Assessing the Relationship Between Treatment Quality, Matching and Dosage and Juvenile Justice Outcomes Among Youth With Co-Occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Health Disorders, Florida, 2016-2019 (ICPSR 39124)

Version Date: May 30, 2025

Cite this study |

Principal Investigator(s):
Kevin T. Wolff, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39124.v2

Version V2 ()

  • V2 [2025-05-30]
  • V1 [2025-05-29] unpublished
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Summary

The effective treatment of youth with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders placed in juvenile justice residential facilities aims to effect positive change among youth in the system's care and promote public safety. This study aimed to examine the prevalence of co-occurring disorders among a multiyear, statewide sample of youth completing residential placement within the juvenile justice system in the state of Florida.

The study was developed to address three specific goals:
  • Determine the prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders, and their co-occurrence among youth placed in long-term juvenile justice facilities across the state of Florida
  • Assess the impact of service matching to assessed dynamic risk factors, dosage of intervention services actually provided to each youth, and treatment quality/fidelity of those interventions on both changes in risk and protective factors during placement and post-release recidivism outcomes
  • provide policy recommendations related to the efficacy of best practices through the combination of service matching/dosage/treatment quality of treatment within residential facilities among youth presenting with co-occurring disorders

    • Citation

    Wolff, Kevin T. Assessing the Relationship Between Treatment Quality, Matching and Dosage and Juvenile Justice Outcomes Among Youth With Co-Occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Health Disorders, Florida, 2016-2019. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-05-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39124.v2

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    Funding

    United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (15PNIJ-22-GG-03054-TITL)

    Subject Terms

    Geographic Coverage

    Restrictions

    Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reason for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

    Distributor(s)

    Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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    Time Period(s)

    2016-07-01 -- 2019-12-31

    Date of Collection

    2023-01-02 -- 2024-06-30
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    Study Purpose

    The study focused on understanding the impact of matching treatment services to assessed dynamic risk/needs, achieving dosage targets as set by the Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP), and treatment quality on:

  • risk reduction during placement
  • protective factor enhancement during placement
  • and subsequent recidivism, among youth in juvenile justice residential placement with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders.

    • Study Design

    The study utilized data acquired from the Juvenile Justice Information System (JJIS) in Florida. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ) maintains the JJIS which houses data inclusive of complete offense, placement, risk assessment, and intervention dosage (for youth placed in residential programs) for all youth arrested under the age of 18 in Florida, which was used for the study, in conjunction with three annual data files of program completions with an indicator of recidivism. Additionally, the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-2 (MAYSI-2) administered at admission to the residential facility was included (which is also maintained in the FDJJ JJIS).

    Utilizing this data, the study team compiled descriptive statistics to summarizes characteristics of the sample of use to determine associations between demographics, assessed differences between groups that received treatments that were matched, of adequate dosage, and of high quality versus those that did not, changes in dynamic risk and protective factors which occurred between a youth's entry into the program and their release, and predicted juvenile recidivism.

    Sample

    The study leveraged Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ) data inclusive of all youth who completed a residential placement across three fiscal years (July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2019).

    Criteria for inclusion included all youth who had:

  • An initial (at admission) and exit (prior to release) Residential Positive Achievement Change Tool (R-PACT) risk/needs assessment completed (required for all youth, necessary for examining risk/protective changes during placement)
  • Treatment service dosage information of interventions received during placement

    • Additionally, for youth with multiple residential placements within the three fiscal years examined, only the first residential placement within that period was included. Furthermore, all youth placed in residential programs specifically for juveniles with sexual offending treatment needs were excluded from the current study (based on their low recidivism base rates and differing treatment needs). These criteria resulted in a 5,587 youth that completed a FDJJ residential placement during the study timeframe. Additional exclusions included 2 youth without a MAYSI-2 at admission, 13 youth classified as "other" race/ethnicity, 208 youth placed in programs for juveniles with sexual offenses for sexual offense treatment specifically, and 165 youth who were not from Florida (committed offenses while visiting Florida) due to concerns about adequate recidivism data, resulting in a final sample of 5,469 youth included in the analysis file.

    Time Method

    Longitudinal

    Universe

    Youths arrested under the age of 18 in Florida

    Unit(s) of Observation

    Individual

    Data Type(s)

    Mode of Data Collection

    Description of Variables

    This study included variables regarding criminal history, medical and mental health history, and respondent demographics.

    Presence of Common Scales

    Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-2 (MAYSI-2). Grisso, T., and Barnum, R. (2000).

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    Original Release Date

    2025-05-29

    Version History

    2025-05-30 The epub version of the ICPSR codebook has been made publicly available.

    2025-05-29 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

    • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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    Notes

    • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

    • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.