Family‐based Intervention for Legal System‐involved Girls: A Mixed Methods Evaluation

Abstract

The increased proportion of juvenile court‐involved girls has spurred interest to implement and evaluate services to reduce girls’ system involvement. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a family‐based intervention by using a dominant sequential mixed methods evaluation approach. First, we examined quantitative data using a quasi‐experimental design to determine whether the family‐based intervention reduced recidivism among court‐involved girls. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to construct statistically equivalent groups to compare one‐year recidivism outcomes for girls who received the court‐run family‐based intervention (n = 181) to a group of girls on probation who did not receive the intervention (n = 803). Qualitative interviews (n = 39) were conducted to contextualize the quantitative findings and highlighted the circumstances that family‐focused interventions for court‐involved girls. Girls who received the program had slightly lower recidivism rates following the intervention. The qualitative findings contextualized the quasi‐experimental results by providing an explanation as to the girls’ family circumstances and insights into the mechanisms of the intervention. Results highlighted the importance of family‐focused interventions for juvenile justice‐involved girls. These findings have practical and policy implications for the use interventions—beyond the individual level—with adjudicated girls and offer suggestions for ways to improve their effectiveness using a community psychology lens. In addition, this paper includes a discussion of evaluating of juvenile court programming from a community psychology perspective including strengths, challenges, and considerations for future work in this area.

Risk and Protective Factors and Interventions for Reducing Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review

“…The effectiveness of these therapies may be improved by addressing parenting style and legitimacy and utilizing a multiple family group approach (Karam et al 2017;Trinkner et al 2012). Findings of these studies align with interviews with practitioners who point to family as an important consideration in interventions addressing juvenile delinquency and incarceration given their proximal influence on youth (Anderson et al 2021).…”

Mixed methods in community psychology: A values‐forward synthesis

“…MMR, and in particular studies designed toward the purpose of initiation, can be valuable approaches to “finding” whether and how paradox exists. Initiation‐based studies were sometimes used to recast and contextualize null findings and the hypothesis‐testing paradigm of postpositivist inquiry (e.g., Anderson et al, 2020; Puxley & Chapin, 2021). Especially for scholarship with and on behalf of marginalized groups, utilizing MMR for initiation can be a critical way to reveal the discrepancies between program design and the needs and lived experiences of the participants these programs are meant to serve but may fail to address.…”

Promising Services for Justice-Involved Youth: A Scoping Review with Implications for the Los Angeles County Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act

“…Finally, a gender-specific family-based delinquency intervention also seemed to significantly lower rates of rearrest; moreover, both boys and girls showed a similar significant decrease in mental health symptoms relative to the historical comparison group (Mayworm and Sharkey, 2013). Although these studies suggest some promise for familyfocused interventions using a variety of approaches, two quasi-experimental studies found no significant effect of family interventions on such outcomes as rearrests, new court petitions, and convictions (Diamond, Morris, and Caudill, 2011;Anderson, Rubino, and McKenna, 2021).…”