Examining What Works for High Risk Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System
Comparing the Effect of the Community Connections (CC) Program to Intensive Supervision Probation (ISP) Over A Nine-Year Time Period
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52935/Abstract
Using administrative data collected by an urban juvenile probation department between January 2007 and August 2016, this study compared the impact of the Community Connections (CC) program to a matched sample of youth who received intensive supervision probation (ISP) on six time-to-event variables (i.e., time to second program, detention, out-of-home placement, another offense, violation of court order, and days in program). The study included youth who were assigned to court-ordered post-adjudication community supervision and who were deemed to have a high risk of re-offending by the department’s risk and needs assessment. CC and ISP youth were matched using propensity score matching that created a final sample of 381 youth in each program. When examining the program effect of CC vs. ISP on the time-to-event variables the findings were mixed. However, across both programs, the analysis revealed that youth who remained in the programs longer and youth with a successful program discharge generally experienced better long-term outcomes than their peers.
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