Impact of Brief Intervention Services on Drug-Using Truant Youths' Self-Reported Delinquency and Arrest Charges: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

The issue of delinquency among truant youth is insufficiently documented in the literature. There is a need to elucidate this issue, and assess the efficacy of interventions to reduce this problem behavior. The present, NIDA-funded study addressed this gap by examining the impact of a Brief Intervention (BI), originally designed to address youth substance use, on their delinquent behavior over an 18-month follow-up period (for self-reported delinquency) and a 24-month follow-up period (for official record delinquency). A number of significant BI intervention effects with sizable effect sizes were found, as well as a number of marginally significant BI effects. In particular, significant reductions in arrest charges at 24-month follow-up for youth receiving BI services compared to controls were among the key findings of this study. Service delivery implications and directions for future analyses are discussed.

Substance Use and HIV Among Justice-Involved Youth: Intersecting Risks

“…Of the 46 studies that enrolled justice-involved youth (e.g., court-involved truancy, arrestees, probation, juvenile drug court, detention), a little over half of the studies (54%; n=25) included youth who were community-supervised (e.g., truancy, juvenile drug court or juvenile probation) and approximately 47% (n=21) focused on detained or incarcerated youth. With respect to study design, 22% (n=10) were intervention trials [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] of which 9 were randomized controlled trials (RCTs); 56% (n=26) were cross-sectional [6, and 22% (n=10) were longitudinal or prospective analysis designs [11,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]. At time of enrollment, study participant ages ranged from 11-18 years with most studies including age range of 13-17 years and several studies extending into young adulthood (i.e., up to 30 years of age [11,27,59,61]).…”

“…Sample size study enrollment ranged from 15 to 2260 youth, depending on study design (e.g., qualitative versus quantitative cross-sectional) and stage (e.g., pilot randomized trial versus large-scale randomized controlled trial). Intervention studies' sample sizes ranged from 47 to 460 with a 6-12 month post-intervention follow-up window being most typical and two studies following participants up to 24 months or more post-intervention [29,35]. Longitudinal assessment (non-intervention) studies included a variable number of assessments over time but most commonly included 2 to 3 post-baseline timepoints (range 1-11) over a period of 6-24 months with the two longest follow-up periods occurring 7 years post-baseline with high-risk girls in a trial of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care [64] and 14 years post-baseline among a sample of youth initially detained during adolescence as part of the Northwestern Juvenile Project [11].…”

“…Two intervention trials published 2 sets of papers with the same intervention just at different stages (i.e., pilot stage and then full trial) [31][32][33]37]. Interventions ranged with respect to format (e.g., individual, group or family-based) and intensity, ranging from brief [28,29] to more intensive [34,35]. For example, Bryan and colleagues (2018) recently demonstrated the efficacy of a single 3 hour substance use (alcohol and marijuana) and sexual risk reduction intervention session for detained youth in reducing STI incidence at 12 month follow-up [28].…”

“…Five interventions incorporated parent training or family-based approaches [29,[33][34][35][36][37]. Efficacy of the interventions was variable.…”

A tailored cognitive behavioral program for juvenile justice-referred females at risk of substance use and delinquency: A pilot quasi-experimental trial

“…Nevertheless, future research should incorporate other dimensions of fidelity that may impact participant outcomes, such as facilitator competence. Similarly, self-reported delinquent behavior and substance use outcomes, while shown to be reliable indicators in other studies [62, 65], may underestimate the true incidence of these behaviors and could reflect bias in reporting.…”