Family Centered Treatment, Juvenile Justice, and the Grand Challenge of Smart Decarceration

The School's Charlotte Bright, Jill Farrell, Andrew Winters, Sara Betsinger and Bethany Lee are co-authors of "Family Centered Treatment, Juvenile Justice, and the Grand Challenge of Smart Decarceration" which has been published by Research on Social Work Practice.

Purpose:

Responding to social work’s grand challenge of smart decarceration, this study investigated whether Family Centered Treatment (FCT), a home-based service for juvenile court-involved youth, is more effective than group care (GC) in reducing recidivism. Outcomes are juvenile readjudication and commitment to placement, and adult conviction and sentence of incarceration.

Method:

Data were drawn from service provider and state administrative databases. Propensity score matching was used to create a sample of 1,246 FCT youth and 693 GC youth. Cox proportional hazard models estimated time to the four outcomes.

Results:

FCT participants had a significantly lower risk of adult conviction and adult incarceration relative to youth who received GC. The findings for juvenile outcomes were nonsignificant.

Citation:
 
 Bright, C. L., Farrell, J., Winters, A. M., Betsinger, S., & Lee, B. R.(2017). Family Centered Treatment, Juvenile Justice, and the GrandChallenge of Smart Decarceration.Research on Social Work Practice, doi: 10.1177/1049731517730127