The Effectiveness of a Cognitive Behavioral Group Intervention Program for Adjudicated Youth

The current project assessed the effectiveness of the Thinking for a Change Program (T4C) on adolescents' self- reported feelings of anger, attitude toward delinquent behaviors and criminogenic thought processes. The intervention (T4C) was delivered at two sites in a suburban county in New York to youth that had been adjudicated to probation. T4C program is used nation-wide with the offender population (both adolescents and adults). The program was developed by integrating other curriculums that have years of consistent empirical support for all age groups. To date, numerous studies have identified this as an effective intervention in reducing recidivism rates and significant improvements in interpersonal skills in the adult offender population. Although grounded in empirically supported adolescent curriculums, the T4C intervention has not been studied with adolescents.;The current study utilized an experimental design in an effort to determine if there were measurable changes from Time 1 (pre) to Time 2 (post) for the treatment group as compared to a comparison group. In order to determine if the changes were significant, a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to compare the marginal means between the two groups. The results found no significant changes on the surveys that measured the adolescents' pride and criminogenic thought processes. There was a significant decrease noted for all participants on the anger measures, but no significant difference between the control and experimental group was observed. A post hoc analysis revealed that for adolescents who reported high levels of anger, that they did have a noticeable decrease after participating in the T4C program. The trends observed on the measure for criminogenic thinking and attitudes toward delinquency suggest support for the iotragenic effect.;The current study raised concerns regarding the challenges that can be met when implementing curriculums in community settings. Future research should continue to investigate the effects that group treatment can have with adjudicated youth. In addition, it should focus on developing treatment programs, whose curriculums demonstrate both treatment efficacy and effectiveness.