Effective Practice in Youth Justice

By Martin Stephenson, Henri Giller, and Sally Brown
Portland, Oregon: Willan Publishing, 2007

The authors ambitiously review “What Works” in youth justice in light of the insurgent evidence-based practice movement.  Effective Practice in Youth Justice is based on a series of “Readers” commissioned by the Youth Justice Board in the U.K. in tandem with Henri Giller’s review of the most up-to-date research. Interventions cited in the book are relevant to a wide range of service providers both directly involved with youth and those with decision-making roles in the system. The “centrality of relationship” (p. 32) between adults (including practitioners) and youth is only mildly addressed in the book and mostly in reference to parenting. The notion that changes in how youth think, feel, and behave are socially constituted and mediated by trusted adults is disappointedly absent from current research except for vague references in resiliency, motivational interviewing, and pro-social modeling. Yet, the book does have direct application and relevance for research, schools, social and community service agencies, probation offices, custodial services, diversion programs, and youth courts in provinces across Canada.

Effective Practice in Youth Justice first situates the reader in the context of the evidence-based practice movement in health and social services, and then progressively reviews research related to programmes and interventions for youth who offend from the least to the most intensive.  The four chapters in Part l deal with assessment, planning, and access to key mainstream services including education, mental health, and substance misuse. Part ll of the book also has four chapters and deals with prevention including neighbourhood programs, parenting, restorative justice, and mentoring. Part lll of the book contains three final chapters focused on the most intensive interventions in youth justice including offending behaviour programmes, intensive supervision and surveillance programmes (ISSP), and custody.

Chapter 1 provides an exceptionally strong introduction to the topic of evidence-based practice, and is perhaps the most helpful chapter in the book. The authors state the need for interventions with the highest level of validation from research and evaluation (p. 7) for practice purposes (p. 255).  They express concerns over the continued use of programmes that have been shown to be ineffective. The randomized clinical trial (RCT) approach is described as the “gold standard” (p. 15) and the most widely recognized method in the field along with the statistical meta-analysis approach where results are used as aggregate data. Guidelines and principles for effective practice are then summarized and discussed in relation to issues specific to youth justice and include risk classification, criminogenic needs, dosage, responsivity, community base, intervention modality, and programme integrity.

Chapter 2 distinguishes three main priorities for risk-assessment and includes reoffending behaviour, vulnerability, and committing serious harm to others. The widely-used Onset and Asset assessment tools are examined closely along with various criticisms in view of their moderate predictive accuracy rates. The cycle of change model is introduced to underscore the importance of assessing both motivation as well as risk in youth (p. 55). But the mediating role of the relationship in change is only faintly discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 3 explores the role of “detachment” and “exclusion” from education, training, and employment in offending behaviour. The authors reference a number of case examples and statistics to support the claim that academic failure is endemic among youth who offend. Although the authors emphasize the importance of social inclusion in schools, they fail to describe the centrality of the relationship to inclusion. Various arts-based programs (700 projects and 400 activities) offered in schools and their various claims for success are reviewed. The authors shed disbelief on these claims of arts-based interventions as they tend to lack control groups, have few appropriate measures, and over-rely on anecdotal evidence and unsupported assumptions (p. 80). Again, the authors fail to highlight the role of arts-based projects in engaging and mediating relationship between youth and trusted adults in schools.

Chapters 4 and 5 address the roles of mental health and substance misuse respectively in offending behaviour and youth justice. The authors wisely stress multi-modal approaches aimed at motivating and engaging youth in offence reduction programmes (p. 105) and they call for synchronized models of care (p. 108).  The research reviewed falls short yet again at identifying the key role of relationship in mediating change in youth who misuse substances or suffer from concurrent or other mental health issues.

Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Part 2 of the book focus on the evidence reviewed to support prevention programs. Support for strong healthy communities is substantiated in the research review along with the findings for effective parenting in the home. Restorative justice practices and mentoring programmes are also found to be effective in the evaluation literature. Again, there appears to be little focus on the importance of healthy relationships between youth and trusted adults underlying each of these areas of prevention.

Part lll of the book deals with the most intensive responses in youth justice where some programmes discussed are relevant to a Canadian context and others are not. The authors eloquently present research findings to support the various intensive programmes used in the U.K., but some of these interventions such as “electronic tagging”, “voice verification”, and “resettlement” are not implemented uniformly, if at all, in youth justice across Canada.  Consistent with the rest of the book, little attention is paid in evidence-based research to the transformative nature of healthy, prosocial, and positive relationships between youth and trusted adults. The last chapter in the book dealing with custody and resettlement (reintegration in Canada) is another especially strong chapter as it summarizes the research demonstrating the ineffectiveness and potential harm caused to youth by custody.

I agree with the author’s conclusion that “broad-brushed findings of meta-analysis” must be filtered with professional judgment about their potential limitations (p. 255).  Although they only weakly refer to the role of child abuse and poverty in offending behaviours and social exclusions of youth, the authors do hint at the multi-factorial nature of problems. The book fails to critically analyze the evidenced-based results given the deeply embedded transnational social issues facing young people who offend.

Another substantive criticism of the book and perhaps to the larger evidence-based practice movement is the pretense that we can in fact delineate specific measurable variables that somehow demonstrate change in youth. If we indeed view change as a process, then measuring the effectiveness of interventions without recognizing (through measurement) the sometimes messiness of the work in youth justice is unfair. Most certainly, although the authors refer albeit mildly to the idea that intervention may be effective despite the lack of evidence to support it, they fail to propose an alternate method to achieve the highest validation from research and evaluation other than the randomized clinical trial (RCT) approach. The authors’ challenge to consider the inclusion of RCT evaluation in the field appears impractical and naïve from a front-line perspective. At the same time, this challenge to enter the evidence-based practice movement is a noble attempt to heighten professional credibility. Most certainly, without the evidence to support programmes, the importance of the work is often rendered invisible.

A final downside to Effective Practice in Youth Justice is the dismissal of programs, activities, and interventions like the arts-based ones discussed above which evaluate poorly but which interventionists, practitioners, and educators believe foster positive relationships with youth. A critical question remains: Is it the intervention itself that changes offending behaviour and anti-social thinking in youth, or is it the relationship, socially constituted and mediated by trusted adults that prompts and sustains change?