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Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach (2013)

Chapter: Appendix C: Mentoring

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
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Appendix C

Mentoring

RESEARCH ON MENTORING

Given the huge federal investment in mentoring, it is useful to lay out what is known about mentoring and its impact on behavior. Research provides support for the prosocial benefits young people receive from having at least one close, enduring relationship with a caring adult during adolescence (Butts, Bazemore, and Meroe, 2010). Such benefits include fewer risky behaviors, like substance abuse and delinquency (Aspy et al., 2004; Oman et al., 2004). Many believe that at-risk youth, like those who grow up in poverty and/or are in contact with child welfare, foster care, or the juvenile justice systems, lack such a relationship (Rhodes and DuBois, 2006). As such, mentoring is a widely used approach to match at-risk youth with a prosocial adult in an enduring and supportive relationship.

Most youth mentoring programs serve the broad purpose of developing competencies and future potential of mentees through ongoing, structured relationships with trusted individuals. Today, mentoring programs can take several forms: traditional mentoring (one adult to one young person); group mentoring (one adult with a small group of young people); team mentoring (several adults working with small groups of young people, in which the typical adult-to-youth ratio is not greater than 1:4); peer mentoring (trained, caring youth mentoring other youth); and even e-mentoring (mentoring via e-mail and the Internet). They can also take place in a number of settings, such as the workplace, a school, a faith-based organization or other community setting, a juvenile corrections facility, or a virtual community.

Evaluations of formal one-to-one mentoring programs have provided

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×

evidence of improvements in self-efficacy and social competence and academic success, as well as measurable reductions in problem behavior (Tierney, Grossman, and Resch, 1995; Grossman and Tierney, 1998; DuBois et al., 2002b, 2002c; Keating et al., 2002; Karcher, 2005; DeWit et al., 2007; Herrera et al., 2007). A highly cited study of the Big Brother, Big Sister Program demonstrates that positive outcomes were sustained for both boys and girls and across races (Tierney et al., 1995; Sipe, 1996). Meta-analytic results comparing studies across a range of program types and youth populations also support the general effectiveness of mentoring programs; however, effect sizes are relatively modest, particularly when compared with effects sizes found in meta-analyses of other prevention programs (DuBois, et al., 2002a; Rhodes, 2008). Positive social, academic, and behavioral outcomes are more likely to occur when programs have best practices in place. Such practices include procedures to screen then train volunteers, supervise the matches, provide ongoing support to the mentors, and ensure a relationship of at least 12 months with frequent meetings (Sipe, 1996; Brady et al., 2005; Rhodes, 2008).

Although mentoring programs have been shown on average to promote positive outcomes in adolescents’ development, there is also evidence that (1) some programs are less effective, most notably those that do not have the structures to support the best practices; (2) some youth are less likely to benefit from mentoring; and (3) the measured benefit among different outcomes (e.g., academic, behavioral, social) varies within and across different types of programs. In other words, the current state of research can show only that mentoring works for some youth, in some settings, and for some outcomes (Roberts et al., 2004; Rhodes, 2008). Most of what is known about effective mentoring comes from evaluations of one-to-one mentoring programs. Other types of programs are just starting to be rigorously studied.

There is very little known about the limits of mentoring programs. The modest improvements in youth outcomes have not been tested to see if they hold up over time. Mentoring does seem to provide immediate academic success, such as improved test scores and school behaviors, but there is little known about its impact on other relevant outcomes, such as overall educational attainment, substance use, or juvenile offending (DuBois et al., 2011). The field has limited understanding of the characteristics of youth that are best served by mentoring and how many adults can be reasonably expected to serve as mentors (Sipe, 1996).

FEDERAL SUPPORT OF MENTORING

In 1992, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) was amended to establish the Juvenile Mentoring Program (JUMP). The program competitively awarded three-year grants to community-based non-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×

profit organizations or local education agencies to provide one-to-one mentoring for youth at risk of delinquency, gang involvement, or educational failure. At the same time, Congress instructed the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to conduct an ongoing evaluation of JUMP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2000).

The 1992 reauthorization defined mentoring specifically as a one-to-one relationship between a unpaid volunteer age 21 or over (mentor) and a juvenile (mentee) that occurs over an extended period of time. The program had clear expectations of one mentor for one mentee, and in the first few years JUMP grantees complied with this requirement (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2000). In addition to individual grants to organizations, JUMP supported mentoring across the nation in other ways. OJJDP was not the only federal agency to support mentoring programs. In 1999, the U.S. General Accounting Office identified 45 programs in 10 agencies that included mentoring services for at-risk or delinquent youth as part (if not all) of the program. OJJDP administered four of the nine programs identified within the U.S. Department of Justice. One was JUMP; the other three1 had the authority to support mentoring programs although mentoring was not their primary focus (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1999).

FY2002 was the last year for which a JUMP solicitation was issued. In the 2002 reauthorization, Congress consolidated JUMP with other program areas under the Title II, Part C, Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Block Grant Program. This new block grant program never received funding. However, OJJDP continued to support previous JUMP applicants and grantees (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2004) and subsequently turned to supporting different types of juvenile mentoring initiatives. From 1995 to 2005, more than $50 million was awarded to 261 programs through JUMP (Boyle, 2006).

In response to recommendations from the White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth (2003), the Federal Mentoring Council was established in 2006 to strengthen support for mentoring, coordinate federal efforts, and minimize duplication. The council is chaired by the Corporation for National and Community Service and includes representatives of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor.

To continue to support juvenile mentoring, congressional appropriators began carving out such funds from appropriations under JJDPA. Carve-outs for juvenile mentoring started at about $10 million in FY2006; one-third of this was available for discretionary awards, and the rest was congres-

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1 The other three programs were Title II Formula Grants, Title V Incentive Grants for Delinquency Prevention Program, and Gang-Free Schools and Communities: Community-Based Gang Interventions.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×

sionally directed toward specific organizations (Office of Justice Programs, 2006). In its 2008 annual report, OJJDP reports spending more than $60 million on mentoring in FY2008. OJJDP was appropriated $80 million and $100 million respectively for juvenile mentoring programs in FY2009 and FY2010. All totaled, more than $300 million has been expended by OJJDP on mentoring.

At the time of this writing, OJJDP has six separate discretionary programs2 that support youth mentoring activities. In addition to these discretionary grants, OJJDP has also been tasked with administering congressional earmarks, many of which were directed to mentoring partnerships (Fitzpatrick, 2010). In FY2011, OJJDP also received a $20 million transfer from the U.S. Department of Defense to support mentoring for youth with a military parent. It is beyond the charge and resources of this study to examine the quality of mentoring programs supported by OJJDP and other agencies.

Recent solicitations from OJJDP indicate that the scope of mentoring support has broadened. Eligibility for awards now extends to organizations that include adults or trained peers as mentors, that provide one-to-one or group mentoring services, and that target not only youth at risk of delinquency and offending but also those more broadly at risk of unhealthy development (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2010). OJJDP is currently mandated to support mentoring for tribal youth, sexually exploited children, youth with disabilities, and youth in military families. Although these are notably youth groups in need of services, there is no research that supports the notion that they are more in need of mentoring than other groups or that these groups will stand to benefit more than other groups (Chandra, 2010).

One advantage of having received increased funding support for mentoring is that OJJDP has been able to use set-aside funds for research on mentoring. However, this is a case of the cart before the horse, with needed research being undertaken after an expansion of federally supported mentoring programs has occurred. Targeted solicitations went out in FY2009, FY2010, and FY2011 requesting research proposals to identify the components of mentoring programs with the greatest impact toward reducing juvenile delinquency and offending. Some proposals were open to field-initiated ideas regarding the selection of components, and others were targeted to specific programmatic characteristics, such as paid versus volunteer mentors or specific group mentoring programs.

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2 The FY2011 discretionary grant programs on mentoring included OJJDP’s Mentoring for Child Victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation Initiative; the Mentoring for Youth with Disabilities Initiative; the Multi-State Mentoring Initiative; the National Mentoring Program; the Second Chance Act Juvenile Mentoring Initiative; and the Tribal Youth National Mentoring Program.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×
Page 431
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×
Page 432
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×
Page 433
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Mentoring." National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14685.
×
Page 434
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Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks.

Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century.

It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

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