The Impact of Reentry Services on Juvenile Offenders' Recidivism

• Author: Kathleen J. Bergseth,Jeffrey A. Bouffard
• Published date: 01 July 2008
• Date: 01 July 2008
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1541204007313384
• Published By: Sage Publications, Inc.
• Subject Matter: Articles

295

The Impact of Reentry

Services on Juvenile

Offenders’ Recidivism

Jeffrey A. Bouffard

Washington State University

Kathleen J. Bergseth

North Dakota State University

Despite recent decline in juvenile crime, the formal processing and incarceration of juveniles

has increased. Many incarcerated juveniles return to their communities with serious risk and

need areas unaddressed, complicating their chances for successful reentry. Juvenile aftercare

and/or reentry programs have emerged to address these youths’unique needs and the risk they

pose to public safety. This study examined preliminary process and outcome indicators of a

unique juvenile offender reentry program, including a strong mentoring component, compared

to similar youth not receiving reentry services. The authors examined service delivery, as well

as intermediate outcome measures and short-term recidivism outcomes, including time to first

new offense and number of new official contacts within 6 months of release. Findings demon-

strate that the program was delivered as intended, successfully created intermediate change in

participants, and was modestly effective in reducing recidivism likelihood and increasing time

to recidivism.

Keywords: juvenile offenders; offender reentry; program evaluation; recidivism

In recognition of the impact that chronic juvenile offenders have on the juvenile justice

system (Snyder & Sickmund, 1999), and the significant impact of the release of serious

and violent offenders on public safety, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention (OJJDP) and other federal agencies have begun funding program development

and evaluation efforts to increase public safety by addressing reintegration issues related to

juvenile offender reentry. Current aftercare or reintegration models call for the combination

of approaches including surveillance (or “community restraint”) and services (or “intervention”;

Gies, 2003). Community restraint elements include the control of offenders through probation

or parole contacts, urine testing, electronic monitoring, and other means to ensure public

safety, whereas interventions include employment, cognitive-behavioral treatments (CBT),

academic, and other services aimed at changing individual behavior.

Although juvenile offender aftercare programs began to receive attention in the early 1990s,

increased interest in recent years has led to the development of two primary aftercare or

reentry models, along with multisite demonstration projects which attempt to determine

Youth Violence and

Juvenile Justice

Volume 6 Number 3

July 2008 295-318

© 2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/1541204007313384

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Authors’ Note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeffrey A. Bouffard, PhD,

Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice Program, Washington State University, PO Box 644880, Pullman, WA

99164; e-mail: jbouffard@wsu.edu.

296 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

best practices in juvenile offender placement and reintegration. The two primary forms of

juvenile aftercare/reentry programs include the “Intensive Aftercare Program” (IAP; Altschuler

& Armstrong, 1994) with demonstration programs in three states and the “Serious and

Violent Offender Reentry Initiative” (SVORI) which includes both juvenile and adult

offender reintegration programs with 37 programs specifically targeting juvenile offenders

(Winterfield & Brumbaugh, 2005). Detailed explanations of the philosophy and compo-

nents of each of these two types of aftercare are available elsewhere (e.g., Altschuler &

Armstrong, 1999; Winterfield & Brumbaugh, 2005); however, both models share common

characteristics, including a three-phase program design, needs assessment, and coordinated

case management.

Specifically, each model calls for the coordination of case management and rehabilitative/

reintegrative services over (a) an institutional or prerelease planning and services phase, (b)

a reentry preparation or short term postrelease phase, and (c) a community-based services

phase after release from placement. Client assessment allows for the development of indi-

vidualized case plans and the identification of services both during placement and in the

community to address the unique needs of the offender. Coordinated case management is

an attempt to ensure continuity in services, improved matching of placement services to

real-world problems faced by the offender, and to ensure that treatment services during

placement are followed by aftercare in the community (Altschuler & Armstrong, 1999). By

identifying and addressing the needs of the offender and improving support networks on

return to the community, both models attempt to effect short- and long-term changes in

offenders to improve public safety.

Research on Juvenile Reentry

Although there is some general agreement that “community restraint” alone is largely

ineffective at reducing recidivism in intensive supervision probation/parole, there are indications

that supervision combined with increased treatment services can reduce recidivism (Petersilia

& Turner, 1993). At the same time, evidence is mixed regarding the effectiveness of intensive

supervision combined with services as an aftercare strategy. Although most studies have

found no difference in prevalence of reoffending between treatment and comparison groups,

a few evaluations found an impact on offending prevalence (Land, McCall, & Williams,

1990), frequency (Sontheimer & Goodstein, 1993) and frequency and seriousness of later

offending (Fagan, 1990), especially among program sites with strong implementation.

Although SVORI programs are in their infancy, the IAP demonstration sites in Colorado,

Nevada, and Virginia began randomized studies in the late 1990s (Wiebush,Wagner, McNulty,

Wang, & Le, 2005). Wiebush and colleagues (2005) examined outcomes for experimental

and control groups in the IAP demonstration sites over a 12-month follow-up and found

some evidence for improvements in intermediate outcomes (e.g., shorter institutional stays,

lower probability of testing positive for illicit substances) but few significant differences in

recidivism between treatment and controls using a variety of measures, including offending

prevalence, frequency, seriousness, and time to new arrest. In the end, these authors con-

cluded that implementation difficulties, coupled with small sample sizes and little statistical

power, precluded definitive conclusions regarding the effectiveness of the IAP model

(Wiebush et al., 2005).