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Research Article

Confronting Oppression: Reframing Need and Advancing Responsivity for LGBTQ+ Youth and Young Adults

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Pages 2-28 | Published online: 18 Sep 2021
 

Abstract

Research in juvenile and criminal justice concerning how to assess and target interventions to LGBTQ+ youth and young adults is insufficient. With the proliferation of the Risk-Need-Responsivity Model (RNR), risk/need assessment tools have become evidence-based practice providing guidance to determining risk, identifying need, and the importance of targeting interventions to advance prosocial behavior. Critics have noted that during implementation of the RNR Model, the focus is too often on the risk principle at the expense of the need and responsivity principles. This study provides evidence from an intensive case study, and process evaluation of the Lambert House: LGBTQ+ Youth Community Center, that responsivity needs to be prominent when serving LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. Based on an analysis of 60 semi-structured interviews with program participants, staff, and community advocates, we argue that risk/need assessment tools driven by the RNR model be inclusive and responsive to LGBTQ+ youth and young adults.

Notes

1 See Harvell et al. (2018) for mention of LGBTQ + in a review of screening, assessment, and structured decision making with justice involved juveniles. Although LGBTQ+ youth are mentioned, gender/sex nonconforming youth are consistently grouped together with gender and girls and not as an independent group worthy of unique screening or assessment.

2 To the best of the first author’s knowledge, AGLYA was the first LGBTQ+ young adult organization to apply for and receive 501(c)(3) status, and to provide prevention-focused services for sexual and gender minority youth in the world outside of a college campus.

3 Lambert House is named in memory of Gray Lambert, who was one of the founding youth advocates for the program.

4 When the Principle Investigator Roig-Palmer approached the Administrator of Lambert House to conduct research, he made clear that gaining access would require a commitment to the organization and the youth for one year as an adult volunteer in the program space. A traditional “colonial” research approach that extracted data from an oppressed population without serving the greater needs of the organization or the youth would not be acceptable. He would only allow a research project originating from a Community-Participatory Research Methodology (see Stoecker, 2013) in which the key stakeholders inspired the research questions in which the results, either positive or negative, would best serve the needs of the community being studied.

5 Community advocates included adults living in the community who advocate or support LH. This group included people such as a legal parent/guardian, teacher, probation officer, police officer, case manager, mentor, etc.

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