Multimedia Interventions for Juvenile Offenders

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The juvenile justice system is undergoing a paradigmatic shift toward a balanced and restorative justice model. A central goal of the approach is to teach youth social skills as a means of fulfilling reparations to their victims, their community, and to themselves. In this application we propose developing four interactive multimedia intervention programs that reflect a core set of social competencies for youth: anger management, decision-making social skills, victim empathy, and self-management planning. Juvenile justice systems throughout the nation are keenly interested in providing youth with interventions in these critical areas of training that are of high quality and that are consistent with the balanced and restorative justice model. The proposed multimedia programs are specifically intended to engage this at-risk population through an approach that is highly visual, has extensive guidance, models skills, and provides realistic yet prosocial contexts. The programs will be based on current curriculums written by leading experts in this field. In Phase I we will develop the complete anger management program, and in Phase II we will develop the remaining three programs. The evaluation studies in both phases will be conducted with adjudicated youth in the state of California.