The development and evaluation of a treatment and relapse prevention program for juvenile offenders aimed at reducing substance use and criminal behavior

NDARC Staff

Aspasia Karageorge, Laura Vogl, John Howard

Other Investigators

Richard Kemp (School of Psychology, UNSW)

Aims

The aim of the current project is to develop and evaluate a treatment and relapse prevention program for juvenile offenders which will jointly address substance use and criminal behaviour. The aim of the evaluation is to assess if this program is:

• Feasible, acceptable and readily implemented in the different Juvenile Justice environments,
• Effective in reducing substance use
• Effective in reducing the risk of future criminal behaviour
• Effective in modifying risk and protective factors associated with crime and substance use behaviour

  Design and Method

  
  

The NSW Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) has engaged NDARC to development a treatment and relapse prevention program for substance use and criminal behaviour. In addition, NDARC will conduct an effectiveness evaluation of the program.

Program content will be developed based on an extensive literature review of evidence based interventions and focus groups with DJJ staff, clients and client families. Program content will be developed to overcome the identified difficulties associated with implementation. In addition, program content will be created so as to be easily adapted to group or individual work as well as delivery in both community and custodial environments.

The evaluation of the Treatment and Relapse Prevention program will be implemented in a staged process whereby some DJJ centres will receive the program and other DJJ centres will continue with care-as-usual. This staged implementation will allow for a wait-list controlled trial to be conducted comparing the new treatment and relapse prevention program with care-as-usual (i.e., the programs currently being delivered in DJJ facilities).

Progress

An extensive literature review has been conducted and the development of program content has commenced.

Funding

NSW Department of Juvenile Justice
Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing