NIJ Evaluation: Wraparound Programs

The National Institute of Justice has released a report examining “wraparound” programs aimed at lowering juvenile delinquency. The methods used by wraparound programs involve surrounding at-risk youth with coordinated sources, including school staff, courts, law enforcement, and services. By providing support through these methods, the hope is that the youth will be less likely to commit offenses, while also making schools and communities safer for other students.

However, in practice, the NIJ found that wraparound programs—even well-designed ones—did not accomplish the goal of reducing delinquency. Results were inconsistent, and the evaluation determined that it was neither harmful nor beneficial in the pilot program(s) in terms of schoolwide effects.

Additionally, researchers struggled to implement the program in schools while coordinating with other entities of the law. The program performed better when there was greater buy-in from principals and staff in the schools. Staffing also was identified as an issue in the evaluation.

To read more about the NIJ’s wraparound program evaluation, you can visit their site here.

NIJ Evaluation: Teen Courts

The National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs has released an evaluation detailing the effectiveness on teen courts on reducing recidivism for youth. Teen courts—also known as peer courts or youth courts—are a way to offer an alternative to traditional court processing.

Youth participate on a volunteer basis and can opt-out at any time, but will be sent back to a traditional court if they choose to do so. In different models of this type of intervention, youth may hold a variety of roles and adults may sometimes participate. The goal of the intervention is for the youth on trial to take responsibility for and be held accountable to their actions.

Regardless of the type of model being used, teen courts have been found to be ineffective at reducing recidivism. After aggregating the results of 11 studies, a meta-analysis found that none of the studies showed that teen courts had a statistically-significant effect on juvenile recidivism rates. Treatment and control groups were also used.

To read more about this analysis of teen courts, you can visit the OJP’s website here.

NIJ Evaluation: Crisis Response and Prevention

The National Institute of Justice has taken a close look at crisis response programs within schools. These crisis response programs differ from the ones funded by Community-based Aid grants in that they are within schools, rather than the broader community.

These programs are organized into tiers. The first tier involves teaching student leaders how to use practical, nonviolent communication and intervention skills. These students also communicate with school staff to discuss observations they have made about bullying and harassment.

The second tier identifies students who may need emotional or behavioral support. After a student is identified, they are assessed and linked to services in the third tier. These tiers are intended to help prevent an emotional crisis from happening in the school.

The fourth tier involves responding to a crisis as it happens in the school. A licensed, certified social worker (or workers) intervene with a student who is having a crisis. They use culturally-sensitive, school-informed protocol to assist the student. After the crisis is responded to, tier five involves connecting that student to aftercare to prevent a relapse.

This intervention proves promising, according to the NIJ. While the program did result in a significantly lower frequency of office referrals and suspensions, it does not appear to have affected the frequency of bullying, juvenile justice referrals, or emotional/behavioral health incidents.

To learn more about this intervention, please visit the NIJ website to see their evaluation in more detail.

NIJ Evaluation: Cyberbullying Programs

The National Institute of Justice has released an evaluation of cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. Cyberbullying is defined as aggressive, intentional act carried out by an individual or group over digital media, repeatedly over time against a vulnerable target. Examples may include hateful posts on social media, spamming harassment, and so on.

The programs evaluated aimed to prevent cyberbullying from happening, and/or intervene if someone is being cyberbullied. Programs were categorized based on who they targeted: individuals, universal/whole-schools, or multi-level systemic approaches. Individual-level strategies focused on teaching students a variety of strategies to respond to cyberbullying. Universal/whole-school strategies used schoolwide strategies and addressed how school related to cyberbullying. Finally, multi-level systemic approaches addressed different groups: classrooms, teachers/staff, families, and/or students. These programs may teach students how to respond to online bullying, and then also help staff build students’ social relationships at school, for example.

The NIJ found that these programs were effective in both addressing bullying and victimization. Using randomized controlled trials, the findings indicate that participating in cyberbullying invtervention or prevention programs can reduce online bullying behaviors and victimization from online bullying among school-aged youth.

To read more about the NIJ’s findings, you can visit the site after this link.