Examining the Role of Responsivity Factors in Juvenile Probation Outcomes

• NCJ Number: 305929
• Author(s): Anthony J. Fortuna
• Date Published: 2021
• Length: 78 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2016-CV-BX-0002
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Thesis/Dissertation
• Award: Assessing a Trauma-Informed Decision Protocol for Juvenile Justice Practitioners

Annotation

This thesis reports on a study aimed at exploring the impact of mental health concerns as a specific responsivity factor in relation to 12-month recidivism rates.

Abstract

The author of this thesis names two goals for the research project: to broadly investigate the impact of adherence to Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) principles and how responsivity factors impacted adolescent recidivism in a sample of adolescents receiving services through juvenile probation, and, more specifically, to explore the impact of mental health concerns as a specific responsivity factor in relation to 12-month recidivism rates. The author begins with the premise that there is reason to believe that mental health concerns are particularly impactful in relation to an adolescent actively participating in services to address their criminogenic needs and associated risk reduction, such as recidivism outcomes, with higher levels of mental health concerns putting adolescents at elevated risk for poor treatment compliance or mental health difficulties enhancing the criminogenic need—recidivism association. The research method section includes demographic information, youth levels of service/case management inventory (YLS/CMI), Massachusetts Youth Screening Inventory – 2^nd Edition (MAYSI-2), a case plan match, and recidivism outcome. The author also describes his procedure and data analysis. The results section discusses descriptive statistics including demographics, YLS/CMI, MAYSI-2, case plans, recidivism, and case plan match, as well as inferential analyses of the author’s hypotheses.