Practice Profile: Treatment in Secure Corrections for Serious Juveniles Who Have Committed Serious or Multiple Offenses

This practice includes interventions targeting serious (violent and chronic) juveniles sentenced to serve time in secure corrections. The overall goal is to decrease recidivism rates when juveniles are released and return to the community. The practice is rated Effective for reducing general recidivism and serious recidivism of violent and chronically offending juveniles.

Practice Goals

Interventions targeting serious (violent and chronic) juveniles sentenced to serve time in secure corrections aim to decrease recidivism rates when juveniles are released and return to the community. These interventions can include psychological approaches, social and educational methods, and environmental conditions, all of which support the learning of prosocial attitudes and behaviors.

Target Population

A juvenile is generally defined as a young person aged 12 to 21 years old. Serious juvenile offenders include those who have committed violent and chronic offenses. Violent juvenile offenders are juveniles who have committed offenses in which someone has been hurt or seriously injured and requires medical attention. Violent offenses include murder, voluntary manslaughter, kidnapping, assault, robbery, endangerment, and arson. Chronic juvenile offenders are juveniles who have three or more previous legal adjudications.

Practice Components

There are a number of different types of treatment that may be available to juvenile in secure corrections. The treatment types include behavioral, cognitive–behavioral, cognitive, education, and nonbehavioral.

Behavioral treatment is based on learning theories, which hold that criminal conduct is learned. Behavioral treatment employs learning mechanisms to reverse the learning process, aiming to teach individuals to replace their criminal tendencies with socially admissible behavior. All staff is involved in the delivery of behavioral treatment programs and the programs are typically led by a small group of experts. Behavioral treatment programs include token economy programs and behavior modification strategies.

Cognitive–behavioral treatment focuses on them skills that will help with their interaction with other people, such as prosocial values. The main elements include 1) an evaluation of the subject’s deficits in cognitive and interaction skills; 2) treatment that is applied in small groups for several weekly sessions; and 3) strategies such as interpersonal cognitive problem solving, social skills training, anger control, critical reasoning, values development, negotiation abilities, and creative thinking. Cognitive–behavioral programs are the most commonly used treatment programs with all kinds of individuals.

Cognitive treatment, based on the cognitive–behavioral model, stresses cognitive reframing through the control of cognitive distortions, automatic thought, and self-instructions. Cognitive treatment centers more on the cognitive part of cognitive–behavioral treatment.

Education treatment is based on the belief that by increasing the educational attainment of individuals through schooling programs, recidivism will decrease.

Nonbehavioral treatment is grounded in the belief that they commit crimes as a result of emotional distress. The treatment is aimed at treating individuals’ underlying psychological issues through therapies, such as psychological therapy, with the hope that this will lead to a reduction or disappearance of criminal behavior.

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Multisystemic Therapy–Family Integrated Transitions (MST-FIT)

Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center

Project BUILD

Violent Offender Treatment Program (VOTP)

Responsive Aggression Regulation Therapy (Netherlands)

Restoring Promise (South Carolina)

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?