Mentorship: A Missing Piece to Manage Juvenile Intensive Supervision Programs and Youth Gangs?

Abstract

Intensive supervision probation (ISP) has proven generally ineffective for youth. In this article we argue that mentorship, an intervention with increasing empirical support in the literature, is a missing treatment component. We test this proposition with results from the Spotlight Serious Offender Services Unit, an urban-based Canadian ISP program that targets high-risk gang youth. Unique to Spotlight is their adoption of street mentors to work with youth in the community. Our study incorporated quantitative and qualitative approaches: client interviews and researcher observation of street mentors coupled with comparison of recidivism outcomes between a comparison group (N = 85) of high-risk young offenders and Spotlight (N = 57) clients, matched via a propensity score matching (PSM) procedure. Spotlight cases did significantly better than the comparison group on all recidivism outcomes examined. Qualitative interview and observation data supported mentorship efficacy. Given the lack of effectiveness of other ISPs observed in the literature, we argue that mentorship makes a difference.

“It Changed My Life”: Traumatic Loss, Behavioral Health, and Turning Points Among Gang-Involved and Justice-Involved Youth

“…Therefore, while it is important to provide and increase access to trauma-focused interventions, it is also important to identify and support the basic needs of gang-involved youth such as physical health, emotional support, and safety. One way to address these needs and reduce youth's trauma exposure is encouraging desistance from gang involvement, and many gang interventions have been successful in doing so (Boxer, Docherty, Ostermann, Kubik, & Veysey, 2017;Sexton & Turner, 2011;Weinrath, Donatelli, & Murchison, 2016). However, the current work further supports the need for gang intervention programming to include trauma-informed practices and trauma-focused interventions (Dierkhising & Kerig, 2018) to address these basic needs and behavioral health in an integrated fashion.…”

The devil is in the details: Unpackaging the systematic in systematic reviews: Short reply to reconsidering the effectiveness of mentoring for prevention of juvenile criminal recidivism.

“…These two examples highlight the importance of not only conducting a thorough search but also the importance of following the criteria defined for critically appraising studies once they are found. Importantly, Weinrath et al’s (2016) study appears to be driving the difference in findings between our Olsson et al’s (2021) study and the DuBois (2022) brief comment regarding studies based on nonrandomized controlled trials. As such, had DuBois (2022) chose to exclude Weinrath et al (2016), the findings they present in their brief comment would likely have been similar to our findings.…”

“…Importantly, Weinrath et al’s (2016) study appears to be driving the difference in findings between our Olsson et al’s (2021) study and the DuBois (2022) brief comment regarding studies based on nonrandomized controlled trials. As such, had DuBois (2022) chose to exclude Weinrath et al (2016), the findings they present in their brief comment would likely have been similar to our findings.…”

“…Had we found the study by Duriez et al (2017), for example, we likely would have excluded it as the study failed to meet the requirement and focus in our study on noninstitutional interventions, as the adolescent participants in Duriez et al (2017) were required to be provided the mentoring services studied prior to their release from a juvenile facility. Weinrath et al’s (2016) study was excluded after full-text review due to high risk of bias as only 57 out of 109 (52%) participants in the intervention group sample and 85 out of 217 (39%) participants in the control group sample were included in the analysis based on the quasi-experimental design. These two examples highlight the importance of not only conducting a thorough search but also the importance of following the criteria defined for critically appraising studies once they are found.…”

Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media

“…but increased convicted offenses (e.g., convictions, adjudications, incarcerations; Bouchard & Wong, 2018). On the other hand, one study of a more recent ISP program for juvenile gang offenders in Manitoba, Canada that included a mentorship component (not included in the aforementioned reviews) successfully reduced recidivism compared to usual probation services (Weinrath, Donatelli, & Murchison, 2016). The mixed evidence suggests it is not clear whether combining treatment services with intensive supervision for juveniles is an effective model.…”