Does Treatment Quality Matter?

Abstract

Research Summary The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has implemented a process to evaluate the treatment quality of interventions provided statewide in all long‐term residential programs. In the current study, we examine the predictive validity of this treatment quality component in the prediction of recidivism of youth (N = 2,397) who completed juvenile justice residential programs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. We use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the effects of treatment quality (as youth are nested within programs), controlling for demographic and criminal history factors. The results indicate that higher average treatment quality scores of interventions received within a residential program decreased the likelihood of subsequent arrest, conviction, and reincarceration, whereas the highest treatment quality score of any specific intervention provided within the program decreased the odds of reincarceration only. Policy Implications In this study, we confirm the importance of fidelity and implementation quality in the provision of crime prevention treatment interventions to serious, deep‐end juvenile offenders. Additionally, our results shed light on the ability of a juvenile justice agency to measure treatment quality in a substantively meaningful way with the use of limited additional resources. The services provided to keep communities safe, prevent future offending, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders must be held accountable for producing such outcomes, and one method of measuring such compliance is to evaluate the quality of the interventions with respect to staff training, fidelity adherence, evaluation, and corrective action processes.

Gender Differences in the Empathy–Recidivism Relationship

“…In addition, individual-level information on specific services received within the facility, the duration/dosage of each service, nor the quality/fidelity of services provided were not available in the data. Such treatment components (fidelity, treatment quality, duration, dosage, whether services were appropriately matched to risk/needs assessment results) have been demonstrated as critical components in recidivism reduction among youth completing residential programs in Florida (Baglivio et al, 2021; Baglivio, Wolff, Howell, et al, 2018; Baglivio, Wolff, Jackowski, et al, 2018). However, we note that our purposive decision to use the R-PACT assessment just prior to release (therefore just prior to the beginning of the recidivism follow-up), by default controls for differences in services received during placement as that assessment is a snapshot of each youth’s risk/needs profile after services have been provided.…”

Working upstream: A statewide analysis of individual and contextual risk factors for future juvenile justice involvement among youth receiving prevention services

“…Notably, the effectiveness of evidence‐based practices and services more generally is contingent on the quality of their implementation (Lipsey, 2009). Prior research has demonstrated the importance of treatment quality and achieving proscribed dosages of interventions for reducing criminogenic risk and recidivism (Baglivio, Wolff, Howell, et al., 2018; Baglivio, Wolff, Jackowski, et al., 2018; Lipsey et al., 2010). DJJ does not maintain detailed information on prevention service fidelity; however, the significant reduction in system contact associated with program completion—a potential indicator of service dosage—in the present study reaffirms the previous finding.…”

Revisited: Effective use of the large body of research on the effectiveness of programs for juvenile offenders and the failure of the model programs approach

“…The version of the SPEP tested in Arizona lacked the quality of service delivery component, which had not yet been developed and incorporated into the scoring at the time of the validation studies. As mentioned earlier, a separate analysis of the relationship of the ratings on only that component with risk-adjusted recidivism was conducted with Florida data from 56 residential programs (Baglivio et al, 2018). Statistically significant odds ratios were found for the relationships with risk-adjusted rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration with the respective odds ratios all about 0.89.…”