Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a court-ordered Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) presentation to prevent recidivism among 246 juvenile alcohol and drug offenders. The presentation, which lasts approximately two hours and incorporates educational components with a victim awareness program, seeks to increase offenders' empathy and knowledge about the dangers of substance use. A handful of published studies suggest that such programs are a cost-effective rehabilitative strategy with adult alcohol and drug offenders though their utility with adjudicated juveniles has not been evaluated. Yet, these youth represent an especially important population for intervention since they pose a particularly high risk for subsequent criminal activity. Identification of effective rehabilitative programming for these youth therefore can lead to reduced crime across the juvenile's lifespan, safer neighborhoods, less burden on criminal justice and social service systems, and lower legal and correctional expenditures. Using a quasi-experimental design, 91 juveniles who attended the MADD presentation were compared to 155 who did not. The groups are similar in gender (75.6% male), age (mean age=15.6 years), living arrangement (23.9% live with both parents) and mean length of delinquency (mean=560 days). A larger percentage of MADD attendees are Caucasian (82.4%) compared to non-attendees (71.0%). A greater percentage of juveniles who did not attend the MADD presentation have prior juvenile justice contact (52.9% vs. 35.2%) and prior alcohol- or drug-related contact (15.5% vs. 6.6%). During a 12-month follow-up period, 46.2% of presentation attendees and 57.4% of non-attendees had contact with the juvenile justice system. Multivariate logistic regression models show that prior juvenile justice involvement is the strongest predictor of future contact while gender and prior involvement significantly predict future alcohol- or drug-related juvenile justice contact. Attending the MADD presentation was not significantly related to either outcome. Such results should not be seen as a mark against MADD or its programming. Though this evaluation yielded unfavorable results, MADD does offer other interventions and presentations with proven effectiveness. Instead, the outcomes of this evaluation support the notion that juvenile alcohol and drug offenders pose a special challenge for rehabilitation. Only a small number of effective programs have been identified and these tend to be both time and resource intensive. While discovery of a shorter alternative would be more cost-effective, it is perhaps unreasonable to expect such a brief presentation like the one studied here to curb delinquency for these youth. Instead, this presentation, with its emphasis on building empathy and knowledge, might be a suitable complement to another, more comprehensive intervention. In this scenario, the outcome of interest would not be recidivism, but rather emotional and cognitive changes within the juvenile. These changes are important to prevent delinquency and might better prepare the youth for additional long-term intervention strategies. Given the lack of available rehabilitation programs targeted specifically to juvenile alcohol and drug offenders, such an effective arrangement of presentations and programs that reduces juvenile recidivism would have tremendous utility and value.