Court -ordered cognitive -behavioural group treatment with adolescent offenders: Outcomes of an anger management program

The Oakland County Court Family Division Psychological Clinic offers two group interventions to aid juvenile offenders and their families. The Skills Training in Anger Reduction (STAR) program is a cognitive behavioural anger management group intervention program for juveniles, while Court Help On Increasing Control and Effectiveness (CHOICE) is a group parent training program tailored to meet the needs of parents of juvenile offenders. Archival data from court records for 281 participants in STAR, CHOICE, or both interventions provided intervention and recidivism data. For a portion of STAR participants, pre- and post-intervention self-reported anger and parent-reported behaviour data also were available. Pearson product correlations, GLM multivariate analyses, logistic regressions, and Cox Regression Survival analyses permitted the exploration of the role of juvenile characteristics in intervention outcome and the examination of treatment effects on recidivism. Juvenile offender gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, delinquency of peers, and ages at first offense and intervention all were found to be related to differences in pre-intervention and/or outcome variables. Pre-intervention felony charges were related to higher rates of intervention completion while total pre-intervention charges were related to lower rates of intervention completion. Comparing STAR completers to non-completers revealed significant differences in recidivism between groups. Similarly, significant differences also were observed between CHOICE completers and non-completers. The study failed to find significant added benefits for combined treatment. Court employee surveys provided insight into the importance of various treatment objectives and characteristics of potential participants in juvenile offender and parenting groups