The Holy Grail: Service Matching, Intervention Dosage, and Recidivism Among Serious Juvenile Offenders in Residential Placement

• In Event: Research on Juvenile Recidivism

Abstract

The prolific Risk-Need-Responsivity paradigm promotes the matching of services and interventions to individualized criminogenic needs. While this theoretical framework has become common lexicon, the empirical evaluation of service matching, especially that which includes actual dosage of each intervention received is surprisingly sparse. The current study examines the efficacy of matching criminogenic need profiles to interventions received within juvenile justice residential programs while taking into account the actual dosages of each service received (number of contact hours and number of weeks/duration). As such, we hypothesize youth receiving matched services meeting dosage thresholds will evidence lower subsequent recidivism (official arrest) post-release from residential placement among a sample of 1,296 juvenile offenders (58% Black, 14% female). Future directions and policy implications are discussed.

Authors

• Michael Baglivio, G4S Youth Services, LLC

• Kevin Wolff, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY

• James Howell, National Gang Center

• Katherine Jackowski, G4S Youth Services, LLC

• Mark Andrew Greenwald, Florida State University