An Evidence-Based Approach to Reducing Recidivism in Court-Referred Youth

The focus on court-referred youth within this study necessitates a brief description of the modern juvenile justice system. Children and adolescents under the age of 18 are described as juvenile delinquents if they engage in activities prohibited by local, state, or federal legal codes (Granville, 2007). When juveniles violate the law, their cases are typically processed through the juvenile justice system, a loose network of agencies that deal with juveniles including police, prosecutor, detention, court, probation, and the Department of Juvenile Corrections (Nissen, 2006). Historically, the juvenile justice system has been oriented toward offender rehabilitation over incarceration and other punitive measures (Granville, 2007). Embedded within the juvenile justice system is the notion that minors lack the cognitive and developmental capabilities of their adult counterparts, and thus they cannot be considered fully culpable for their actions (Binder, 1988). Despite the juvenile justice system’s inherent leniency, juvenile crime is indisputably a serious social problem (Binder, 1988; Latzman, 2008; Steinberg, 2009). Juvenile crime accounted for 16% of all violent crime arrests and 26% of property crime arrests in 2007 (Puzzanchera, 2009). Although cost estimates are not readily available, researchers in the 1990s estimated that reported juvenile crimes cost victims $17.6 billion annually (Freeman, 1996). Furthermore, trajectory analysis of juvenile delinquency has found that juvenile crime is often a doorway to more serious offending and adult criminality (Kadish, Glaser, Calhoun, & Risler, 1999; Van der Geest, Blokland, & Bijleveld, 2009). The total cost to society of a single career criminal, who commenced criminal behaviors during adolescence, is estimated to be $1.5 to $1.8 million (M. Cohen, 1998).