Juvenile Recidivism Methodology Plan

Project Methodology Plan

Selected Project Option

The proposed project, which is founded on the social learning theory, seeks to reduce recidivism rates among juveniles released from juvenile detention centers. To realize this goal, the study i) determines the factors influencing the risk of recidivism among juvenile offenders and based on these factors, ii) develops an intervention that could effectively minimize criminal elements and hence, the risk of recidivism. In this regard, the proposed study will adopt the intervention project option.

Rationale for the Selected Project Option

Several reasons inform the decision to use the intervention project option. First, intervention research assesses the impact of a certain intervention on an outcome variable (Salkind, 2010). Multiple studies have been conducted to analyze the factors influencing juvenile recidivism based on the assumptions of the social learning theory. The proposed study, however, goes beyond just identifying these factors, and focuses more on how the precepts of the theory could be used to develop interventions that minimize the effect of these factors and hence, the risk of recidivism. Other project options offer avenues for understanding why phenomena are the way they are, such as why recidivism occurs, but cannot be effectively used to assess the effectiveness of interventions for addressing the same.

Further, according to Salkind (2010), intervention research is used when the aim of the study is not to prevent a negative outcome from occurring, but to engender a specific desirable outcome for individuals in need, such as to reduce anxiety symptoms in patients with substance use disorders. The target population for the proposed study is juvenile offenders who have been rearrested within three years of release from a juvenile detention center. These are individuals who are already victims of recidivism as they have already been rearrested. The aim of the study, therefore, is not to prevent recidivism, but to minimize the inclination to recidivate for individuals at a high risk of recidivism. This makes the intervention project option more plausible for the proposed study than other options that focus on developing strategies to prevent a phenomenon from occurring.

The Selected Project Option and Study Research Questions

The intervention project will be guided by an intervention manual. Sidani et al. (2011) define an intervention manual as a document detailing the goals, components, and activities of an intervention including what needs to be done, how it is to be done, and when to deliver the intervention. Since the proposed study is of a cross-sectional nature, it may not be possible to deliver the intervention and assess participants’ progress over time. The manual will be used to develop an effective intervention for juvenile offender rehabilitation that incorporates several strategies and best practices.

Suitable strategies will be identified based on information obtained from various stakeholders dealing with youth and the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. Potential stakeholders include juvenile detention center staff, social workers, leaders of local area churches, and staff from local support groups concerned with youth empowerment. Possible support organizations to be considered in the search for information include the Bull City Youth Build Support Group, the Boys and Girls Club of Durham, and on-campus counseling and men’s achievement centers (Bull City Youth Build, 2010; BGC Durham, 2020). Face-to-face and telephone interviews with representatives from these organizations, selected social workers, local church leaders, and supervisors in selected juvenile detention facilities will be conducted to obtain insights into the strategies that they find most effective in minimizing the risk of recidivism.

Once all relevant feedback on suitable rehabilitation strategies and programs has been obtained from the identified stakeholders, the same will be compiled to identify common themes and strategies. From these, strategies that are rooted in the social learning theory will be identified and put together into an intervention for rehabilitating juvenile offenders. As such, the intervention will incorporate multiple strategies rooted in the social learning theory and identified as effective by the various stakeholders.

The proposed study’s aim is to assess the effectiveness of offender intervention programs rooted in the social learning theory in minimizing the risk of recidivism. Based on the developed intervention, the study will incorporate annual state reports to identify the extent to which their offender programs employ the strategies included in the intervention. States that employ less than 30 percent of the strategies in the developed intervention will be categorized in one class, and those that employ more than 50 percent of the strategies will be classified in a different class. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) will then be used to compare juvenile recidivism rates between the two classes of states to determine whether there are significant differences (Gifford, 2016). The insights obtained will be used to answer the second research question, which seeks to identify interventions that are most effective in reducing recidivism among juvenile offenders. The study hypothesizes that states that employ more of the strategies in the developed intervention will have lower rates of juvenile recidivism and that the differences in recidivism rates between the two classes of states will be significant.