Does Treatment Quality Matter?

• Published in: Criminology & public policy Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 147 - 180
• Main Authors: Baglivio, Michael T., Wolff, Kevin T., Jackowski, Katherine, Chapman, Gabrielle, Greenwald, Mark A., Gomez, Katherine
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken American Society of Criminology 01.02.2018
• Subjects: Accountability; Arrests; Convictions; Crime prevention; Criminal justice; fidelity; Implementation; Intervention; Juvenile justice; Juvenile offenders; juvenile recidivism; Predictions; program evaluation; Quality; Recidivism; Services; Training; Treatment integrity; Youth
• ISSN: 1538-6473; 1745-9133
• DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12338

Research Summary The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has implemented a process to evaluate the treatment quality of interventions provided statewide in all long‐term residential programs. In the current study, we examine the predictive validity of this treatment quality component in the prediction of recidivism of youth (N = 2,397) who completed juvenile justice residential programs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. We use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the effects of treatment quality (as youth are nested within programs), controlling for demographic and criminal history factors. The results indicate that higher average treatment quality scores of interventions received within a residential program decreased the likelihood of subsequent arrest, conviction, and reincarceration, whereas the highest treatment quality score of any specific intervention provided within the program decreased the odds of reincarceration only. Policy Implications In this study, we confirm the importance of fidelity and implementation quality in the provision of crime prevention treatment interventions to serious, deep‐end juvenile offenders. Additionally, our results shed light on the ability of a juvenile justice agency to measure treatment quality in a substantively meaningful way with the use of limited additional resources. The services provided to keep communities safe, prevent future offending, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders must be held accountable for producing such outcomes, and one method of measuring such compliance is to evaluate the quality of the interventions with respect to staff training, fidelity adherence, evaluation, and corrective action processes.