Responding to Crossover Youth: A Look Beyond Recidivism Outcomes

• Author: Ryan Spohn,Michael Campagna,Emily M. Wright
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1541204020922887
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
2020, Vol. 18(4) 381-394
Responding to Crossover
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DOI: 10.1177/1541204020922887
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Recidivism Outcomes
Emily M. Wright1 , Ryan Spohn2, and Michael Campagna2
Abstract
Crossover youth are involved in both child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The Crossover
Youth Practice Model (CYPM) promotes collaboration between these systems to inform decision
making between the two agencies and better serve these youth. Yet, few outcome evaluations of the
CYPM exist, especially those that assess outcomes beyond recidivism, such as case dispositions, case
closure, or placement or living situations. This study examined whether the CYPM (n ¼ 210)
decreased recidivism and increased system/case responses and positive outcomes among youth
within 9–18 months after the youth’s initial arrest relative to a comparison group of crossover youth
(n ¼ 425) who were arrested 1 year before the CYPM was implemented. Overall, the findings
suggest that the CYPM in the jurisdiction under study dismisses or diverts crossover youth more
often, closes delinquency cases more often, and leads to more home placements than was previously
done in the jurisdiction, but it does not significantly reduce recidivism.
Keywords
crossover youth, recidivism, child welfare, juvenile justice
Crossover youth, or those youth who are involved in both the juvenile justice system (JJS) and child
welfare system (CWS), are of increasing concern to society. These youth are higher risk for exposure
to violence and family dysfunction, congregate or group home placement, school problems, mental
health and/or substance use problems, and adult criminality than at-risk youth who are engaged in
only one of the two systems (e.g., Halemba et al., 2004; Herz & Ryan, 2008; Widom & Maxfield,
2001; Young et al., 2015). Crossover youth tend to receive harsher sanctions more often than
nondually involved youth (Halemba et al., 2004; Ryan et al., 2007; Young et al., 2015), so they
are often highly represented at deep ends of the JJS and CWS (Culhane et al., 2011; Young et al.,
2015). Further, crossover youth demonstrate high needs that are costly to society: Over time, they
have more jail detentions, use emergency health services at higher rates, engage in more criminal
1 School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska at Omaha, NE, USA
2 Nebraska Center for Justice Research, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska at Omaha, NE,
USA
Corresponding Author:
Emily M. Wright, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street, 218
CPACS, Omaha, NE 68182, USA.
Email: emwright@unomaha.edu

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Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 18(4)
justice–related outcomes like crime and deviance, earn less, and are less consistently employed than
youth who are only involved in either the JJS or CWS (Culhane et al., 2011).
Historically, crossover youth have been treated separately by the JJS and the CWS, often result-
ing in worse outcomes and overlapping service delivery (Herz et al., 2012; Lutz et al., 2010). To
better identify crossover youth and respond to their dual involvement and various needs via a
multisystem response, the Crossover Youth Practice Model (CYPM) was developed (Lutz et al.,
2010). The CYPM was designed to provide multisystem response using multidisciplinary teams
(MDTs) for dually involved1 children and recommends collaboration and information-sharing
between professionals in the CWS and JJSs in order to better identify crossover youth in each
system, process their cases, and provide case planning and management for crossover youth and
their families (Bilchik & Tuell, 2011; Lutz et al., 2010). Reports and evaluations from efforts to
implement the model demonstrate that the CYPM encourages multiagency coordination and
enhanced information sharing regarding crossover cases and often increases service delivery to
crossover youth (Haight et al., 2014, 2016; McKinney, 2019; Wright et al., 2017). The existing
research has focused on process reforms and recidivism outcomes related to CYPM efforts, and very
few external evaluations of the CYPM have been conducted (Haight et al., 2016). However, given
the multisystem involvement of these youth, and the multidisciplinary nature of the responses
needed, outcomes to determine the “effectiveness” of the approach should not be limited to those
of interest to just one agency (e.g., recidivism that is primarily an outcome of interest to those in
juvenile justice). This study contributes to the limited external evaluation research regarding the
CYPM and examines various outcomes that are relevant to both the JJS and CWS, such as multiple
case processing (disposition, case closure) and social (living situation) outcomes for crossover
youth—as well as recidivism—for youth who have been treated with a CYPM multidisciplinary
care team versus those who have not been treated with such a response team.
CYPM
Responding to a youth who has a multitude of problems that have resulted in both child welfare and
juvenile justice involvement with a single-system approach is limited in scope and likely fails to
address the core problems that resulted in their dual involvement in the first place. The CYPM (Lutz
et al., 2010) was developed in part to address these problems and enhance service delivery and/or
diversion to crossover youth. The goal for the model is to identify these crossover youth, coordinate
and inform decisions made by both CWS and JJSs regarding the youth and their families, and
provide enhanced, evidence-based services to them in order to divert them from further entrench-
ment into the JJS and CWS. To achieve these goals, the CYPM promotes collaboration between
juvenile justice and child welfare personnel and provides techniques to inform decision making
between the two agencies in order to better serve crossover youth. As a “practice model,” it provides
a conceptual map and organizational ideology regarding how staff can collaborate with families and
system personnel to provide effective services to at-risk youth (Lutz et al., 2010) but can be tailored
to the needs and goals of each jurisdiction in which it is adopted.
The CYPM in this study was adopted and implemented in 2012 in an urban county in a Mid-
western state with technical assistance from the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown
University. Agencies involved in implementing the CYPM initiative included the county attorney’s
office, Department of Health and Human Services, juvenile assessment center (diversion), probation
department, private welfare provider, a family advocacy center, a youth advocate, and a facilitator.
Representatives from these agencies came together every week to consider crossover cases in the
county. Ultimately, the county attorney, with input from these team members, made decisions on
how to precede with cases by choosing one of the four potential options: nolle pros, file charges,
provide enhanced child welfare services, or divert the case. The team then worked collaboratively to

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Wright et al.
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provide appropriate services and interventions for each youth until the case was closed. The current
study reports findings from an outcome evaluation of this model.
CYPM: MDTs for Crossover Youth
In the county under study, the CYPM can be thought of as an MDT that seeks primarily to divert
crossover youth from further system involvement. Generally, the goals of MDTs are to improve
system responses to their target population (in this case, crossover youth) through communication
and collaboration in an effort to reduce redundancies and increase efficiencies for the systems that
are involved (Herbert & Bromfield, 2019). Similarly, the goals of the CYPM in the current study
were to increase diversion and dismissals for crossover youth, reduce recidivism, improve case
coordination between agencies, improve social and living situations for the youth, and reduce
duplication and efforts across the JJS and CWS (e.g., close cases more quickly). Currently, evalua-
tions of the CYPM and research on MDT effectiveness in child abuse cases are somewhat scarce,
with most studies primarily focusing on juvenile justice outcomes instead of child protection out-
comes and very few studies reporting on the effectiveness of MDTs relative to some type of a
comparison group (Herbert & Bromfield, 2019). Given the limited research on MDTs and CYPMs,
the current study aimed to examine multiple outcomes of interest to juvenile justice and child
welfare in order to determine whether the CYPM reached its goals regarding case dispositions, case
closures, recidivism, and youth social living situations. We did this using an historical comparison
group of crossover youth who were arrested 1 year before the CYPM was implemented in the
jurisdiction under study.
Early research on CYPM and the multidisciplinary nature of the teams centered around descrip-
tive analyses of crossover youth and team processes (Culhane et al., 2011; Haight et al., 2014, 2016;
Herz et al., 2010) and generally reported that crossover youth were at higher risk than other system-
involved youth to experience family hardship and dysfunction, were viewed as higher risk by system
personnel, and were more likely to be deeply system involved (Halemba et al., 2004; Herz & Ryan,
2008; Young et al., 2015). The research on process-related outcomes among these...