Survey of Youth in Residential Placement: Youth's Needs and Services

• NCJ Number: 227660
• Author(s): Andrea J. Sedlak Ph.D.; Karla McPherson Ph.D.
• Date Published: 2010
• Length: 62 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2001-JR-BX-K001
• Agencies: OJJDP-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research Paper

Annotation

The Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP) is the third component in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) constellation of surveys providing updated statistics on youth in custody in the juvenile justice system.

Abstract

This research report describes youth's emotional and psychological needs, substance abuse problems, medical needs, and educational status as well as the relevant services they receive in custody. SYRP provides the first nationally representative findings on the self-reported needs of the population of youth who are in custody because they are charged with or adjudicated for offenses. This report details what the youth report regarding: 1. their overall emotional and psychological problems, and the counseling they receive in custody; 2. their substance abuse problems prior to entering custody, and the substance abuse counseling they receive in their facility; 3. their medical needs and services; and 4. their educational status and the educational services the facility provides to them. The SYRP findings are based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of 7,073 youth in custody during spring 2003. Analyses examined youth's answers on different topics for all youth in custody and assessed differences among subgroups of youth offenders in custody, based on their sex and placement program (i.e. detention, corrections, community-based, camp, or residential treatment). All SYRP reports present findings in terms of estimated numbers (rounded to the nearest multiple of 10) and percentages in the national population of youth in residential placement. As with any survey of a representative sample, SYRP's findings are not exact measures, but are estimates about the full population that have a known degree of precision. SYRP research reports indicate the precision of estimates in tables by giving the 95-percent confidence interval (CI). The CI specifies the range in which the estimate would fall in 95 out of 100 comparable replications of the study.