Risk Assessment for Juvenile Violent Offending by Anna Costanza Baldry Andreas Kapardis

Author:Anna Costanza Baldry, Andreas Kapardis [Anna Costanza Baldry, Andreas Kapardis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136241789
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

5 Community-based intervention programs for released incarcerated serious and violent young offenders

Challenges and opportunities

R. Corrado and and A. M. F. Peters

The late childhood and adolescent dynamic and static factors associated with increased risk for delinquency, general criminal offending, and serious/violent offending have been well established (Howell, 2009; Loeber and Farrington, 1998b; Mulder et al., 2011; Myner et al., 1998). Far more recent research, as discussed in Chapter 1, has identified similar risk factors for the earliest developmental age stages. In contrast, there is more limited research concerning the effectiveness of treatment programs addressed to reduce risk, and protective factors, especially those associated with serious and violent offending (Farrington and Welsh, 2007; Greenwood et al., 2001). One general theme that has emerged from the complex and sophisticated meta-analytic studies of the few appropriately designed evaluation studies is that few treatment programs demonstrated large effect sizes; again, especially for the serious and violent young offenders. In other words, the under- standing of how to reduce the likelihood for either the onset of such offending or its persistence with effective treatment programs has not progressed at the same rate as the identification of the risk and protective factors. This is not surprising given that the development of treatment programs with high effect sizes is inherently considerably more challenging than both the development of theories and the identification of risk/protective factors for a complex phenomenon such as serious and violent young offenders. For example, the Cracow risk management instrument illustrates the enormous number and complexity of risk and protective factors that have been asserted to be necessary to consider for developing case plans for individual young offenders, yet, to date, specific treatment programs to address various combinations of such factors at the successive developmental stages have not been identified and integrated into this instrument or any other similar comprehensive instrument. One reason for this omission is simply that such programs do not exist or still need to be validated. Another program challenge, though far narrower in scope and complexity than the above challenges, involves the identification of effective program interventions for incarcerated serious and violent offenders released into their communities at the end of their custodial sentences. This chapter will review, first, the key risk assessment instruments utilized in custodial institutions to assist in creating case management plans while in custody; second, rehabilitative programs for serious/violent high-risk young offenders in the community; and, third, an experimental community program currently employed in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A long-standing debate, especially in certain countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, has been whether custodial institutions by their very nature preclude or, at least, seriously inhibit the effectiveness of treatment programs for serious and violent offenders. The essence of this debate is, on the one hand, the assertion that custody for such offenders is necessary to protect society from further violent victimizations through incapacitation; and, additionally, that custody serves as a form of general and specific (i.e., society-directed as opposed to individually aimed) deterrence and provides direct access to treatment programs.

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