Scientific American Psychologists have long struggled with how to treat adolescents with
conduct disorder, or juvenile delinquency, as the condition is sometimes
called when it comes to the attention of the courts. Given that the
annual number of juvenile court cases is about 1.2 million, these
efforts are of great societal importance. One set of approaches involves
“getting tough” with delinquents by exposing them to strict discipline
and attempting to shock them out of future crime. These efforts are
popular, in part because they quench the public's understandable thirst
for law and order. Yet scientific studies indicate that these
interventions are ineffective and can even backfire. Better ways to turn
around troubled teens involve teaching them how to engage in positive
behaviors rather than punishing them for negative ones.
One get-tough technique is boot camp, or “shock incarceration,” a
solution for troubled teens introduced in the 1980s. Modeled after
military boot camps, these programs are typically supervised by a drill
instructor and last from three to six months. They emphasize strict
rules and swift punishments (such as repeated push-ups) for
disobedience, along with a regimen of physical work and demanding
exercise. According to the National Institute of Justice, 11 states
operated such programs in 2009. Indeed, Mike S. was sent to a boot camp
program following his discharge from the hospital.
Even so, research has yielded at best mixed support for boot camps.
In a 2010 review of 69 controlled studies, criminologists Benjamin Meade
and Benjamin Steiner, both then at the University of South Carolina,
revealed that such programs produced little or no overall improvement in
offender recidivism. For reasons that are unclear, some of them reduced
rates of delinquency, but others led to higher rates. Boot camps that
incorporated psychological treatments, such as substance abuse
counseling or psychotherapy, seemed somewhat more effective than those
that did not offer such therapies, although the number of studies was
too small to draw firm conclusions.
Another method is “Scared Straight,” which became popular following an Academy Award–winning documentary (Scared Straight!),
which was filmed in a New Jersey state prison in 1978. Typically these
programs bring delinquents and other high-risk teens into prisons to
interact with adult inmates, who talk bluntly about the harsh realities
of life behind bars. Making adolescents keenly aware of prison life is
supposed to deter them from criminal careers. Yet the research on these
interventions is not encouraging. In a 2003 meta-analysis (quantitative
review) of nine controlled studies of Scared Straight programs, criminal
justice researcher Anthony Petrosino, now at the research agency
WestEd, and his colleagues showed that these treatments backfired,
boosting the odds of offending by 60 to 70 percent.
The verdict for other get-tough interventions, such as juvenile
transfer laws, which allow teens who commit especially heinous offenses
to be tried as adults, is no more promising. In a 2010 summary,
psychologist Richard Redding of Chapman University found higher
recidivism rates among transferred adolescent offenders than among
nontransferred ones.
Perils of Punishment
Psychologists do not know for sure why get-tough treatments are
ineffective and potentially harmful, but the psychological literature
holds several clues. First, researchers have long found that
punishment-based strategies tend to be less effective than reward-based
strategies for lasting behavioral change, in part because they teach
people what not to do but not what to do. Second, studies indicate that
highly confrontational therapeutic approaches are rarely effective in
the long term. For example, in a 1993 controlled trial psychologist
William Miller of the University of New Mexico and his colleagues found
that counselors who used confrontational styles with problem
drinkers—for example, by taking them to task for minimizing the extent
of their drinking problem—had significantly less success in helping
their clients overcome their addictions than did counselors who used
supportive styles that relied on empathy. Similarly, a 2010 review by
criminal justice researcher Paul Klenowski of Clarion University and his
collaborators found that delinquency programs that involved
confrontational tactics, such as berating children for misbehavior, were
less effective than programs that did not use them. [...]
These results show that merely imposing harsh discipline on young
offenders or frightening them is unlikely to help them refrain from
problematic behavior. Instead teens must learn enduring tools—including
better social skills, ways to communicate with parents and peers, and
anger management techniques—that help them avoid future aggression.
Several effective interventions do just that, including
cognitive-behavior therapy, a method intended to change maladaptive
thinking patterns and behaviors, and multisystemic therapy, in which
parents, schools and communities develop programs to reinforce positive
behaviors. Another well-supported method, aimed at improving behavior in
at-risk children younger than eight years, is parent-child interaction
therapy. Parents are coached by therapists in real time to respond to a
child's behavior in ways that strengthen the parent-child bond and
provide incentives for cooperation [see
“Behave!” by Ingrid Wickelgren;
Scientific American Mind, March/April 2014].
