OBJECTIVE To conduct a critical review of all HIV prevention intervention studies conducted with adolescents in juvenile justice settings to inform future intervention development. METHOD PubMed and PsycInfo database searches were conducted for peer-reviewed, published HIV prevention intervention studies with juvenile offenders. RESULTS Sixteen studies were identified (N = 3,700 adolescents...

Youth in the juvenile justice system have diverse needs and problems. Several potentially effective behavioral, rehabilitative interventions have been developed, and evaluations of those programs have been conducted. Little is known, however, about how those programs might be integrated into a juvenile justice system, and a range of system-level questions remain unanswered. Using the tools of o...

Several factors are associated to delinquency. It is difficult to change or to reduce risk factors, therefore, the perspective of protective factors promotion appears as an alternative or a complementary approach for the risk behaviour prevention. The present study was developed using mixed methods in order to analyse risk and protective factors in juvenile delinquency. First, a quantitative st...

Systematic assessment of the substantial research evidence on ‘what works’ has shown that flagship programmes have a modest effect, on average, in changing the future behaviour of young offenders. Yet actual juvenile justice systems do not typically deliver the modest benefits provided by programmes selected for evaluation, and probably they never will. Comparative research shows that a passive...

OBJECTIVES This article provides an overview of what is known about the prevalence, diagnosis, and effective treatment of mood disorders among youths, particularly among juvenile offenders, and discusses the unique problems that arise for the delivery of treatment services. The relationship between mood disorders and disruptive or delinquent behaviors as well as the particular importance of pro...

This study examines the relationship between level of supervision by the juvenile probation officers (JPO) and an adolescent's offending, considering the characteristics of juvenile offenders (specifically, level of psychopathy). Data are taken from the Pathways to Desistance Study on a subset of 859 juvenile offenders. We found that the level of probation officer supervision was not consistent...

General intelligence has been the most commonly studied neuropsychological characteristic of sexual offenders for over 70 years. Results, however, have been highly inconsistent. To assess whether sexual offenders score lower in IQ than nonsexual offenders and to explore which sexual offense characteristics relate to IQ, the authors reanalyzed all reports providing sufficient information. Data s...

Background: Structured risk/need assessment tools are increasingly used to orientate risk reduction strategies with juvenile offenders. The assumption is that the risk/need items on these tools are sufficiently sensitive to measure changes in the individual, family and/or contextual characteristics of juvenile offenders. However, there is very little research demonstrating the capacity of these...

There exists a national trend lowering the age to transfer children facing serious charges to adult court for trial. This study examined juvenile offenders' understanding of factual information about trials. Juveniles ages 11 through 16 experiencing their first institutional placement were administered a competence to stand trial screening measure, shown an educational videotape, and readminist...