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Recent increases in the delinquency and incarceration of girls have prompted juvenile justice professionals to search for effective, gender-specific prevention and treatment strategies. Given the dearth of research on girls' programming, these professionals are often left to sort out discrepancies between two major bodies of literature that address the needs of delinquent girls-the "what works" literature and the "gender-responsive" literature. This article culls the best of what is available within both these bodies of literature and suggests programmatic elements deemed essential for working effectively with girls.

Due to the popularity of cognitive behavioral interventions, programs that follow this model are often assumed to be effective. Yet evaluations of specific programs have been slow in coming. The current investigation seeks to bridge this gap by evaluating the effectiveness of Thinking for a Change (TFAC), a widely used cognitive behavioral curriculum for offenders. Furthermore, this evaluation provides a “real-world” test of TFAC, because it was implemented by line staff in a community corrections agency as opposed to being a pilot project implemented by program developers. The results of the analyses indicate that offenders participating in the TFAC program had a significantly lower recidivism rate than similar offenders that were not exposed to the program.

The research on what works in correctional interventions provides a powerful agenda for correctional programming. Evaluability assessment is a tool that can be used to help put this research into practice by providing a measure of program quality. This article describes Gendreau and Andrews's Correctional Program Assessment Inventory (CPAI) as one example of an evaluability assessment tool that is designed to ascertain how well programs are meeting certain principles of effective intervention. It also reports the results of CPAIs conducted on 86 treatment programs. The results indicate that these programs are not adequately incorporating the principles into their correctional programming. Common shortcomings are discussed, and potential resolutions are offered.

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