Disrupting the Pathway from Truancy to Delinquency: A Randomized Field Trial Test of the Longitudinal Impact of a School Engagement Program

Abstract

Objective Truancy in adolescence is related to detrimental developmental outcomes over the life-course, including a greater risk for delinquency during adolescence and offending in adulthood. This paper presents results from the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP): a Third Party Policing partnership between schools and police that sought to disrupt the relationship between truancy and delinquency by communicating, in a procedurally fair dialogue, the legal responsibilities of parents to ensure their children attend school. This paper examines the impact of ASEP on antisocial behavior and the modifying effects of ASEP on the relationship between willingness to go to school and antisocial behavior. Methods ASEP was evaluated under randomized field trial conditions, where 102 truanting young people from a highly disadvantaged urban area in Brisbane, Australia, were randomly assigned to either the ASEP intervention or the business-as-usual condition. Results Utilizing four waves of survey data collected over a 2-year time period, we found evidence that ASEP was related to decreases in self-reported antisocial behavior throughout the 2 years study. We also find that ASEP lessened the negative relationship between willingness to go to school and self-reported antisocial behavior for those in the experimental condition up to 1 year post random allocation. Conclusions Partnerships between schools and police that communicate, in a procedurally fair way, parental legal responsibilities for their children to attend school holds promise for increasing a truanting young person's willingness to go to school and reducing their selfreported antisocial behaviour, at least in the short run.

Bully Victimization, Truancy, and Violent Offending: Evidence From the ASEP Truancy Reduction Experiment

“…Bully victimization can be a traumatic experience for young people (Vidourek et al, 2016) which can lead to young people skipping school (Gastic, 2008), weaken young people’s bonds to school (Popp & Peguero, 2012), and lead to a variety of criminal and non-criminal outcomes (Copeland et al, 2013; Wolke et al, 2013). Much evidence indicates truancy prevention programs are associated with increased school attendance (Maynard et al, 2017) and reduced criminal behavior in general (Bennett et al, 2018; Dembo et al, 2014; Mazerolle et al, 2019). However, it is imperative that care is taken when identifying the causes of truancy—particularly bully victimization—in order to ensure the most effective treatment outcomes.…”

“…This Action Plan was tailored to each individual young person and family and intended to be a tool to help students and their parents/guardians overcome the barriers that prevented regular school attendance. Through the ASEP conference and resulting Action Plan that focused on risk factors for truancy, it was hypothesized (and later found) that young people who took part in the experiment would increase their school attendance (Mazerolle, Antrobus, Bennett, & Eggins, 2017; Mazerolle, Bennett, Antrobus, & Eggins, 2017) and have lower levels of antisocial behavior relative to the control participants (Bennett et al, 2018; Mazerolle et al, 2019).…”

Procedural justice and legal compliance

“…Tyler (1990) found some support for this proposition in his initial work examining legitimacy and compliance as much of the offending behavior reported by citizens he surveyed was minor. Research by Mazerolle et al (2017Mazerolle et al ( , 2019 provided promising evidence in support of this possibility, but even here it is important to recognize that these interventions were a complex integration of concepts from not only PJ relating to the manner of interpersonal interaction but also restorative justice and deterrence, which relate to the substance of that interaction. For these types of legal infractions, the legitimacy of their enforcers might influence citizen willingness to comply, but whether that compliance will result in material gain in social welfare is problematic.…”

“…A recent policy experiment similarly integrated PJ into a meeting format, this time with truant youth. Mazerolle, Bennett, Antrobus, and Eggins (2017, 2019) evaluated a truancy reduction program involving schools and police collaborating to deliver a message regarding the importance of school attendance. A facilitator, school personnel, and police worked together to create a dialogue with parents that emphasized creating trust, allowing parents to have voice, and treating parents with respect.…”

Policing partnerships to address youth antisocial behavior: How parental risk‐taking shapes child outcomes

“…Past research on the main findings of ASEP has explicitly addressed the program's impact on truancy and official offending, finding favorable outcomes on these measures for young people who participated in thr program. ASEP was associated with reduced self‐reported antisocial behavior (Mazerolle et al., 2019), reductions in official police contacts (Bennett, Mazerolle, Antrobus, Eggins, & Piquero, 2018), and increased official and self‐reported school attendance (Mazerolle, Bennett, Antrobus, & Eggins, 2017). The questions under investigation in the current study, however, have not been previously examined.…”