Mentoring Best Practices Research: Effectiveness of Juvenile Mentoring for Youth on Parole and Probation in Ohio

• NCJ Number: 251408
• Date Published: November 2017
• Length: 1 page
• Grant Number(s): 2013-JU-FX-0004
• Agencies: OJJDP-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Evaluation; Program/Project Description

Annotation

This is a summary of a report on a study that examined six mentoring programs in Ohio to determine their impact on recidivism.

Abstract

The main finding of the study is that youth on parole and probation who received mentoring services in Ohio continued their delinquent behavior without any statistically significant reduction. In order to address this issue, the researchers recommend that mentoring programs working with justice-involved youth should tailor their approaches to this particular population of youth. The mentoring programs that adhered most to evidence-based practices produced the largest reduction in the rate of recidivism between mentored youth and youth who were not mentored. In contrast, those programs that adhered least to evidence-based practices experienced an increase in the recidivism rate among those youth who participated in mentoring; however, these differences were not statistically significant. The study used a quasi-experimental design under which youth on parole and probation who received mentoring service were matched with similar youth who di not receive mentoring services. Researchers defined "recidivism" for the parole sample as a return to incarceration. Recidivism for the probation sample consisted of any new adjudication.