Community Service Outcomes in Justice-Involved Youth: Comparing Restorative Community Service to Standard Community Service

Abstract

Traditional mandated community service (CS) typically consists of picking up trash or performing manual labor, distanced from the community. Some juvenile justice programs have begun to implement restorative community service (RCS) programs that enable youth to complete meaningful CS projects in a shame-free manner alongside community members. This study compared RCS with a standard community service (SCS) program in two counties in Washington State on psychosocial outcomes, including attitudes, peer relationships, school conduct, academic performance, and substance use. Recidivism was also examined. RCS was associated with reduced substance use and fewer school conduct difficulties compared with SCS, and also positively influenced peer relationships and attitudes. These findings suggest that adding a restorative component to CS may improve psychosocial outcomes for justice-involved youth, but there was no evidence that adding a restorative component to CS led to reduced recidivism. Additional systematic studies are needed to determine whether these findings replicate.

Keywords

community service restorative justice juvenile justice probation propensity score matching

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Andrews

D. A.

Bonta

(2010). The psychology of criminal conduct. Routledge.

Asscher

J. J.

Van der Put

C. E.

Stams

G. J. J. M

. (2015). Gender differences in the impact of abuse and neglect victimization on adolescent offending behavior. Journal of Family Violence, 30, 215–225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-014-9668-4

Astin

A. W.

Sax

L. J.

(1998). How undergraduates are affected by service participation. Service Participation, 39(3), 251–263.

Austin

P. C.

(2009). Balance diagnostics for comparing the distribution of baseline covariates between treatment groups in propensity-score matched samples. Statistics in Medicine, 28, 3083–3107. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.3697

Barnoski

(2004). Washington State juvenile court assessment manual, version 2.1. Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

Bazemore

Karp

(2004). A civic justice corps: Community service as a means of reintegration. Justice Policy Journal, 1, 1–35.

Bazemore

Maloney

(1994). Rehabilitating community service: Toward restorative service sanctions in a balanced justice system. Federal Probation, 58(1), 24–35.

Bazemore

McLeod

(2012). Restorative justice and the future of diversion and informal social control. In Weitekamp

Kerner

H.-J.

(Eds.), Restorative justice: Theoretical foundations (pp. 143–176). Willan.

Bazemore

Schiff

(2015). Restorative community justice: Repairing harm and transforming communities. Routledge. (Original work published 2001)

10.

Bazemore

Stinchcomb

(2004). A civic engagement model of reentry: Involving community through service and restorative justice. Federal Probation, 68(2), 14–24.

11.

Bishop

D. M.

Leiber

Johnson

(2010). Contexts of decision making in the juvenile justice system: An organizational approach to understanding minority overrepresentation. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 8(3), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204009361177

12.

Bouffard

J. A.

Muftić

L. R.

(2006). Program completion and recidivism outcomes among adult offenders ordered to complete a community service sentence. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 43(2), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1300/J076v43n02_01

13.

Bouffard

J. A.

Muftić

L. R.

(2007). The effectiveness of community service sentences compared to traditional fines for low-level offenders. The Prison Journal, 87(2), 171–194. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885507303741

14.

Bugbee

B. A.

Beck

K. H.

Fryer

C. S.

Arria

A. M.

(2019). Substance use, academic performance, and academic engagement among high school seniors. Journal of School Health, 89(2), 145–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.12723

15.

Caldwell

L. L.

Smith

E. A.

(2006). Leisure as a context for youth development and delinquency prevention. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 39(3), 398–418.

16.

Chassin

(2008). Juvenile justice and substance use. The Future of Children, 18(2), 165–183.

17.

Chouhy

Cullen

F. T.

Lee

(2020). A social support theory of desistance. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 6(2), 204–223. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-020-00146-4

18.

Data USA. (2019). Basic demographics comparison charts for Clark County and Kitsap County, WA [Chart]. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/kitsap-county-wa/?compare=clark-county-wa

19.

Dishion

T. J.

McCord

Poulin

(1999). When interventions harm: Peer groups and problem behavior. American Psychologist, 54(9), 755–764.

20.

Dishion

T. J.

Tipsord

J. M.

(2011). Peer contagion in child and adolescent social and emotional development. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 189–214.

21.

Elonheimo

Sourander

Niemelä

Nuutila

A. M.

Helenius

Sillanmäki

Ristkari

Parkkola

(2009). Psychosocial correlates of police-registered youth crime. A Finnish population-based study. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 63(4), 292–300. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100412

22.

Farrington

D. P.

Loeber

Ttofi

M. M.

(2012). Risk and protective factors for offending. In Welsh

Farrington

D. P.

(Eds.), Oxford handbook of crime prevention (pp. 46–69). Oxford University Press.

23.

Flanagan

C. A.

Kim

Collura

Kopish

M. A.

(2015). Community service and adolescents’ social capital. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 25(2), 295–309. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12137

24.

Geller

J. D.

(2011). Probing the relationship between volunteering and substance abuse in adolescence: A test of two explanations [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Vanderbilt University.

25.

Gelsthrope

Rex

(2004). Community service as reintegration: Exploring the potential. In Mair

(Ed.), What matters in probation (pp. 229–254). Willan.

26.

Gifford-Smith

Dodge

K. A.

Dishion

T. J.

McCord

(2005). Peer influence in children and adolescents: Crossing the bridge from developmental to intervention science. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33(3), 255–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-005-3563-7

27.

Hansen

Umbreit

M. S.

(2018). State of knowledge: Four decades of victim-offender mediation research and practice: The evidence. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 36(2), 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21234

28.

Harder

V. S.

Stuart

E. A.

Anthony

J. C.

(2010). Propensity score techniques and the assessment of measured covariate balance to test causal associations in psychological research. Psychological Methods, 15(3), 234–249. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019623

29.

Hawkins

J. D.

Catalano

R. F.

Miller

J. Y.

(1992). Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 64–105. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.1.64

30.

D. E.

Imai

King

Stuart

E. A.

(2007). Matching as nonparametric preprocessing for reducing model dependence in parametric causal inference. Political Analysis, 15, 199–236. https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpl013

31.

Job

Friese

Bernecker

(2015). Effects of practicing self-control on academic performance. Motivation Science, 1(4), 219–232. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000024

32.

Kadden

R. M.

Litt

M. D.

(2011). The role of self-efficacy in the treatment of substance use disorders. Addictive Behaviors, 36(12), 1120–1126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2011.07.032

33.

Khan

Parsonage

Stubbs

(2015). Investing in children’s mental health. A review of evidence on the costs and benefits of increased service provision. Center for Mental Health.

34.

Knoth

Wanner

(2019). Washington state’s aggression replacement training for juvenile court youth: Outcome evaluation (Document Number 19-06-1201). Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

35.

Kristjansson

A. L.

James

J. E.

Allegrante

J. P.

Sigfusdottir

I. D.

Helgason

A. R.

(2010). Adolescent substance use, parental monitoring, and leisure-time activities: 12-year outcomes of primary prevention in Iceland. Preventive Medicine, 51(2), 168–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2010.05.001

36.

Latimer

Dowden

Muise

(2005). The effectiveness of restorative justice practices: A meta-analysis. The Prison Journal, 85(2), 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885505276969

37.

Leiber

M. J.

Peck

J. H.

(2012). Race in juvenile justice and sentencing policy: An overview of research and policy recommendations. Law & Inequality, 31(2), 331–339.

38.

Lutz

Schiefele

A. K.

Wucherpfennig

Rubel

Stulz

(2016). Clinical effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for depression in routine care: A propensity score based comparison between randomized controlled trials and clinical practice. Journal of Affective Disorders, 189(1), 150–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2015.08.072

39.

Mackinnon

S. P.

(2012). Perceived social support and academic achievement: Cross-lagged panel and bivariate growth curve analyses. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41(4), 474–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-011-9691-1

40.

McIvor

(2016). What is the impact of community service? In McNeill

Durnescu

Butter

(Eds.), Probation: 12 essential questions (pp. 107–128). Palgrave Macmillan.

41.

Miller

Fumia

(2015). The King County Education and Employment Training (EET) program: Outcome evaluation and benefit-cost analysis (Doc. No. 15-12-3901). Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

42.

Morris

Tonry

(1991). Between prison and probation: Intermediate punishments in a rational sentencing system. Oxford University Press.

43.

Murray

Farrington

D. P.

(2010). Risk factors for conduct disorder and delinquency: Key findings from longitudinal studies. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 55(10), 633–642.

44.

O’Neill

M. E.

Mathews

(2000). Theory & methods: A weighted least squares approach to Levene’s test of homogeneity of variance. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics, 42(1), 81–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-842X.00109

45.

Peterson

(2017). Functional Family Therapy in a probation setting: Outcomes for youths starting treatment January 2010–September 2012. Center for Court Research, Administrative Office of the Courts.

46.

Phelps

M. S.

(2018). Ending mass probation. The Future of Children, 28(1), 125–146.

47.

Rubin

Thomas

(1996). Matching using estimated propensity scores: Relating theory to practice. Biometrics, 52(1), 249–264. https://doi.org/10.2307/2533160

48.

Rutherford

(2001). Introducing ANOVA and ANCOVA: A GLM approach. SAGE.

49.

Ryals

J. S.

(2004). Restorative justice: New horizons in juvenile offender counseling. Journal of Addictions and Offender Counseling, 25(1), 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1874.2004.tb00190.x

50.

Sha

(2006). Optimism, pessimism and depression; the relations and differences by stress level and gender. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 38(6), 886–901.

51.

Spengler

Damian

R. I.

Roberts

B. W.

(2018). How you behave in school predicts life success above and beyond family background, broad traits, and cognitive ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(4), 620–635. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000185

52.

Strang

Braithwaite

(Eds.). (2017). Restorative justice: Philosophy to practice. Routledge.

53.

Suzuki

Wood

W. R.

(2018). Is restorative justice conferencing appropriate for youth offenders? Criminology & Criminal Justice, 18(4), 450–467. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895817722188

54.

Tanner-Smith

E. E.

Wilson

S. J.

Lipsey

M. W.

(2013). The comparative effectiveness of outpatient treatment for adolescent substance abuse: A meta-analysis. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 44(2), 145–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2012.05.006

55.

Taylor

A. S.

LoSciuto

Fox

Hilbert

S. M.

Sonkowsky

(1999). The mentoring factor: Evaluation of the across ages’ intergenerational approach to drug abuse prevention. Child and Youth Services, 20(1), 77–99. https://doi.org/10.1300/J024v20n01_07

56.

Tolan

P. H.

Henry

D. B.

Schoeny

M. S.

Lovegrove

Nichols

(2014). Mentoring programs to affect delinquency and associated outcomes of youth at risk: A comprehensive meta-analytic review. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 10(2), 179–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-013-9181-4

57.

Valdebenito

Eisner

Farrington

D. P.

Ttofi

M. M.

Sutherland

(2019). What can we do to reduce disciplinary school exclusion? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 15(3), 253–287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-018-09351-0

58.

Van der Put

C. E.

Creemers

H. E.

Hoeve

. (2014). Differences between juvenile offenders with and without substance use problems in the prevalence and impact of risk and protective factors for criminal recidivism. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 134(1), 267–274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.10.012

59.

Watts

A. S.

(2016). Probation in-depth: The length of probation sentences. Robina Institute of Criminal Law & Criminal Justice.

60.

Wood

W. R.

(2012). Correcting community service: From work crews to community work in a juvenile court. Justice Quarterly, 29(5), 684–711. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2011.576688

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.09 MB