Introduction to Part II: Trauma and Juvenile Delinquency: New Directions in Interventions

Abstract

This article introduces the second part of a two-part special issue featuring new directions in research with traumatized youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The articles in this issue focus on cutting-edge evidence-based interventions designed to help youth to overcome the sequelae associated with trauma exposure and to support them in returning to a prosocial developmental pathway. The interventions described vary in the targets of therapeutic change, ranging from parental internal working models of relationship alone, to relational functions in the larger family system, to traumagenic dynamics among delinquent girls and their therapeutic foster parents, to the empowerment of groups of youth through participation in musical theatre, to changes directed at the detention milieu itself to, at the policy level, the creation of a more trauma-informed juvenile justice system overall. However, what unites all these efforts is thoughtful attention to an underlying theory of change and consideration of principles of evidence-based and best practices in intervention implementation and research.

Keywords:

• trauma
• delinquency
• intervention
• gender
• posttraumatic stress
• policy
• juvenile justice