Effective family-based program options for justice-involved youth

Families play a significant role both in youth's development of criminal behavior and in their desistance of criminal behavior. Nonetheless, programming for families of justice-involved youth is limited. This article describes two family-based programs found in the National Institute of Justice CrimeSolutions database. Among 19 programs for families, only the Functional Family Therapy and Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care for Adolescents are documented as effective in helping justice-involved youths and their families. The discussion proposes how these programs could be used to harness services under special education law for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities who are overrepresented in juvenile correctional facilities.