Intervention Targeting the Multiple Causes of Delinquency
Because family issues combine with a range of other factors in predicting
delinquency, comprehensive delinquency intervention should target multiple
systems and facilitate family involvement in other domains of adolescents'
lives, such as in school and with peers. Research consistently reveals
a negative association between antisocial behavior and academic performance.
[142] Interventions to remedy academic skill deficits may be school based,
but the family can also play an important role in early school adjustment.
Parents' involvement in school and monitoring of school performance lessens
the likelihood of school failure and associated negative outcomes, such
as dropping out and delinquency. [143] Research suggest that antisocial
youths' lack of academic engagement both in the classroom (e.g., time on
task) and at home (e.g., time spent on homework) contributes to poor academic
performance. [144] Therefore, one area of intervention involves helping
parents to provide an environment for doing homework, including setting
rules about when homework gets done and monitoring homework completion.
Discussing school with children enables parents to track what and how the
child is doing in school and to communicate their investment.
Parent-school involvement encompasses a range of activities at school and
at home that foster academic competence. Unfortunately, recent research
on factors that affect parent-school involvement finds that some of the
same disadvantages related to parent training failures undermine parent-school
involvement. [145] School social workers may be in the best position to
foster parent-school involvement for these high-risk families by working
with groups of parents to identify barriers to involvement, empowering
parents to work together to support their children's schooling, and facilitating
links between parents and schools that address and remedy obstacles to
collaboration. [146]
Because the antisocial child's intrapersonal and social skills deficits
play into peer rejection, interventions that focus on the individual characteristics
of aggressive youth are examined next. Among the most promising are cognitive-behavioral
interventions that target attributional styles and problem-solving skills
in an attempt to improve positive social coping in peer interactions. [147]
These interventions, usually conducted in small groups in school- or institution-based
settings, have been shown to decrease aggressive behavior and increase
social functioning, but there is less evidence for maintaining change or
generalizing outside of the training settings. For adjudicated delinquents,
cognitive-behavioral treatments generally show skill improvements, but
the studies either do not examine or only demonstrate minimal effects on
recidivism. [148] Interventions that place aggressive and delinquent youth
together in small groups are also not without risks given the prominence
of deviant peers in explaining risk for delinquency. [149] Evaluation of
peer coping skills training that combined minimally and highly aggressive
youth in small groups so that competent children could function as role
models showed no adverse effects and some positive ones for the competent
children. Because the intervention also decreased aggressive behavior and
increased positive coping for the high-risk youth, this may represent a
promising strategy for group interventions with aggressive youth. [150]
Combining skills training for youth with family interventions may produce
more durable and generalizable change, as a few studies now suggest. Alan
Kazdin and colleagues found that combining cognitive problem-solving skills
training with parent management training had a more marked effect on child
antisocial behavior and delinquency, as well as on parental stress and
depression, than either intervention alone. [151] Similarly, Arnold Goldstein
and associates found less delinquency recidivism when families were involved
in his skills-building aggression replacement training when youths alone
received the group training. [152] Psychostimulant medication can enhance
the effects of both adolescent skills training and family management for
many youth who have attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and induced
positive short -term changes in behavioral, academic, and social functioning
of treated children, but most researchers in this area agree that combining
medication with other interventions is necessary given the myriad problems
associated with ADHD and the lack of evidence for enduring effects of psychostimulant
medication. [153]
Finally, families are important in the control of the peer environment,
contributing both indirect and direct effects. [154] For example, although
association with delinquent peers is linked to delinquency, this relationship
is weaker under conditions of greater family support than it is with low
support. [155] As another example, Mark Warr found that attachment to parents
prevented association with delinquent peers and, moreover, if adolescents
developed friendships with delinquent peers, the amount of time spent with
parents, especially weekend time, could counter peer influence and mitigate
against delinquency. [156]
Longitudinal data now show that poor monitoring increases drift into a
deviant peer group, particularly in adolescence when an increasing amount
of unsupervised time is spent with peers. [157] Families can therefore
influence the peer environment through monitoring and supervision. [158]
Involvement in networks with other parents may increase the ability of
parents to monitor adolescents effectively, although this has not been
empirically evaluated to our knowledge. Unfortunately, there is very little
intervention research on the intersection between parenting and peer networks.
This issue is an important arena for developing intervention principles
and strategies.
The research literature, especially findings from recent causal modeling
studies, clearly supports the importance of multidimensional approaches
to intervention with delinquents and their families. Nevertheless, few
programs actually incorporate these approaches. In a notable exception,
Henggeler and his colleagues have developed multisystemic family therapy
(MST) that addresses the context of family life and targets the multiple
domains relevant to the adolescent's dysfunction, intrapersonal and systemic
(family, peer, school, and neighborhood). [159] Services are delivered
in the youth's natural environment, using a home-based family preservation
model. The therapy attempts to provide parents with the skills and resources
to develop and carry out strategies to promote behavior change across the
other key systems linked with antisocial behavior. Treatment is time-linked,
individualized for each family, and high flexible.
In a series of controlled group studies, multisystemic family therapy has
shown consistent and strong results as an effective intervention for serious
antisocial behavior and juvenile delinquency in both urban and rural areas
and with families of different cultural backgrounds and socioeconomic status.
[160] A recent study of the long-term effects of MST with serious multiple
offenders illustrates its effect on the targeted correlates of antisocial
behavior, as well as on the prevention of criminality and violence. [161]
Treatment increased family members' perception of cohesion and adaptability,
increased observed supportiveness, decreased conflict and hostility, and
decreased parents' reports of youth problem behavior and of their own psychiatric
problem. Most important, compared with youth who received individual treatment,
MST youths at 4-year follow-up were significantly less likely to have been
arrested or, if arrested, had committed significantly less serious offenses
Although they did not independently evaluate this premise, the researchers
hypothesized that the favorable results were largely due to the comprehensive
nature of MST and its delivery in the natural settings of the adolescent
and family.
Increasing recognition of the need to focus on the multiple determinants
of antisocial behavior has also led to the development of several multicomponent
prevention programs. An important example is the Seattle Social Development
Project developed by Hawkins and associates. [162] The goal of this program-to
strengthen bonds to family, school, and conventional peers as a deterrent
to antisocial behavior-is addressed by developing skills to increase successful
participation in each of these arenas. The program provides opportunities,
skills, and reinforcement in structured components including classroom
interventions and parent training. Initial comparisons of experimental
and control groups suggest that the program has the greatest effect on
school adjustment and skills, although some reduction in early delinquency
and drug use has been demonstrated. The program illustrates the promise
and complexity of coordinated programming directed at multiple targets.
[163]
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