The Role of Mental Health and Specific Responsivity in Juvenile Justice Rehabilitation (2017)

While mental health problems are generally not risk factors for criminal behavior according to the risk-needs-responsivity (RNR) framework of correctional psychology practice, prevalence rates are very high and RNR principles suggest that mental health as a responsivity variable may moderate the success of interventions targeted to criminogenic needs. In this study we investigated the relationships among mental health status, criminogenic needs treatment, and recidivism in … youth referred for court-ordered assessments and followed through their community supervision sentence (probation). Youth with mental health needs were no more likely than youth without these needs to reoffend, regardless of whether those needs were treated … youth who had a greater proportion of criminogenic needs targeted through appropriate services were less likely to reoffend, regardless of mental health status (p. 55).