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Juvenile Justice - Program/System Assessments

  • The Sustainability of Juvenile Programs beyond Second Chance Act Funding: The Case of Two Grantees (2016)

    This brief discusses how the implementation and sustainability of Second Chance Act programs for juveniles were affected by the changing policy contexts in Houston, Texas, and Sacramento, California.

  • Understanding Research and Practice Gaps in Juvenile Justice Early Insights: Early Insights from the Bridge Project (2016)

    Most juvenile justice practitioners are aware of the value of research and evidence-based practices, but few resources exist to help them apply research-informed practices in ways that respect the identities and developmental needs of youth. These and other findings are highlighted in this brief, which documents themes from interviews with key juvenile justice stakeholders. Interview findings reveal the most pressing research and practice gaps in the field, the barriers practitioners face in accessing and implementing research, and the audiences that could benefit most from research translation tools and products.

  • Bridging Research and Practice for Juvenile Justice: Systematizing the Approach (2016)

    Translating research into practice requires a systematic approach grounded in implementation science and input from practitioners. This document details such an approach for The Bridge Project— an effort designed to facilitate translation of juvenile justice research into actionable policy and practice changes through the development of practitioner-friendly, application-ready products. The underlying decision making framework for this project includes: a continuous consideration of evidence, stakeholder feedback, and input carefully weighed and considered at multiple decision points.

  • Implementing the Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol to Rate Juvenile Justice Programs Lessons from OJJDP’s Juvenile Justice Reform and Reinvestment Initiative (2016)

    The Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP) is a system that rates the potential for therapeutic services to reduce recidivism among youth, by comparing programs to what prior evaluation has shown to be effective. SPEP ratings are intended to guide program improvements in a cycle of Continuous Quality Improvement. This report describes the general requirements and drivers of successful implementation of the SPEP, as informed by implementation at three sites participating in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Juvenile Justice Reinvestment and Reform Initiative. Trying to implement the SPEP often uncovers deficiencies in risk assessment systems, client tracking systems...

  • Implementation and Sustainability of Juvenile Reentry Programs in Second Chance Act Sites: Evaluation Sites in Oklahoma and Virginia (2017)

    Delivering reentry services to youth proves challenging. This brief describes the implementation and sustainability of two Juvenile Second Chance Act reentry programs in Oklahoma and Virginia. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with grantees and community and state stakeholders conducted between 2013 and 2016, evaluators document the challenges to providing prerelease support and coordinating services among institutional and community supervision agencies and organizations.

  • Strategies for Reducing Criminal and Juvenile Justice Involvement: Building Ladders of Opportunity for Young People in the Great Lakes States, Brief 4 (2017)

    Crime, victimization, and justice system responses greatly affect the life prospects of the most vulnerable Great Lakes youth, restricting their access to ladders of opportunity. This brief describes how crime and justice involvement impact youth development and opportunity generally, and explores the specific crime and justice intervention context in the Great Lakes states. It presents an array of promising and proven policies and practices that have the potential to deliver more safety while reducing juvenile justice and criminal justice involvement and their negative impact on youth.

  • Local Validation of SPEP Ratings of Juvenile Justice Program Effectiveness: A Case Study (2017)

    The Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP) system rates how effectively juvenile justice services reduce recidivism. It is based on meta-analyses of programs’ effectiveness and has been validated in statewide analyses by comparing the recidivism of clients in well-rated versus poorly rated programs. This technical report describes an attempt to locally validate the system, using data from the Iowa site of OJJDP’s Juvenile Justice Reform and Reinvestment Initiative. The report provides basic information on programs and how they fared on the SPEP. Ultimately, the local data were unsuitable for a local validation because of limitations in the available risk data and...

  • Juvenile Justice System Improvement: Implementing an Evidence-Based Decision-Making Platform (2017)

    This report explains how jurisdictions have integrated the JJSIP [Juvenile Justice Systems Improvement Project] and the JJRRI [Juvenile Justice Reform and Reinvestment Initiative] into a successful “evidence-based decision-making platform, consisting of validated risk and needs assessment tools, structured decision-making tools to assist in the better matching of the needs of youth involved in the juvenile justice system with the correct level of supervision and types of services, and evidence-based programs and services (p. 3). This evidence-based platform will reduce recidivism and increase positive youth outcomes, ensure public safety, and decrease juvenile justice system costs.

  • Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP) (2018)

    The Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP) is a validated, data driven rating scheme for determining how well an existing program or service matches the research evidence for the effectiveness of that particular type of intervention for reducing the recidivism of juvenile offenders. The SPEP scheme is based on a meta-analysis of over 500 studies conducted by Dr. Mark Lipsey and his colleagues over the last 30 years. These analyses have investigated the general program characteristics that are most strongly associated with reductions in the reoffense rates of the juveniles served.” Points of entry on this website are: SPEP in the...

  • Assessing the Impact of South Carolina’s Parole and Probation Reforms: Justice Reinvestment Initiative (2017)

    In 2010, South Carolina passed the Sentencing Reform Act, enacting comprehensive criminal justice reforms. One key reform encouraged the Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services to employ administration responses to parole and probation violations, rather than sending people to prison. This brief finds that, following these reforms, use of administrative responses increased. Reform implementation was associated with a decline in recidivism; people beginning supervision after the reforms were 33 percent less likely to be incarcerated after one year compared with pre-reform cohorts. Still, implementation of these reforms was impeded by several challenges, including delays, data limitations, and funding roadblocks.

  • Assessing the Impact of Georgia’s Sentencing Reforms: Justice Reinvestment Initiative (2017)

    In 2012, Georgia passed comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation. The reforms restructured offense classifications and sentencing policies for drug and property offenses with the goal of tailoring justice system responses to the severity of the offense committed. This brief analyzes trends in commitments, sentence length, and time served for offense categories affected by the reforms. Commitments to prison for these offenses declined 13 percent, and probation commitments fell 9 percent. Average sentence length for most affected offenses fell following reforms, and time served in prison and on probation began to decline as well.

  • Arches Transformative Mentoring Program: An Implementation and Impact Evaluation in New York City (2018)

    This report evaluates the New York City-based Arches Transformative Mentoring program, finding that participation in the program reduces one-year felony reconviction by over two-thirds, and reduces two-year felony reconviction by over half, with especially profound impacts for the youngest program participants. The program's evidence-based curriculum is completed over a 6-12-month period and delivered in a group setting by "credible messengers," direct service professionals with backgrounds similar to the populations they serve.

  • Positive Outcomes: Strategies for Assessing the Progress of Youth Involved in the Justice System (2018)

    This report reviews a number of prominent frameworks that are available to help youth justice systems rely on positive outcomes rather than recidivism to measure their effectiveness. These include the Developmental Assets model, the 5Cs model, the Youth Program Quality Assessment model, the Positive Youth Justice model, and the Youth Thrive framework. Each model or framework aligns with the key principles of positive youth development as well as the large body of research on desistance from crime, which is also presented in this report (p. 1).

  • Reentry Starts Here: A Guide for Youth in Long-Term Juvenile Corrections and Treatment Programs (2018)

    This toolkit, Reentry Starts Here: A Guide for Youth in Long-Term Juvenile Corrections and Treatment Programs, was developed as a resource to help young people in juvenile corrections and treatment programs prepare for reentry and success in the community.

    According to OJJDP’s Statistical Briefing Book, each year there are more than 48,043 youth in placement on any given day. Each of you will eventually be released back into the community and will have an opportunity to move forward with your lives in a positive direction.

    The purpose of this guide is to encourage you to begin thinking and planning for...