The Importance of Skills Development for Therapeutic Progress and Reduced Court Involvement for at-Risk Youth on Probation

Background and Purpose: Despite being the most common disposition in juvenile justice, evidence on the effectiveness of probation for reducing recidivism is mixed and uncertainty exists regarding the optimal “dosage” (length) needed to improve youth outcomes. While social-emotional skill acquisition is significantly associated with reduced juvenile recidivism (e.g., Walker & Bishop, 2016), decisions around intervention dosage focus less on such therapeutic factors and more on policies related to crime severity and other high risk indicators for violence. Research is greatly needed to calibrate the relationship between probation dosage, therapeutic change, and justice system re-involvement for court-involved youth, holding important implications for probation practice, youth outcomes, and subsequent juvenile justice policy.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the length of a youth’s first probation obligation impacts therapeutic gains, as measured by changes in problem solving, future orientation, internal and behavioral self-regulation, and subsequent court re-involvement.

Methods: Data derive from a large juvenile court jurisdiction in Washington State. Youth on probation were assessed using a validated court-based risk-and-needs assessment tool – those with both an initial and end assessment for their first probation obligation were included (n=3,678). The moderate-to-high risk sample was an average of 15.49 years old (SD=1.45), majority male (77%) and white (56%). Measures drew upon items from seven domains of the tool: criminal history, school history, relationships, mental health history, attitudes/behaviors, aggression, and social-emotional skills. Descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, and multivariate regression techniques were used to address study aims.

Results: The average length of first probation obligation was 8.64 months (SD=6.91), with 31% re-involvement. Several significant bivariate relationships were found between re-involvement, skills change, and youth characteristics including race, gender, age, social disadvantage, special education diagnosis, history of abuse, and prior court referrals. Youth with subsequent court involvement after their first probation obligation had significantly lower problem-solving skills, future orientation, internal self-regulation, and behavioral self-regulation. Longer length of probation was inversely related to re-involvement. Regression models accounting for youth characteristics found significant, near-zero effects of probation length on skills change scores (beta ranges=0.01-0.02 for standardized measures, all p<.001) and re-involvement (OR=0.91, p<.001). Behavioral self-regulation was the sole significant predictor of reduced re-involvement among the skills change measures after accounting for youth characteristics and probation length.

Conclusions and Implications: While longer probation dispositions appear to provide some benefit, the effects on skills change and re-involvement were minimal. Behavioral self-regulation was significantly associated with reduced re-involvement, and African American youth had significantly lower behavioral self-regulation change. We also found that having a special education diagnosis was significantly related to lower skill gains in problem solving and internal self-regulation. Taken together, these findings align with current research and practice principles suggesting that justice system interventions are more likely to be successful in interrupting negative trajectories if tied to programmatic structures that facilitate and promote skills change. Directions for juvenile courts to ensure that probation practices are adapted to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized youth populations are discussed.