News
We are excited to begin another fiscal year of program evaluation in the Evidence-based Nebraska (EB-NE) program. We continue to grow and evolve the strategies for evaluation in collaboration with the Nebraska Crime Commission.
The information in this document will provide a comprehensive overview of the evaluation strategy for this year and important dates and activities that will help your program and the collective Community Based Aid program achieve meaningful evaluation results.
The Juvenile Justice Institute is happy to announce that our latest report on our Juvenile Case Management System Definitions and Data Fidelity Project (JDDF Project) was released in June 2021.
This fiscal year, we conducted the JDDF Project which we discuss in more detail in this report. In addition to reporting on what we learned through the JDDF Project, we provide some insight into why programs may have received the results they did, and suggestions for improving data entry. We also looked at the missing data reports that programs received in FY 2018/2019 to see if data entry rates of required variables have improved.
You can read the report here. If you would like to see all of our previous publications, check out our Reports page.
The Juvenile Justice Institute is happy to announce that our latest report on school interventionist programs, was released in May 2021.
Interventionists identify and coordinate behavioral or academic intervention for a student to address attendance issues, poor grades, lack of engagement, and/or behavior issues. For this report, the JJI interviewed the currently funded interventionists, examined what youth are being referred to interventionists for, and the outcomes for these youth in both school and the juvenile justice system.
You can read the report here. If you would like to see all of our previous publications, check out our Reports page.
The Juvenile Justice Institute is happy to announce that our latest report on restorative justice conferencing programs, also known as mediation centers, has been released today.
Restorative justice conferencing programs aim to increase community engagement, reduce recidivism, prevent youth from moving deeper into the juvenile justice system, and produce greater community and/or victim satisfaction. The report also discusses how restorative justice programs work, and how factors like race/ethnicity, gender, and age affect aspects of these programs and youth outcomes.
You can read the report here. If you would like to see all of our previous publications, check out our Reports page.
The National Institute of Justice has released its latest evaluation, this time focusing on an intervention meant to help low-income, first-generation high-school students enroll in college.
The intervention, known as Bottom Line, targets students with GPAs of at least 2.5 and whose families have an income below 200% of the federal poverty limit. The targeted students would also be the first members of their family to attend college.
Bottom Line connects these students with advisors and holds meetings with them regularly, for up to six years as the student prepares for and attends college.
Multiple evaluations of the program indicated that target students were more likely to enroll in college, and remain in attendance. In general, students enrolled in the program seemed to be more likely to attend a four-year college than a two-year one.
The National Institute of Justice has released a report examining “wraparound” programs aimed at lowering juvenile delinquency. The methods used by wraparound programs involve surrounding at-risk youth with coordinated sources, including school staff, courts, law enforcement, and services. By providing support through these methods, the hope is that the youth will be less likely to commit offenses, while also making schools and communities safer for other students.
However, in practice, the NIJ found that wraparound programs—even well-designed ones—did not accomplish the goal of reducing delinquency. Results were inconsistent, and the evaluation determined that it was neither harmful nor beneficial in the pilot program(s) in terms of schoolwide effects.
Additionally, researchers struggled to implement the program in schools while coordinating with other entities of the law. The program performed better when there was greater buy-in from principals and staff in the schools. Staffing also was identified as an issue in the evaluation.
To read more about the NIJ’s wraparound program evaluation, you can visit their site here.
The National Institute of Justice has released an article, published in Criminology & Public Policy, detailing the effects of school resource officers on school crime and responses to school crime. This study in this article, funded by a grant from the NIJ, examined schools that increased their spending on SROs.
You can read the article online at the Wiley Online Library at this link.
In the study linked above, evidence was found that SROs do not necessarily make schools safer, and generally end up increasing the criminalization of school discipline.
The presence of school resource officers in the classroom is a controversial topic. In Lincoln, the school board debated whether or not to continue its $500,000 contract with the Lincoln Police Department to have SROs in the schools. Members of the community and the school board said that the money would be spent better elsewhere, such as on social workers, counselors, school psychologists, and so on. The school board ultimately decided to keep the contract with LPD.
The National Institute of Justice has released a report on the effectiveness on Project Arrive, an intervention that focuses on youth who are at risk of dropping out of school. This intervention uses group mentoring as a model, which consists of a group of six to eight students meeting with two volunteer co-mentors.
The NIJ used two separate studies that looked at whether or not the intervention had an effect on youth. For the most part, these studies found that Project Arrive has no significant effect on the following aspects: juvenile offenses, home support, self-awareness, instructional time, and GPA.
To read the full profile of the Project Arrive program, you can visit the NIJ’s website here.
The National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs has released an evaluation detailing the effectiveness on teen courts on reducing recidivism for youth. Teen courts—also known as peer courts or youth courts—are a way to offer an alternative to traditional court processing.
Youth participate on a volunteer basis and can opt-out at any time, but will be sent back to a traditional court if they choose to do so. In different models of this type of intervention, youth may hold a variety of roles and adults may sometimes participate. The goal of the intervention is for the youth on trial to take responsibility for and be held accountable to their actions.
Regardless of the type of model being used, teen courts have been found to be ineffective at reducing recidivism. After aggregating the results of 11 studies, a meta-analysis found that none of the studies showed that teen courts had a statistically-significant effect on juvenile recidivism rates. Treatment and control groups were also used.
To read more about this analysis of teen courts, you can visit the OJP’s website here.
The Nebraska Juvenile Justice Association is co-sponsoring a series of webinars about Racial and Ethnic Disparity (RED), which are presented by the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative group in Omaha. Tomorrow, July 22, the first session will be presented on.
Session 1: Reducing Racial Disparities in Juvenile Detention with Effective and Innovative Alternatives to Detention, presented by Opal West from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, will be streamed Wednesday, July 22, from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CDT.
This conference is free to people who work with young people and families in the juvenile justice system. To attend the conference and view the webinar, you can download the app at this link.
