NCJ Number
77901
Date Published
1979
Length
152 pages
Annotation
A group of 317 Chicago youths who had been adjudicated delinquent were studied with respect to their levels of delinquent behavior before and after correctional treatment and in comparison with other populations of delinquents.
Abstract
The study's goal was to measure the 'suppression effect' or the reduction in delinquency following treatment. This comparison of levels of delinquency before and after treatment was felt to be more relevant in evaluations of corrections effectiveness than the usual indicator, the presence or absence of any recidivism, because the study population consisted of chronic offenders for whom complete cessation of delinquent behavior would be unlikely. The typical offense history of the group prior to commitment to the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) consisted of 8.2 arrests for person-to-person offenses that would be felonies if committed by an adult. In the year before they were sent to DOC, the 317 DOC subjects were arrested an average of 6.3 times, compared to an average of 2.9 times during an average followup period of 16.8 months. Additional analysis showed that data supported the existence of a suppression effect, rather than simply identifying the effect of maturation, inaccurate data, or other factors as causes of a reduction in delinquency. Comparison of alternative correctional approaches ranging from services provided while the youth lived at home to residential intensive care facilities showed that the greatest effects were produced by out-of-town residential interventions. Low level interventions such as supervision and probation did little good. Data also indicated the need for rethinking common assumptions about juvenile corrections, especially the belief that corrections only makes youths behave worse. However, results did not support a punitive approach in that some of the residential treatment alternatives provided by an experimental program, Unified Delinquency Intervention Services, were much less forbidding than some of the DOC institutions and did as well or better on the recidivism measures. Tables, figures, chapter notes, and appendixes presenting the study design, cost comparisons of different correctional alternatives, and 20 references are provided.