Citation

Thornberry TP, Kearley B, Gottfredson DC, Slothower MP, Devlin DN, Fader JJ. Criminol. Public Policy 2018; 17(4): 953-989.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, American Society of Criminology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1745-9133.12395

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Research Summary No gang prevention or intervention programs meet the standards for effectiveness promulgated by Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. This randomized controlled trial of a well-known program--Functional Family Therapy--that was modified to address the needs of gang-involved adolescents yields two main findings. First, youth at high risk for gang membership and their families engaged with and successfully completed the program at the same level as low-gang-risk youth. Second, the effectiveness results varied by gang-risk status. For youth at high risk for gang membership, the treatment group had significantly lower recidivism rates at the 18-month follow-up as compared with a "treatment as usual" control group. For youth at low risk for gang membership, however, no consistent differences were found between the treated and control groups.

Policy Implications Modifying and extending evidence-based delinquency programs to gang-involved youth seems to be a reasonable strategy for developing a wider array of effective programs to respond to the challenge of street gangs. The differential findings by gang-risk status suggests that the juvenile justice system should expand the use of evidence-based community programs to higher risk youth, including those identified as being "at risk" because of their gang involvement.

Language: en

Keywords

family therapy for court-involved youth; Functional Family Therapy; gang prevention intervention; gangs; randomized controlled trial