Promoting Rehabilitation Among Youth on Probation: An Examination of Strengths as Specific Responsivity Factors

• Date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Shelley L. Brown,Sonia Finseth,Tracey A. Skilling,Michele Peterson-Badali
• DOI: 10.1177/00938548211039881
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2022, Vol. 49, No. 5, May 2022, 745 –760.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211039881

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2021 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

745

PROMOTING REHABILITATION AMONG

YOUTH ON PROBATION

An Examination of Strengths as Specific Responsivity

Factors

SONIA FINSETH

MICHELE PETERSON-BADALI

University of Toronto

SHELLEY L. BROWN

Carleton University

TRACEY A. SKILLING

University of Toronto

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Despite calls for strength-focused approaches in juvenile justice, there is little research on the role of strengths in probation

case management. This is one of the first studies to examine whether strengths function as specific responsivity factors as

proposed by the risk–need–responsivity model, through mediating and moderating effects, and findings lend preliminary

support to this conceptualization. In a sample of 261 justice-involved youth, the relationship between strengths and recidi-

vism was found to be partially mediated by the service-to-needs match rate, even while controlling for risk—suggesting that

strengths have an important indirect effect on recidivism through their impact on youth’s engagement in and completion of

services. Strengths, however, did not moderate the relationship between service-to-needs match and reoffending, suggesting

that appropriately matched services are essential irrespective of a youth’s strength profile. Research corroborating these find-

ings and examining the feasibility of front-line use of strengths information is warranted.

Keywords: risk–need–responsivity; rehabilitation; juvenile justice; protective factors; recidivism

INTRODUCTION

Beyond ensuring public safety, one of the main aims of youth criminal justice policy is

rehabilitation: To help justice-involved individuals reduce and eventually cease offending

(Bonta & Andrews, 2017). The risk–need–responsivity (RNR) framework is an emp irically

AUTHORS’ NOTE: Sonia Finseth is now at the Eating Disorders Program South Vancouver Island, Child and

Youth Mental Health, Ministry of Children and Family Development. The study was funded by the Social sci-

ence and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Correspondence concerning this article should be

addressed to Michele Peterson-Badali, Department of Applied Psychology & Human Development, Ontario

Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, 9th Floor, Toronto, Ontario,

Canada M5S 1V6; e-mail: m.petersonbadali@utoronto.ca

1039881CJBXXX10.1177/00938548211039881CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIORFinseth et al. / Strengths As Specific Responsivity Factors

research-article2022

746 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

supported and widely implemented model of rehabilitation for justice-involved individu-

als (Andrews et al., 1990; Bonta & Andrews, 2017) that guides both risk assessment and

case management. The risk principle posits that the intensity of services should match an

individual’s risk level (i.e., higher risk individuals will receive higher intensity interven-

tions; Bonta & Andrews, 2017). The need principle states that services should address

risk factors empirically established as strong and direct predictors of reoffending;

termed criminogenic needs, for youth, these comprise Antisocial Attitudes, Antisocial

Personality Factors, Antisocial Peers, Substance Abuse, Family Dysfunction, Challenges

in Education/Employment, and Inappropriate Use of Leisure Time (Bonta & Andrews,

2017). The responsivity principle asserts that services should focus on cognitive-behav-

ioral and social learning strategies to maximize effectiveness (general responsivity) and

should take personal characteristics into account (e.g., sex, culture, strengths), as these

“regulate an individual’s . . . ability and motivation to learn” (specific responsivity;

Bonta, 1995, p. 2).

The most common sanction for youth entering the justice system is a period of probation,

and this is true for youth in both Canada (Statistics Canada, 2019) and the United States (U.S.

Department of Justice, 2019). Research looking into the efficacy of probation services that

follow the RNR model has found that matching probation services to youth’s individually

identified criminogenic needs is linked to reduced reoffending, with higher proportions of met

needs associated with significantly lower rates of reoffending (Luong & Wormith, 2011;

Vieira et al., 2009); these findings lend support to the idea that probation and appropriate case

management are important for supporting pathways out of crime. Unfortunately, it appears

that overall, few criminogenic needs are successfully met over the course of probation, due to

a combination of factors, including referral practices, service availability and accessibility,

youth’s ability to engage in services, as well as the fact that youth generally present with a

high number of identified needs (Peterson-Badali et al., 2015; Singh et al., 2014).

In addition to the focus on risk factors (i.e., criminogenic needs), growing interest in

positive psychology and strength-based interventions has sparked calls to assess strength

factors to enhance correctional practices. Indeed, critics of the RNR framework have

argued that it suffers by focusing too heavily on deficits and could be improved by consid-

ering strengths alongside risk (Kleeven et al., 2020; Ward & Maruna, 2007). Strengths can

be understood as personal and/or environmental characteristics that are associated with

positive outcomes, such as desistance from offending. Although some scholars conceptu-

alize strengths to include the weak pole of a risk dimension (e.g., not having antisocial

peers; McAra & McVie, 2016; Stouthamer-Loeber et al., 2002), others assert that strengths

must provide unique information (e.g., having prosocial peers) that cannot be inferred

from the measurement of risk factors (Borum et al., 2006; de Vogel et al., 2009). Measures

of risk and strength do tend to be moderately to highly negatively correlated (de Vries

Robbé et al., 2011; Kleeven et al., 2020; Viljoen et al., 2020), which calls into question

their utility in adding unique information to the prediction of risk (e.g., to reoffend, for

violence). A systematic review conducted by Dickens and O’Shea (2017) found that while

youth with higher scores on the protective factors section of a well-known risk assessment

measure (Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth [SAVRY]; Borum et al., 2006)

were somewhat less likely to reoffend than other adolescents, there was no evidence that

this measure improved the predictive accuracy over known risk factors. However, recent

work (Chu et al., 2020; Kleeven et al., 2020) using a more comprehensive measure of