Something That Works in Juvenile Justice

Recently, the state of North Carolina has supported a randomized experimental project designed to provide intensive supervision services for undisciplined youths (status offenders or youths referred to the courts for runaway, truant, or ungovernable behaviors) placed under the protective supervision of the juvenile courts. As compared to regular procedures for juvenile court protective supervision of status offenders, the Intensive Protective Supervision Project (IPSP) involves more extensive and proactive contact between the court counselor, the status offender, and the status offender's family. The essential idea of the IPSP is that through the intensive supervision and provision of professional services to status offenders it may be possible to decrease the rate of occurrence of additional status offenses and the likelihood that the youths will commit more serious delinquent offenses. Results from a statistical and field-based evalu ation of the IPSP experiment suggest that the project is quite successful in achieving its goals for those undisciplined youths who have not previously been charged with delinquent offenses.