Disrupting the pathway from truancy to delinquency: a randomized field trial test of the longitudinal impact of a school engagement program

Objective: Truancy in adolescence is related to detrimental developmental outcomes over the life-course, including a greater risk for delinquency during adolescence and offending in adulthood. This paper presents results from the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP): a Third Party Policing partnership between schools and police that sought to disrupt the relationship between truancy and delinquency by communicating, in a procedurally fair dialogue, the legal responsibilities of parents to ensure their children attend school. This paper examines the impact of ASEP on antisocial behavior and the modifying effects of ASEP on the relationship between willingness to go to school and antisocial behavior. Methods: ASEP was evaluated under randomized field trial conditions, where 102 truanting young people from a highly disadvantaged urban area in Brisbane, Australia, were randomly assigned to either the ASEP intervention or the business-as-usual condition. Results: Utilizing four waves of survey data collected over a 2-year time period, we found evidence that ASEP was related to decreases in self-reported antisocial behavior throughout the 2\ua0years study. We also find that ASEP lessened the negative relationship between willingness to go to school and self-reported antisocial behavior for those in the experimental condition up to 1\ua0year post random allocation. Conclusions: Partnerships between schools and police that communicate, in a procedurally fair way, parental legal responsibilities for their children to attend school holds promise for increasing a truanting young person’s willingness to go to school and reducing their self-reported antisocial behaviour, at least in the short run