Reducing Juvenile Crime, What Works — and What Doesn't

A Forum — July 14, 2000

This forum featured the findings of the publication Less Hype, More Help: Reducing Juvenile Crime, What Works—and What Doesn’t, supported by the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, and developed by the American Youth Policy Forum in partnership with the Child Welfare League of America, Coalition for Juvenile Justice, National Collaboration for Youth, National Crime Prevention Council, National League of Cities and National Urban League.

According to report author, Richard Mendel, "what we don't know about juvenile crime policy can hurt us—and waste lots of taxpayer money." The nine months of research to produce Less Hype yielded substantial evidence that transferring youth to adult courts—by far the most popular policy strategy of the 1990s—actually exacerbates the criminality of youth rather than preventing additional criminal acts or deterring other youth. He showed that transferred youth are more likely to re-offend (recidivate) and to commit more serious offenses than youth retained in juvenile courts. Incarcerating youth with adult criminals is also dangerous to juveniles, dramatically increasing their risks for sexual and physical harassment and suicide. Youth with criminal records are much less able to find employment or to bond with law-abiding peers or potential mates, thus increasing the likelihood they will persist in crime. Despite this evidence, Mendel explained that states are moving youth into adult courts more often and for less and less serious offenses.

Although maintaining a separate juvenile justice system is crucial, today's juvenile justice system has problems that need addressing, Mendel said. Of the $10 - $15 billion states will spend for juvenile justice this year, most will go to removing juvenile offenders from their homes. Yet recidivism rates from juvenile corrections are alarmingly high despite the fact that three-fourths of the young people removed from their homes by juvenile courts are not violent felons. Meanwhile, states and localities tend to spend little for community and home-based supervision of youthful offenders, and few have replicated exemplary, inexpensive, and effective methods of community and home-based treatment. The United States needs to invest more in effective prevention efforts, strengthen probation services and monitoring, and improve aftercare support and supervision. In addition, agencies such as child welfare, mental health, and special education that are involved with delinquent and emotionally disturbed youth need to better coordinate services and become more aware of how their practices affect juvenile delinquency and treatment.

Mendel stated that most juvenile justice agencies pay scant attention to results, and most federal, state and local spending to prevent youth crime is wasted on programs that employ unproven approaches and/or are poorly implemented. However, many research-proven effective practices in juvenile justice have emerged in recent years. Many of these successful strategies involve community and home-based care reflecting the reality that parents, families and communities have powerful influence in the lives of youth and must be a part of any effective response to delinquent behaviors.

Mendel described positive evaluation findings from three highly successful interventions. Multisystemic Therapy, which involves highly accessible family counselors with small caseloads visiting homes and working with parents as much as young people, has reduced future days in corrections or residential treatment by at least 47 percent in eight clinical trials over the past 14 years. Functional Family Therapy, which also provides intensive family counseling, has reduced recidivism by 25 to 80 percent in repeated trials. Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care places young offenders temporarily into specialized foster homes, works with the youth and simultaneously coaches the parents, and then returns the young person home after six to eight months. In the most recent trial, participating youth spent less than half as many days incarcerated as a control group and were seven times as likely to remain arrest-free in the year after treatment. Additional effective programs are referenced in Less Hype, including home visiting for high-risk pregnant women and new mothers, early childhood education programs, alternatives to detention, intensive aftercare and other models.

For policymakers, Mendel recommended (1) rejecting the mantra of "adult time for adult crime," (2) building "a juvenile justice system worthy of the name;" (3) eliminating financial incentives that encourage juvenile court and corrections to remove non-dangerous young people from their homes rather than treating them in their homes and communities, and (4) carefully measuring results of juvenile justice programs and targeting funding to programs that work.

Mr. Mendel was followed by Patrick Lawler, Administrator, Youth Villages, a youth service organization that serves nearly 1000 youth per day in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. Lawler, who has 27 years experience working with troubled children, explained that for the first 20 years of his career he felt it was his job "to raise troubled children because their parents could not." He believed that the longer Youth Villages kept the children, the better. Then Lawler began to note that around 40 percent were returning residential treatment programs or being incarcerated. In 1993, Lawler commissioned a study in which children’s services officials throughout the region were asked to identify the most needed services to help troubled children. The overwhelming feedback was that intensive work was needed with the families in the home. The unavoidable conclusion of Youth Villages’ self-examination was that young people could not adjust successfully to a home setting because their families had not similarly progressed: "Troubled families needed as much attention as—or even more than—the troubled child." Lawler said, "We used to think parents were the problem. Now we know they are the solution." Using of Multisystemic Therapy (MST), developed by Dr. Scott Henggeler in South Carolina, and other research-proven models of treatment, Youth Villages counselors now offer home-based counseling as a first approach and reserve residential treatment as a last resort. Youth Villages now has an 82% success rate (youth still doing well back in their homes after a nine-month follow-up) in a field where a 70% failure rate is common. Youth Villages counselors meet with a family in their home at least three times each week. Family counselors are also on-call to families 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Caseloads are low: only four to five families per counselor.

Despite its success at Youth Villages and elsewhere, MST is still dramatically underutilized. Nationwide, only 5,000 youth will participate in MST programs this year, in a nation where 100,000 youth are incarcerated every day and more than half a million children are in some form of residential treatment or foster care. MST or similar intensive, long-term, home-based counseling is not specifically included in Medicaid’s mandates. Lawler recommends that Congressional hearings be held to explore changing Medicaid regulations to allow more flexibility for states in selecting treatment approaches. Most states must get a special Medicaid waiver to offer home-based counseling. Instead of paying approximately $6,000 a year for home-based treatment that works, states tend to provide treatments--in residential programs or psychiatric hospitals at $200 per day—that are often unnecessary, expensive and not proven to work. Lawler also recommends that officials at the state and federal level need to hold programs accountable for results and that the federal government should establish a national data collection system that will determine exactly how many children are being raised by the government, in juvenile justice systems, foster care or residential treatment. States are not currently required to track or submit these numbers. Lawler cautions that "you can’t manage what you don’t measure."

Accompanying Lawler at the forum were Joseph Banks and his mother, Letha Williams, who both receive MST services, and Youth Villages family counselor Sandra Daniel. Joseph explained that he had been in trouble and that Youth Villages was the first organization that really worked for him, "Youth Villages brought our family back together. It works for anyone who accepts it." Joseph had displayed very aggressive behavior, including hurting his mother and younger siblings and stabbing his step-father with a knife, which resulted in his being hospitalized several times and eventually led mother and son to Youth Villages. To Mrs. Williams, Youth Villages was different from the outset. A counselor came to her home, led her to understand that some of the responsibility and cure for her son’s troubles lay with her, provided her personal counseling focusing on her strengths and provided advice on everything from getting a new job to managing her budget. Having been depressed and feeling powerless to control her son’s behavior, she became positive, got a new job, and began turning around her life and her family. She began to understand that helping the child alone puts children in the position of trying to counsel a whole family, but "Joseph is a child and can’t give me counseling." Joseph has returned home and is now excelling in high school.

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