schaeffer and Borduin, 2005), and multidimensional treatment foster
care (MTFC) (Chamberlain, 2003; Eddy et al., 2004). Each of these programs intervenes with
the family and/or the community context of an adolescent offender, and each has repeatedly
produced convincing evidence of reductions in offending behavior in samples of juvenile
offenders. Each also provides clear information about the characteristics of the intervention. A
number of other more specialized interventions targeting mediators of criminal involvement,
most notably aggression replacement therapy (ART) (Goldstein et al., 1987) and cognitive-
behavioral therapy approaches (Milkman and Wanberg, 2007), have also produced convincing
evidence of their positive effects (Sherman et al., 1997; Mendel, 2000). Unfortunately, efforts to
identify effective programs for female adolescent offenders have been less successful (Larance,
2009). In a nationwide review of 61 girls' delinquency programs, only 17 had published
evaluations, no programs could be rated as effective, and most programs were rated as having
2
In this section, the outcome of interest is rearrest, measured as either police reports or juvenile court petitions.
Interventions are presented as effective or not in terms of how much they reduce rearrest. Programs often target and
change other behaviors, but these effects are not considered in detail here.
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insufficient evidence (Zahn et al., 2008). Most recently, Kempf-Leonard (2012) noted that "The
current body of knowledge is not sufficient to allow us to make informed decisions about
accurate and effective responses to female delinquents" (p. 511).
Many popular programs, like Scared Straight and boot camps, have consistently shown
marginal, null, or negative effects. Individual counseling and peer group interventions relying on
loosely structured group discussions (e.g., the guided group interaction model) have
unimpressive records for preventing reoffending (Sherman et al., 1997). Repeated evaluations of
the Scared Straight program, in which convicts confront groups of adolescent offenders with the
horrors of prison life, show no effect or increased reoffending among the adolescents taking part
(Finckenauer and Gavin, 1999; Klenowski et al., 2010; Petrosino et al., 2003). Boot camp
programs, widely adopted as a method for instilling discipline in adolescent offenders, have
generally been shown to have no, or a negative, impact on reoffending (Bottcher and Ezell, 2005;
MacKenzie et al., 2001), with some reviews showing that boot camps and other disciplinary
programs increase recidivism by about 8 percent (Lipsey, 2009).
Meta-analyses of published reports of the effects of delinquency intervention programs
(Lipsey and Wilson, 1993; Latimer, 2001) have provided quantitatively based estimates of the
relative effects of a variety of interventions. In this approach, findings across studies are
aggregated and summary statistics are generated regarding the effects found and the
characteristics of certain interventions associated with larger or smaller effects. Using well-
defined methods for determining the adequacy of a program evaluation as well as combining the
reports, the analyst can derive a general estimate of the effect size of an intervention approach,
that is, the reduction in the rate of rearrest associated with programs of a particular type. Meta-
analyses of intervention programs with adolescent offenders (Andrews et al., 1990; Lipsey and
Wilson, 1998; Cullen, 2005; Lipsey and Cullen, 2007; Lipsey, 2009) have not all agreed in their
estimates of effects, given different sets of programs examined and the time periods covered. In
general, however, these analyses have identified several features of interventions related to
smaller and larger effects. Institutional programs show approximately a 10 percent in reduction
in rearrest, and probably because institutional confinement is often done with minimal intensity
of targeted programs, these interventions generally show smaller effects than multifaceted
community-based interventions, with about a 25 percent differential in the reduction in rearrest
over a period of approximately a year or longer in one analysis. The important point of these
meta-analyses, however, is the demonstration that there are a number of different types of
interventions that have relatively large effects, and that these effects can be found even when
these interventions are applied in community settings with relatively high-risk adolescents.
Many of these specific program effects are presented later in this chapter, when consideration is
given to the potential costs and benefits of different intervention approaches.
The average effect size attributed to a particular type of program or intervention in a
meta-analysis is obviously dependent on the reports considered to be representative of that
category of programs or interventions. There is often considerable variability of effect sizes
within program types, with even more recognized "model" program types varying in their effect
sizes (Lipsey et al., 2010). Not surprisingly, there are often reports of programs or interventions
that illustrate the conditions under which a certain approach might be more or less effective.
For example, analyses indicate that institutional treatment programs generally have an
unimpressive record for reducing reoffending and that large, overcrowded facilities with limited
treatment programs (in which custody trumps treatment concerns) often have high recidivism
rates (Ezell, 2007; Trulson et al., 2007). At the same time, there are empirically sound and
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that all individuals enrolled in these programs would be in an institutional setting if not enrolled.
It is important to recognize that some programs are economically inferior to conventional
practice (i.e., the benefits are lower than the costs). This is the case for alternative parole
programs. Wilderness challenge, intensive probation supervision, and Scared Straight are all
economically inferior to conventional practice. In these cases, the benefits are less than the costs;
running these programs costs money for no gain in the long run.
Parole is the only custody status for which no alternative programs pass a benefit-cost
test. There may be parole practices that are economically better than standard practice, but they
have not yet been developed or successfully tested. Juvenile justice officials may consider
supporting the development and testing of new parole models that might prove successful and
pass a benefit-cost test. Alternatively, they can use their scarce resources to implement the
already-proven programs that intervene during a different custody status.
These bottom line estimates of total benefits and costs have a degree of uncertainty
because estimates of some of the underlying parameters needed to conduct a benefit-cost
analysis are themselves uncertain.7 The Washington State Institute for Public Policy's (2011)
recent analyses, however, take this uncertainty into account in calculating their costs and
benefits. They use Monte Carlo methods, repeating the computations under thousands of
variations to test the sensitivity of the overall findings to the inherent uncertainty of the
underlying parameters. Columns 3 and 4 of Table 6-2 show the best point estimates of benefits
and costs, using these methods.
The Monte Carlo results in the last column of Table 6-2 imply that one can be highly
confident that aggression replacement therapy, family integrated transitions, functional family
therapy, multisystemic therapy, and victim offender mediation are successful programs from a
benefit-cost perspective. The probabilities that these approaches pass a benefit-cost test are all at
least .86. Most exceed .90. The probabilities are somewhat lower for drug courts and
coordination of services (.80 and .78), but one can still be quite confident that both are
successful.
Because WSIPP uses Washington data to estimate changes in crime and the costs of the
criminal justice system, the findings on program application from this locale are technically not
generalizeable to other states or to the nation as a whole. Washington's crime and the costs of its
criminal justice system, however, in all likelihood do not differ substantially from other states,
and the application of these findings to other locales is probably appropriate. Indeed, even if the
savings in criminal justice costs and the benefits to victims (not shown separately in the table)
were both 25 percent smaller, all programs that pass a benefit-cost test in WSIPP's analysis
would still pass by a wide margin in this adjusted analysis. WSIPP's findings provide reliable
guidance for other states and localities.
Six other types of program examined in Drake and colleagues (2009) also generate
benefits to victims and the criminal justice system, as shown in the lower panel of Table 6-2.
Four of the six have benefits exceeding $40,000 per participant, so they are likely to pass a
benefit-cost test. We cannot draw this conclusion with certainty, however, since WSIPP had not
computed cost estimates at the time of publication. WSIPP is currently developing a tool that
other jurisdictions can use to derive benefit-cost estimates of criminal justice programs (Aos and
7
Suppose an evaluation reports that a program reduced crime by 12 percent, with a standard error of 1.4. This
means that although the most likely impact is 12 percent, there is a 95 percent chance that the true impact lies
between 9.3 and 14.7 percent. Similarly, estimates of program costs, estimates of victim costs, and the methods
used by Drake and colleagues (2009) to combine findings from several studies are not perfectly precise.
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Drake, 2010). The tool will allow analysts to use crime and cost data for their jurisdictions and
vary the assumptions needed to compute cost savings.
Although the program cost estimates in Table 6-2 are essentially complete, all benefit
estimates are understated for several reasons. These shortcomings apply to all other benefit-cost
analyses of juvenile justice programs as well. First, although they assess the benefits of less
crime to victims and to the justice system (police, prosecutors, courts, parole officers, etc), they
ignore possible benefits to nonvictims (e.g., less fear of being victimized) and to offenders and
their families (e.g., increased productivity from substance use treatment). The latter could be
especially large if programs help offenders to attain more schooling or reduce the likelihood that
younger siblings engage in delinquent acts.8 Second, they count the savings of less crime for the
justice system but not for other public or nonprofit agencies that may see savings (e.g., less
money spent on mental health hospitalizations). Third, methods for measuring some types of
victim costs have not yet been developed. 9 Finally, because adolescent behavior, including
delinquency, is heavily influenced by peers, programs that reduce a participant's delinquency
may reduce their peers' antisocial activities as well. Since program evaluations have not
measured this second-round impact on crime, benefit-cost analyses cannot include its benefits.10
Recognizing these reasons why benefits are understated further strengthens our earlier
conclusion: states and localities can invest in a variety of programs for juvenile offenders that, if
implemented well, have demonstrated effectiveness for reducing reoffending and pay large
dividends.
SPECIFIC DETERRENCE
So far, we have focused mainly on the role of providing appropriate rehabilitative
services to move an adolescent onto a more positive developmental track, away from continued
offending. Adolescents may also refrain from future offending, however, by simply learning
their lesson from their encounter with the juvenile justice system. Being held accountable for an
offense may teach an adolescent that his or her own conduct is beyond the bounds of what the
community will tolerate and well short of what is expected. Experience with the juvenile justice
system could also lead the adolescent to rethink the risks and rewards of future criminal
involvement (i.e., they are deterred from future crime). (The potential normative function of the
juvenile justice system is addressed in Chapter 7.)
There is a very large literature in criminology on deterrence (Andenaes, 1974; Zimring
and Hawkins, 1973), generally rooted in the position that criminal activity is reduced when
criminal sanctions are seen as certain, severe, and swift. This happens because the risk and costs
of sanctions will exceed the perceived returns from crime (Becker, 1968). Deterrence theorists
8 Suppose a program raises the probability of completing high school by .10. Since in 2009 male high school
graduates earned $11,600 and female high school graduates earned $8,900 more per year than those without a
degree (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010a, 2010b), the average increase in earnings would be $1,160 for males and $890
for females. Over a 40-year working life, the present value of $1,160 and $890, making the conservative assumption
that it does not grow over time and using a discount rate of 5 percent, is $20,900 and $16,000.
9
Some other studies are further limited because they estimate cost savings to the criminal justice system but not
victim benefits (Robertson et al., 2001; Cowell et al., 2010).
10
Butts and Roman (2009) observe that some potentially valuable program models, such as community-based
interventions, lack the rigorous evaluations required to assess benefits and costs. This is less a limitation of the
technique of benefit-cost analysis per se than of the funding priorities of agencies and researchers.
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usually distinguish between two types of deterrence: for society as a whole (general deterrence)
and for individuals (specific deterrence). General deterrence is based on the idea of vicarious
learning; widely known laws--accompanied by strong enforcement, prosecution, and
punishment--send a clear message that crime will not be tolerated. Potential offenders, seeing or
hearing about the experiences of others, decide that it is not wise to engage in that criminal
activity or others. Specific deterrence is based on experiential learning; one's own prior
offending and sanction experiences provide a framework for judging the likely costs and benefits
of criminal activity involvement and determine whether someone will offend again. We are
concerned here with the idea of specific deterrent effects in adolescents who have already
offended (consideration of general deterrent effects in adolescents is discussed in Chapter 5).
In general, punishment that is more certain should reduce crime, and the stronger a
penalty connected with a crime, the less likely it should be that a person will do it. The majority
of deterrence research indicates that the certainty of the punishment, rather than its severity, is
the primary mechanism through which deterrence works (Nagin, 1998; Durlauf and Nagin, 2011;
Paternoster, 2010). In other words, offenders typically respond to a punishment that is more
likely than one that is more severe.
There is good reason to believe that adolescents might respond differently than adults to
factors related to deterrence. As mentioned throughout this report, distinctive features of
adolescent decision making (e.g., heightened risk-taking and reduced sensitivity to threat of
punishment, especially its long-term consequences) would be expected to affect an adolescent's
weighing the consequences of criminal involvement. Moreover, the objective characteristics of
certainty and severity are not the prime determinant of deterrence; subjective perceptions are
more influential (Matsueda et al., 2006). How an adolescent might distinctly frame the issue of
the certainty and severity of punishment then becomes an even more important concern.
The research on the applicability of deterrence models to adolescent decision making
about criminal involvement, however, is rather limited. Most of the studies of the mechanisms
of deterrence, with both adults and adolescents, have used samples of nonoffenders or primarily
nonserious offenders (Nagin and Pogarsky, 2001, 2003). As a result, there are very few findings
regarding specific deterrence among adolescent offenders in particular. The best known of these
(Schneider, 1990; Shannon, 1980, 1985) indicate that adolescents do not respond in accordance
with the posited mechanisms of deterrence; that is, perceptions of higher costs of crime are not
associated with decreased offending in serious juvenile offenders and processes other than cost-
benefit calculations (e.g., labeling oneself as an offender) may be operating in less serious
offenders.
A series of relevant studies done on serious adolescent offenders from the Pathways to
Desistance project has recently expanded this literature, finding that the elements of deterrence
do operate in a sample of serious adolescent offenders over time, but that these effects are
heterogeneous (Anwar and Loughran, 2011; Loughran et al., 2011a, 2011b, in press). Some
initial findings from these investigations indicate that, even in serious adolescent offenders,
certainty of arrest appears to play a more important role in deterring future criminal activity than
severity of punishment, offenders with more extensive histories of antisocial activity are less
likely to change their risk perceptions after being arrested, and there may be a threshold level of
risk that must be perceived (about a 30 percent chance of being arrested) to exert an effect on
involvement in later offending. Most notably, this line of research so far indicates that deterrence
operates to curtail future offending in serious adolescent offenders, although the mechanisms of
its operations may still be different in some dimensions from those observed in adult samples.
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There is a body of research on the effects of transfer to adult court, which could be
considered a specific deterrent policy meant to dissuade serious offenders from continued
involvement in crime. Numerous studies have compared the arrest histories of samples of
juvenile offenders processed in the juvenile system with those processed in the adult court
system. Analyses of these studies have repeatedly asserted that transfer laws are ineffective (i.e.,
they do not prevent future crime among those transferred) (Redding, 2008) and may in fact be
harmful (i.e., counterproductive for the purpose of reducing crime and enhancing public safety)
(McGowan et al., 2007). There is some indication that transfer to adult court may have a
differential effect on adolescent offenders, with violent offenders reducing, and property
offenders increasing, their subsequent offending levels (Loughran et al., 2010). Most of the
analyses of these results, however, align with the assessment of Bishop and Frazier (2000,
p. 261) that transferred adolescents are "more likely to reoffend, and to reoffend more quickly
and more often, than those retained in the juvenile system." Other work has examined the effects
of placement in a juvenile facility compared with community-based treatment, finding that the
latter in general produces higher levels of successful adjustment after adjudication (Andrews et
al., 1990; Garrett, 1985; Lipsey, 1999; Lipsey et al., 2000; Sherman et al., 1997). A recent, well-
controlled analysis of the effects of institutional placement versus probation, however, indicated
no reduction, or increase, in rearrest or self-reported offending among serious adolescent
offenders associated with placement in a juvenile institution versus assignment to probation
(Loughran et al., 2009). Across the studies of deterrence and the effects of transfer, there is no
evidence that more severe punishments reduce the likelihood of future offending.
TAKING A DEVELOPMENTALLY ORIENTED APPROACH
Clearly, juvenile justice policy and practice have to respond to so-called serious
delinquents and hold them accountable for their behavior, especially because of the frequency
and seriousness of the offenses committed by this small proportion of adolescent offenders. At
the same time, concerns about serious offending delinquents should not dominate the approaches
taken across the juvenile justice system. Over the past 20 years, the juvenile system has become
increasingly punitive: for example, reducing the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, increasing
transfer to adult court, and increasing sentence lengths (Feld, 1999; Howell, 2009; Logan, 1998).
Much of this reorientation of the court to a "war on juveniles" (Howell, 2003a) appears to have
been driven by concern over serious, chronic delinquency; a result of the moral panic about
juvenile crime in the 1990s and the superpredator myth (Dilulio, 1995; Bennett et al., 1996). In
the midst of this uproar, the simple fact that serious delinquents represent a small minority of the
total population of delinquents has become lost. The extreme end of the distribution of juvenile
offenders, that is, youth who are chronically violent, is extraordinarily small. Thus, although it
essential to make every effort to successfully prevent and deter serious delinquent behavior,
these efforts will not be behaviorally appropriate for the vast majority of less serious delinquents
who make up the bulk of the delinquent population. Recall that approximately half of the
delinquents are referred to the juvenile justice system only once. It is just as important to respond
appropriately to the behavior and needs of this very large group as it is to respond to the very
small group of serious, chronic offenders.
Consideration of knowledge regarding adolescent development can help refine the
approaches taken to assess and intervene with juvenile offenders. Current approaches to
processing and intervening with adolescents often build on models adapted from the adult
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criminal justice system or conceptions about behavioral disorders from mental health treatment.
An alternative is to recognize that adolescent offenders, whether serious or not, all share
common processes of risk and development. There may be a greater accumulation of risk in
serious offenders, but the underlying processes by which risk and protective factors affect
outcomes appear to be the same for all juvenile offenders. Based on the studies cited earlier
regarding differential program effects and reports of prevention work increasing stimulation of
environmentally deprived young children (Masten and Coatsworth, 1998; Masten, 2001), it
appears that the impact from interventions involving changes in social context may be most
profound for those with the highest accumulation of risk. The mechanisms of influence may be
consistent, but the size of the effect from an intervention may vary depending on the initial level
of risk.
Given this, it makes sense that the core principles guiding the way that both less serious
and more serious juvenile offenders are treated should flow from a developmental perspective.
Farrington and Welsh (2007) call this risk-focused prevention, in which risk is examined from
the appropriate developmental stage and appropriate domain of risk (Biglan et al., 2004).
Viewing involvement in antisocial behaviors in light of what it means to be an adolescent, rather
than in terms of what it might take to erase a deficit, puts a different light on how one might
think about designing and administering the juvenile justice system.
For one thing, being an adolescent means living in a period of life when change, rather
than behavioral consistency, is the norm. Adolescents, including juvenile offenders, undergo
accelerated physical, emotional, psychological, and social context changes during the period of
their potential involvement with the juvenile court. Despite involvement with the juvenile justice
system, they are still growing up on multiple dimensions. In addition, based on our earlier
review, being an adolescent also means that cognitive and emotional regulatory capacities are not
yet synchronous enough to produce what would be considered logical judgments in times of
emotional arousal. This means that adolescents may make reasonable judgments in some
situations and not in others, or about some issues and not about others, and that their social
learning can show considerable variability depending on the social context considered (Smetana
and Villalobos, 2009). Developing the ability to regulate and integrate cognitive and emotional
processes is one of the major tasks of this developmental period. These simple regularities have
implications for how to most usefully frame and respond to criminal involvement.
Implications for Assessment
The fact that adolescents are moving targets has implications for how one characterizes
and assesses adolescent offenders. Variability in adolescent behavior and perceptions means that
mental health diagnoses of adolescents are less reliable or valid and that the characterizations of
adolescents as having certain immutable personality characteristics (e.g., psychopathy) are less
trustworthy. In addition, involvement in antisocial activity, like many other adolescent behaviors,
changes over time and has some relation to the developmental status of an adolescent.
Considerable evidence exists that a high proportion of adolescent offenders reduce or stop their
antisocial behavior as they move into their mid-twenties (Piquero, 2008b; Broidy et al., 2003).
This change appears to be attributable to some combination of the positive effects of social
transitions that occur during this period (e.g., entry into the workforce, positive romantic
relationships) (Laub and Sampson, 2003), increases in psychosocial capacities (Monahan et al.,
2009), and decreases in substance use (Chassin et al., 2004). Qualitative work has also pointed
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up the importance of an increased sense of personal agency in promoting these changes, with
adolescents trying on new, more prosocial identities as part of their adoption of an emerging
adult sense of self (Maruna, 2001; Giordano et al., 2002).
One implication of these observations is that depictions of an adolescent as having a fixed
set of characteristics are highly likely to be inaccurate, and assessments of adolescents' risk of
future offending and suitability for certain interventions have a limited shelf life (Mulvey and
Iselin, 2008). Categorization of adolescents according to their presenting offense alone, without
consideration of developmental factors, are particularly poor at predicting later adjustment or
outcomes (Loeber and Farrington, 1998), except for the demonstrated low level of reoffending
among juvenile sex offenders (Zimring, 2004). Assessments of adolescents are most valid when
they focus on short-term outcomes and explicitly incorporate the types of events that might
precipitate or reduce the likelihood of a particular outcome. Thus, to be most informative,
assessments of high-risk adolescents should be done regularly and should consider the influential
social factors in the adolescent's life.
This approach stands in sharp contrast to some trends in juvenile justice legislation and
programming. Over the last two decades, statutes limiting the jurisdiction of the juvenile court
have relied on the commission of one of a range of offenses to justify transfer or waiver of an
adolescent to the adult court. Other program foci at the less serious end of the juvenile offender
continuum have also taken an offense-oriented perspective for identifying adolescents who
should receive specialized services, such as school truants and drug dealers. In these approaches,
the overall risk profile of the adolescent is secondary to the presenting offense. From the outset,
such approaches ignore the reality that the illegal behaviors of interest occur in a developmental
framework and that there is considerable relevant variability among adolescents who commit the
same offense or level of offense (Schubert et al., 2010).
Implications for Designing Interventions
Recognizing the fluid nature of adolescence has implications for interventions promoted
by the juvenile justice system. Some interventions are clearly and appropriately aimed at fixing
an adolescent's deficits. For example, providing intensive schooling to increase the likelihood
that an adolescent offender will graduate from high school certainly makes sense. Increasing
human capital in terms of expanded skills or competencies is a key aspiration in any balanced set
of interventions (as advocated by the balanced and restorative justice approach) (Griffin, 2006).
Just "fixing" an adolescent on one dimension of functioning, however, is unlikely to have a great
impact on later adjustment. As seen in the review above, interventions with the most success at
altering the level of subsequent offending provide opportunities for an adolescent to develop
successfully in a supportive social world. Model programs like those cited above work
systematically with multiple aspects of the adolescent's world, including the family, the school,
and the community. While building the personal competencies of the adolescent (e.g., increasing
problem-solving strategies), they also work on constructing a more supportive social
environment for the adolescent.
This makes sense from a developmental perspective. The process of changing an
adolescent's trajectory rests on the ability of the systems around the adolescent to support and
direct the ongoing change process. In late adolescence, most individuals follow a pattern of
individuating from parents, orienting toward peers, and integrating components of attitudes and
behavior into an autonomous self-identity (Collins and Steinberg, 2006). These processes are
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occurring simultaneously in an overlapping fashion, with the success of one process dependent
on the course of another. Navigating this developmental period successfully, in which the
adolescent sees himself or herself as a prosocial, law-abiding person, requires supportive adults,
healthy relationships with peers, and opportunities to make autonomous decisions (Scott and
Steinberg, 2008a).
The juvenile justice system could increase its impact by considering when it might be
impeding or promoting these developmental processes. The most obvious example is the
system's continued reliance on institutional placement. Being in an institutional environment for
extended periods, away from community opportunities to experiment with developing
conceptions of self, might not allow for the developmental experiences needed in adolescence.
Spending time in an institutional setting provides few opportunities to freely develop skills and
competencies like learning job-related expectations or discovering qualities in a life partner that
are a good match. Regimented schedules and restrictions reduce opportunities to develop the
skills critical to a successful adolescent transition to adulthood (Mulvey and Schubert, 2011).
Although some adolescents may receive essential skills for later life relationships, a great many
others may just not catch up when they return to the community. Following this logic, the longer
they are out of the normal, developmental pattern, the more difficult this becomes.
An awareness of the developmental needs of adolescents also implies altered emphases in
designing and assessing both institutional and community-based programming. If one adopts a
developmental approach, the settings and regularities of programming environments take on
increased importance. Instead of simply considering whether a program addresses a feature of
internal change within the adolescent offender (e.g., promoting social skills that might reduce a
reliance on aggression as a response), programs (both institutional and community-based) would
become more focused on the mechanisms by which they are promoting positive development
(e.g., encouraging adolescent involvement in program operations or the maintenance of a safe
environment). Like many of the burgeoning efforts at promoting positive youth development,
juvenile justice programs would become focused on how program environment and operations
further the development of program participants to address the next set of challenges facing
them. Assessment of programs would focus on aspects of program operations that contribute to
the development of an environment that promotes positive outcomes (see the approach taken by
the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality at http://www.cypq.org/ for an example
of that such an orientation might entail.)
SUMMARY
Adolescents who are involved in delinquency continue to develop during adolescence
and early adulthood. This is true both physically, for example with respect to brain development,
and socially, for example with respect to decision making and peer influence. In a real sense
they are not yet complete.
It is thus only logical, but nonetheless imperative, that the services provided to adolescent
offenders foster positive, prosocial development. The developmental differences between adults
and adolescents should be an orienting consideration in how assessments and interventions are
designed for the juvenile justice system and how this system should differ systematically from
the adult criminal justice system. Adolescents require certain social conditions to emerge
successfully from this period of development, whether they have committed a crime or not.
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Evidence indicates that building these factors into the interventions used with adolescents
reduces their likelihood of reoffending.
This is best accomplished in the context of a juvenile justice system that is responsive to
developmental concerns and not in the context of the adult criminal justice system with its often
shared, but nonetheless differently ordered, set of priorities. For juveniles, policies and programs
that are predominantly punitive neither foster prosocial development nor reduce recidivism
(Howell, 2009; Lipsey, 2009). Although they may reaffirm societal values and respond to the
emotional needs of the victimized, they are not consistent with a developmental perspective and
are less likely to foster the primary objective of public safety. There is no convincing evidence
that confinement of juvenile offenders beyond a minimum amount required to provide
sufficiently intense services for them to benefit from this experience, either in adult prisons or
juvenile correctional institutions, appreciably reduces the likelihood of subsequent offending. To
the extent that preventing reoffending is the primary policy consideration, juvenile court
dispositions should avoid lengthy confinement, adolescents should be tried in criminal court only
in the most serious cases of personal violence, and criminal court sentences should avoid
confinement of adolescents in adult prisons.
With exceedingly few exceptions, adolescent offenders (even serious offenders) who
experience secure confinement will return to society while still relatively young, but at a
considerable disadvantage for success as an adult. Given this, it is in society's interest to reduce
the likelihood of continued offending by providing developmentally appropriate interventions
that are rooted in what is known about adolescent development (Biglan et al., 2004; Farrington
and Welsh, 2007). Forestalling future crime and building developmental strengths for offenders
makes more sense in the long run than handicapping offenders by removing them from society in
harsh environments and forestalling positive development in the process. This evidence for the
effectiveness of developmentally sensitive interventions is bolstered by analyses of the costs and
benefits of these interventions. The most comprehensive and detailed analyses of the dollars
spent and saved by putting these types of programs into place show that the public savings are
considerable. The advantages of many programs are not small; broad-based community
interventions and theoretically sound institutional approaches all show benefits several times the
costs.
This is more than simple-minded ideology. Almost all of the model programs that
demonstrate impressive reductions in reoffending are rooted in a developmental perspective.
Successful programs attempt to reduce the risk factors that are associated with delinquency and
violence by fostering prosocial development and by building promotive factors at the individual,
family, school, and peer levels. Policies and programs for the range of adolescent offenders,
including those that take place in secure confinement, should be based on these same core
principles of successful intervention.
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TABLE 6-1 Ranking of Age 6-11 and Age 12-14 Predictors of Violent or Serious
Delinquency at Age 15-25
____________________________________________________________________________
Age 6-11 Predictor (r) Age 12-14 Predictor (r)
____________________________________________________________________________
Rank 1 group
General offenses (.38) Social ties (.39)
Substance use (.30) Antisocial peers (.37)
Rank 2 group
Gender (male) (.26) General offenses (.26)
Family socioeconomic status (.24)
Antisocial parents (.23)
Rank 3 group
Aggression (.21) Aggression (.19)
Ethnicity (.20) School attitude/performance (.19)
Psychological condition (.19)
Parent-child relations (.19)
Gender (male) (.19)
Physical violence (.18)
Rank 4 group
Psychological condition (.15) Antisocial parents (.16)
Parent-child relations (.15) Person crimes (.14)
Social ties (.15) Problem behavior (.12)
Problem behavior (.13) IQ (.11)
School attitude/performance (.13)
Medical/physical (.13)
IQ (.12)
Other family characteristics (.12)
Rank 5 group
Broken home (.09) Broken home (.10)
Abusive parents (.07) Family socioeconomic status (.10)
Antisocial peers (.04) Abusive parents (.09)
Other family characteristics (.08)
Substance use (.06)
Ethnicity (.04)
____________________________________________________________________________
SOURCE: Lipsey and Derzon (1998).
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TABLE 6-2 Benefits and Costs per Participant of Juvenile Offender Programs (Net
Present Value, 2010 Dollars)
Benefits Program Probability
Custody Program to Costs Benefits Benefit- that
Status of Victims (Compared Minus Cost Benefits
Juvenile and with Cost of Costs Ratio Exceed
Participants Criminal Alternative) Costs
a
Justice
System
Institution Aggression $66,954 $1,473 $65,481 45.5 .93
replacement
therapy c
Functional family $60,639 $3,198 $57,341 19.0 .99
therapy c
Family integrated $27,020 $10,968 $16,052 2.5 .86
transitions c
Sex offender $60,477 $35,592 $24,885 1.7 n/a
treatment b
Boot camp b $0 - $8,661 $8,661 n/a n/a
Wilderness $0 $3,350 - $3,350 n/a n/a
challenge b
Group or Multidimensional $40,787 $7,739 $33,047 5.3 n/a
Foster Home treatment foster
care c
Parole Regular $0 $1,301 - $1,301 n/a n/a
surveillance
oriented parole
(versus no parole
supervision) b
Intensive parole $0 $7,015 - $7,015 n/a n/a
supervision b
Probation Aggression $36,043 $1,476 $34,566 24.4 .93
replacement
therapy c
Functional family $37,739 $3,190 $34,549 11.9 .99
therapy c
Multisystemic $29,302 $7,206 $22,096 4.1 .91
therapy c
Intensive probation $0 $1,735 - $1,735 n/a n/a
supervision b
Diversion Adolescent $53,072 $2,077 $50,995 25.6 n/a
diversion project
(for low risk
offenders) b
Teen courts b $17,782 $985 $16,797 18.0 n/a
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Drug courts c 12,737 $3,024 $9,713 4.2 .80
Restorative justice $10,106 $954 $9,152 10.6 n/a
b
Coordination of $5,270 $386 $4,884 13.6 .78
services c
Victim offender $3,922 $566 $3,357 6.9 .90
mediation c
Scared Straight c $-6,031 $63 $-6,095 n/a. n/a
Benefits (Costs not available)
Institution Behavior $42,706
modification b
Cognitive- $7,744
behavioral
therapy b
Counseling, $50,304
psychotherapy b
Education $109,834
programs b
Life skills $13,908
education
programs b
Diversion Diversion with $3,982
services (versus
regular juvenile
court) b
Other family based $40,281
therapy programs
b
NOTE: n/a means estimate not available. Monetary figures are converted into 2010 dollars.
SOURCE: Adapted from (a) Greenwood (2008).
(b) Drake et al., 2009; and
(c) Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2011.
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