NIJ Evaluation: Increasing College Enrollment

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.

To read more about the program, visit the NIJ’s site here.

NIJ Evaluation: Wraparound Programs

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.

NIJ Publication: Effects of SROs in Schools

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.

NIJ Evaluation: Group Mentoring

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.

NIJ Evaluation: Teen Courts

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.

NIJ Evaluation: Crisis Response and Prevention

The National Institute of Justice has taken a close look at crisis response programs within schools. These crisis response programs differ from the ones funded by Community-based Aid grants in that they are within schools, rather than the broader community.

These programs are organized into tiers. The first tier involves teaching student leaders how to use practical, nonviolent communication and intervention skills. These students also communicate with school staff to discuss observations they have made about bullying and harassment.

The second tier identifies students who may need emotional or behavioral support. After a student is identified, they are assessed and linked to services in the third tier. These tiers are intended to help prevent an emotional crisis from happening in the school.

The fourth tier involves responding to a crisis as it happens in the school. A licensed, certified social worker (or workers) intervene with a student who is having a crisis. They use culturally-sensitive, school-informed protocol to assist the student. After the crisis is responded to, tier five involves connecting that student to aftercare to prevent a relapse.

This intervention proves promising, according to the NIJ. While the program did result in a significantly lower frequency of office referrals and suspensions, it does not appear to have affected the frequency of bullying, juvenile justice referrals, or emotional/behavioral health incidents.

To learn more about this intervention, please visit the NIJ website to see their evaluation in more detail.

NIJ Evaluation: Expressive Writing

The National Institute of Justice has released an evaluation focusing on programs using expressive writing as a means of intervention. This intervention is also known as written emotional disclosure, and it is designed to help youth express themselves emotionally and process their emotions to adapt to stressful situations. The target population of this intervention was youth aged 10 to 18.

Youth are encouraged to write about a particular topic during sessions taking about 15 to 20 minutes. They are told to write about a particular topic, including a stressful or challenging event in their life, an ongoing issue in their lives, their relationships with family and/or friends, and so on. All writing is kept confidential, and youth are reassured that they do not need to worry about spelling or grammar.

The NIJ’s evaluation found evidence suggesting that expressive writing is effective with regards to multiple juvenile problem/at-risk behaviors, internalizing behavior, school participation, and somatic complaints.

To read more about expressive writing, please visit the NIJ’s website after this link.

NIJ Evaluation: Cyberbullying Programs

The National Institute of Justice has released an evaluation of cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. Cyberbullying is defined as aggressive, intentional act carried out by an individual or group over digital media, repeatedly over time against a vulnerable target. Examples may include hateful posts on social media, spamming harassment, and so on.

The programs evaluated aimed to prevent cyberbullying from happening, and/or intervene if someone is being cyberbullied. Programs were categorized based on who they targeted: individuals, universal/whole-schools, or multi-level systemic approaches. Individual-level strategies focused on teaching students a variety of strategies to respond to cyberbullying. Universal/whole-school strategies used schoolwide strategies and addressed how school related to cyberbullying. Finally, multi-level systemic approaches addressed different groups: classrooms, teachers/staff, families, and/or students. These programs may teach students how to respond to online bullying, and then also help staff build students’ social relationships at school, for example.

The NIJ found that these programs were effective in both addressing bullying and victimization. Using randomized controlled trials, the findings indicate that participating in cyberbullying invtervention or prevention programs can reduce online bullying behaviors and victimization from online bullying among school-aged youth.

To read more about the NIJ’s findings, you can visit the site after this link.

NIJ Evaluation: School-Based Interventions to Reduce Exclusion

The National Institute of Justice has evaluated school-based interventions that focus on reducing exclusion, commonly known as suspension and expulsion. The interventions described in this article tend to target students between four and eighteen in non-specialized schools. Interventions may target individual students or teachers, or they may target the whole school.

Components of the programs were varied. Components included enhancement of academic skills, after-school programs, mentoring/monitoring programs, building social skills, training for teachers, violence reduction efforts, and counseling, among others.

Interventions were delivered on school premises, or were supported by the school with at least one component being delivered in the school setting. The programs varied in length, and usually ranged from 12 to 14 weeks.

Students in the treatment group who received the intervention experienced a statistically-significant reduction in school exclusion compared with the control group. For more information about the programs, you can view the article after this link on the NIJ website.