Improving Probation Outcomes for Emerging Adults: An Experiment Evaluating a Specialized Caseload in Texas

Abstract

Emerging adults present an array of developmental needs that community supervision agencies should address to improve outcomes including impulsivity, inability to regulate emotions, and being less likely to consider future consequences of their behavior. This study used a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the Hidalgo County Emerging Adult Strategy (HCEAS)�a specialized caseload for emerging adults using principles of goal setting, incentives, and identity and relationship formation. This study examines how HCEAS influences progress on stability measures and probation outcomes, and how stability measure progress affects probation success. Analyses showed that HCEAS was effective in increasing either within- or between-group progress for every stability measure except education. HCEAS decreased outcomes such as arrests, motions to revoke, and failures to appear for probation office visits. These outcomes suggest that an age-specific focus on stability factors is feasible during supervision and likely to result in improved outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Probation
• emerging adults
• randomized controlled trial
• recidivism

Abbreviations

HCEAS

=

Hidalgo County Emerging Adult Strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In Hidalgo County, arrests do not indicate a guaranteed revocation.

2. Removal from the program does not indicate revocation, just removal form the HCEAS program.

3. Mental health caseloads and those with sex-related offenses were excluded from the study because they already have specialized caseload and service provisions tailored to their specific needs which were deemed necessary to address instead of the needs in the HCEAS program.

4. In piloting the project, the probation officers found that using the adolescent version of the Change Company journals was more effective with this age group than the adult ones.

5. In most cases, the consenting officers that did not complete progress reports because they were not supervising a participant in the study. In a few cases, consenting officers failed to submit progress reports when they were asked.

6. The 4% of missing progress reports were missing randomly across age, gender, ethnicity, TRAS risk level, 12 and 18 month outcome, and treatment group so it is not assumed that this missingness influences the analysis.

7. Each timepoint was considered one wave of data and each one covers a 3-month recall period. Therefore, wave 1 measures progress made between months 0 and 3, wave 2 measures progress made between months 3 and 6, and wave 3 measures progress made between months 6 and 9.

8. This variable was collected as nominal measure including categories for transgender man and transgender female. Since all respondents identified as cisgender male or female, it was entered as a dichotomous variable in the models.

9. This analysis was replicated with a sample restricted to those who were successful on probation (i.e. did not experience any of the negative probation outcomes). The results remained relatively consistent and are not included in the text.

10. TRAS is the standardize risk-need assessment tool. The risk level was a significant predictor of negative outcomes in a bivariate model; however, with each additional covariate was added to the model, that relationship was suppressed and ultimately was null. This suggests that risk level does not matter as much as other stability and demographic factors when it came to the outcomes of this study.

11. Education progress was excluded from this model to avoid listwise deletion of an additional 36 respondents who did not have educational supervision requirements.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance [2016-HO-BX-K005]