An Evaluation of a Group Treatment Program With Youth Referred to the Juvenile Probation Service Because of Violent Crime

Abstract

This study assesses the outcomes of group intervention program with violent juveniles. The intervention is based on the ecological approach of Edleson and Tolman (1992). Forty-eight juveniles referred to the juvenile probation service because of violent crime completed the 16 sessions of the intervention. Participants completed questionnaires addressing their attitudes toward violence, perpetration of violent behavior toward others, and sociodemographic factors, pregroup and postgroup intervention. The results show significant reductions in juveniles' endorsement of violent behavior and in violence toward others. These reductions remained significant among the 27 juveniles who completed the 6-month follow-up. The discussion highlights the need for evaluation process among intervention programs conducted by social workers and recommends further research in the field.

Risk and Protective Factors of Juvenile Delinquency among Youth Exposed to Political Conflict: The Role of Social Resistance

“…Juvenile delinquency has severe consequences, from immediate physical and mental harm to the potential development of a lifelong criminal career and even prison sentencing (Khoury-Kassabri et al 2010; Loeber and Farrington 2012). In an attempt to shed light on this phenomenon, scholars have offered and explored various risk and protective factors of the involvement of youth in criminal behaviour (Antle et al 2020; Geerlings et al 2020; Liu and Miller 2020; Orlando and Farrington 2021).…”

“…The former served to determine the role of general violence attitudes, as well as a benchmark for the impact of said political violence attitudes, since it indicates which type of attitudes has a stronger effect. The variable “attitudes towards general violence” was measured using three items ( α = 0.53) from the translated version of the Attitudes Towards Violence Scale (Funk et al 1999) introduced by Khoury-Kassabri et al (2010), such as “If someone hits you, you should hit them back”. Note that this scale’s relatively low α value is probably due to the small number of items comprising this scale (see Swailes and McIntyre-Bhatty 2002), and, therefore, we also calculated the mean interitem correlation – 0.28 – which fell within the optimal range of 0.2–0.4 (Briggs and Cheek 1986).…”

“…Juvenile delinquency has received widespread attention in the literature over the years (Loeber and Farrington 2012;Moffitt 1993;Mohammad and Banse 2023;Orlando and Farrington 2021;Thompson and Bynum 2016). This phenomenon bears severe psychological, physical and social harms, which could manifest themselves in the long term, such as developing a criminal career (Khoury-Kassabri et al 2010;Loeber and Farrington 2012). Thus, it is not surprising that much effort has been spent on identifying the scope of the problem, its causes, and effective interventions (see Cohen 1955;Fernández-Molina and Bartolomé Gutiérrez 2020;Khoury-Kassabri et al 2019;Wilson, Brennan, and Olaghere 2018).…”

Masculine and family honor and youth violence: The moderating role of ethnic-cultural affiliation.

“…Thus, intervention and prevention programs for youth at risk for violent and antisocial behaviors could be established to help counter the negative aspects of masculine honor with positive qualities, such as respect, loyalty, and fairness, which might enable them to gain honor without the use of aggression (Lopez & Emmer, 2002). Adolescents could learn alternative coping skills to handle negative feelings such as anger that may result from being humiliated or insulted and may foster violent behavior (Khoury-Kassabri, Sharvet, Braver, & Livneh, 2010). Furthermore, and in accordance with the suggestion of Brown et al (2009), we recommend increasing the awareness of social workers, educators, parents, and policymakers regarding the role masculine honor plays in increasing youth involvement in violence.…”