Objective
The US Department of Justice has called for the creation of trauma-informed juvenile justice systems in order to combat the negative impact of trauma on youth offenders and front-line staff. Definitions of trauma-informed care have been proposed for various service systems yet there is not currently a widely accepted definition for juvenile justice. The current systematic review examined published definitions of a trauma-informed juvenile justice system in an effort to identify the most commonly named core elements and specific interventions or policies.
Method
A systematic literature search was conducted in 10 databases to identify publications that defined trauma-informed care or recommended specific practices or policies for the juvenile justice system.
Results
We reviewed 950 unique records, of which 10 met criteria for inclusion. The 10 publications included 71 different recommended interventions or policies that reflected 10 core domains of trauma-informed practice. We found eight specific practice or policy recommendations with relative consensus, including staff training on trauma and trauma-specific treatment, while most recommendations were included in two or less definitions.
Conclusion
The extant literature offers relative consensus around the core domains of a trauma-informed juvenile justice system but much less agreement on the specific practices and policies. A logical next step is a review of the empirical research to determine which practices or policies produce positive impacts on outcomes for youth, staff, and the broader agency environment, which will help refine the core definitional elements that comprise a unified theory of trauma-informed practice for juvenile justice.
The present study provided a cross-sectional examination of associations among adverse life events, depressive symptoms, and delinquency in a community sample of 123 early adolescent boys and girls. We also examined whether depressive cognitions, including hopelessness, differentially mediated the relations between exposure to adverse events and delinquent behaviors. Depressive cognitions, especially lack of future orientation, were associated with delinquent behaviors and partially mediated the relationship between adverse events and delinquent behaviors. Findings highlight the importance of future orientation among adversity-exposed youth, and suggest that interventions for trauma should focus on instilling optimism and hope as a means of reducing risk for negative outcomes, including delinquency.Adverse life events in childhood and adolescence have been consistently linked to juvenile delinquency (Kerig, this issue). However, much of the research in this area has focused on exposure to violence or abuse; far less is known about the associations between nonviolent, nonabusive negative life events and delinquent behaviors. Theories such as frustrationaggression theory (Felson, 1992) and general strain theory (Agnew, 2001) suggest that nonviolent negative life events should be associated with delinquency and that negative emotions are the mechanism through which these constructs are related. According to general strain theory, individuals engage in criminal behavior in response to the negative emotions associated with experiencing adverse events. Similarly, frustration-aggression theory posits that adverse events, including the inability to achieve a desired goal, lead to negative affect, which in turn leads to aggression. Taken together, these theories suggest that violent and nonviolent stressful life events lead to negative emotions, which increases the likelihood of adolescent involvement in aggression and delinquency.
The majority of youth in the juvenile justice system have experienced multiple traumatic events in their lives, including community violence, physical abuse, neglect, and traumatic loss. These high prevalence rates, coupled with the known negative consequences of trauma in childhood and adolescence, have led to a greater emphasis on implementing trauma-informed services and practices within juvenile justice settings. However, although many stakeholders and government entities have expressed support for creating more trauma-informed juvenile justice systems, there is still limited empirical knowledge about which interventions are most effective at improving outcomes, particularly at the organizational or facility level. In an effort to fill this gap, the current study evaluated the impact of a trauma-informed milieu intervention, including skills training for youth and training for staff, on rates of violence at two secure juvenile detention facilities ( N = 14,856) located in a large Northeastern city. The analyses revealed that the intervention was significantly related to a reduction of violent incidents in Facility A, with no impact on incidents in Facility B. Follow-up analyses revealed that a larger proportion of eligible youth in Facility A completed the skills group program as compared with eligible youth in Facility B (16% vs. 9%). This finding has important implications for the implementation of trauma-informed interventions for youth in juvenile detention settings, as it suggests that to impact outcomes at the facility level, a minimum threshold of youth may need to be exposed to the intervention. In addition, reductions in violence at Facility A were only realized after both staff training and youth skills components were implemented, suggesting that both components are necessary to create change at the facility level. Future research is needed to further explore the impact of organizational and implementation-level factors on trauma-informed care outcomes in juvenile justice settings.
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