Reintegration, Supervised Release, and Intensive Aftercare
David M. Altschuler, Troy L. Armstrong, and
Doris Layton MacKenzie

Over the past decade, interest in the issue of aftercare for juvenile offenders has grown tremendously. Jurisdictions have sought new ways to reintegrate youth being released from confinement into their communities while also ensuring public safety, and juvenile justice policymakers and professionals have begun experimenting with aftercare and other reintegration models. In the late 1980's, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) began supporting a long-term, multistage research and development initiative to design an intensive juvenile aftercare model. The final stages (implementation and testing) of the initiative, an experimental evaluation of the Intensive Aftercare Program Model (IAP) using random assignment conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), are well under way.

In "Reintegrative Confinement and Intensive Aftercare," Dr. David M. Altschuler and Dr. Troy L. Armstrong describe the IAP model, distinguish it from other models and programs that have been implemented and assessed with varying degrees of success, and analyze individual intensive aftercare programs. While other aftercare evaluations have not all been experimental in design, the IAP evaluation uses experimental methodology to gauge the success of the four OJJDP-supported projects currently implementing the IAP model. Following Drs. Altschuler and Armstrong's comparative analysis, Dr. Doris Layton MacKenzie provides a commentary that reviews existing aftercare programs and studies of these programs and reacts to Drs. Altschuler and Armstrong's conclusions. Dr. MacKenzie examines aftercare initiatives, including OJJDP's IAP model, in light of the findings and recommendations of the University of Maryland's report entitled Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, which she coauthored. Together, these analyses present a cutting-edge examination of what has worked in reintegrating juvenile offenders, what has not worked, and why.

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Reintegration, Supervised Release, and Intensive Aftercare Juvenile Justice Bulletin   ·  July 1999