A Meta-Analysis of Juvenile Correctional Treatment

Debate over the effectiveness of correctional treatment has been raging for over a decade. The view that “nothing works” dominates in the mind of the public and relies on many early reviews of the literature for support. The most contemporary approach to analyzing the state of the evidence on correctional treatment is the use of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a technique that reanalyzes data found in original research reports and arrives at a common measure for all of the studies. The present analysis of research reports published from 1975 to 1984 does not provide encouraging results. The results show that interventions have little positive impact on recidivism and many appear to exacerbate the problem. Indeed, the analysis in this article could be considered overly lenient in its interpretation of the results. It appears that the earlier evaluations that claim that “nothing works” are close to the conclusion to be drawn from more recent evaluations of juvenile treatments.