Providing effective substance abuse treatment for young-offender populations: what works!

Previous research has documented a strong linkage between substance abuse and criminal activity among young offenders. Consequently, the provision of effective substance-abuse interventions for this population is of paramount importance to the criminal justice system. This article explores the literature on the treatment of substance abuse in offender and nonoffender populations.

Risk principle of case classification in correctional treatment: a meta-analytic investigation.

Recent meta-analyses have documented considerable evidence demonstrating that correctional treatment programs are indeed effective for reducing recidivism in offender populations. The effect of client risk, an issue that has received extensive coverage in the extant literature from an assessment perspective, has been relatively ignored in these efforts. The present study marks the first exhaustive meta-analytic investigation of the risk principle and its effects on correctional treatment program effectiveness.

The importance of staff practice in delivering effective correctional treatment: a meta-analytic review of core correctional practice.

Several meta-analyses have rendered strong support for the clinically relevant and psychologically informed principles of human service, risk, need, and general responsivity. However, each of these reviews has focused on specific program components and not on the characteristics of the staff or the specific techniques used to deliver the program. This meta-analytic review examines the role of core correctional practices in reducing recidivism and provides strong preliminary evidence regarding their effectiveness.

The effectiveness of relapse prevention with offenders: a meta-analysis.

Although relapse prevention models have been applied within offender treatment, there has been little controlled outcome research evaluating their effectiveness. This meta-analysis of 40 tests of relapse prevention treatment revealed moderate mean reductions in recidivism (0.15), and certain elements of the relapse prevention model (i.

An evaluation of the effectiveness of substance abuse programming for female offenders.

Although a recent meta-analysis reported that substance abuse treatment was associated with moderate reductions in recidivism for female offenders, very few of the tests of treatment (k = 4) focused on adults. The purpose of this study was to contribute to this relatively sparse area of scientific inquiry by exploring the effectiveness of substance abuse programming in reducing recidivism for a sample of 98 federally sentenced female offenders in Canada. Results revealed a significant reduction in general recidivism for treated substance abusers.