Juvenile Justice Anger Management (JJAM) Treatment for Girls: Results of a randomized controlled trial.

This study examined the efficacy of the Juvenile Justice Anger Management (JJAM) Treatment for Girls, an anger management and aggression reduction treatment designed to meet the unique needs of adolescent girls in residential juvenile justice facilities. This randomized controlled trial of JJAM compared changes in levels of anger and aggression among girls who participated in the JJAM treatment with those of girls who participated in treatment as usual (TAU) at the facilities. This study also investigated the theoretical model underlying the JJAM treatment, which proposed that reductions in hostile attribution biases, development of emotion regulation skills, and improvement in social problem solving would serve as mechanisms of action in JJAM. Participants were 70 female youth who ranged in age from 14 to 20 years (M = 17.45, SD = 1.24) and were placed at 1 of 3 participating juvenile justice facilities; 57 youth completed the study and were included in analyses. Results revealed greater reductions in anger, reactive physical aggression, and reactive relational aggression among girls in the JJAM treatment condition when compared to girls in the TAU control condition. The proposed theoretical model was partially supported via significant mediation findings; changes in hostile attribution bias were identified as a significant mechanism of action in the JJAM treatment. Results suggest that JJAM is a promising treatment to effectively reduce anger and reactive aggression among adolescent girls in juvenile justice placements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Development of the Juvenile Justice Anger Management Treatment for Girls.

Female juvenile offenders exhibit high levels of anger, relational aggression, and physical aggression, but the population has long been ignored in research and practice. No anger management treatments have been developed specifically for this population, and no established anger management treatments are empirically supported for use with delinquent girls. Thus, to alleviate anger and reduce the frequency and severity of aggressive behaviors in this underserved population, we developed the gender-specific, Juvenile Justice Anger Management (JJAM) Treatment for Girls. This cognitive-behavioral intervention was adapted from the Coping Power Program (Lochman & Wells, 2002), a school-based anger management treatment for younger children that has established efficacy and effectiveness findings with its target populations. This paper describes how the content of JJAM was developed to meet the unique needs of adolescent girls in residential juvenile justice placements. It also traces the process of developing a manualized treatment and the steps taken to enhance efficacy and clinical utility. An overview of the treatment, a session-by-session outline, an example session activity, and an example homework assignment are provided. A randomized controlled trial is currently being conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the JJAM Treatment for Girls.

Psychometric properties of the Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments with a juvenile justice sample.

This article describes the psychometric properties of the Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments, the revised version of Grisso's Miranda instruments. The original instruments demonstrated good reliability and validity in a normative sample. The revised instruments updated the content of the original instruments and were administered to a sample of 183 youth in pre- and postadjudication facilities. Analyses were conducted to establish the psychometric properties of the revised instruments and included similar analyses to those conducted by Grisso, as well as additional calculations (e.g., standard errors of measurement, intraclass correlation coefficients, Kappa coefficients). Results revealed sound psychometric properties, similar to those observed for the original instruments.

Assessing the "evolving standards of decency:" perceptions of capital punishment for juveniles.

This study examines whether public opinion parallels recent judicial and statutory changes limiting the applicability of capital sentences to offenders younger than 18 years old. Two hundred and thirty-five undergraduate students were administered a vignette of a capital case and asked to render a sentence of death or life in prison without parole. Results revealed that age of the defendant was not a significant predictor of sentence type; participants sentenced 16- and 17-year-old defendants similarly to 18- and 25-year-old defendants. Therefore, public opinion appears inconsistent with legal and legislative changes to abandon the practice of executing juveniles. Findings also suggested that perceived level of the defendant's responsibility and general opinion about capital sentences significantly predicted sentence type; perceptions of greater responsibility were associated with an increased likelihood of a death sentence. However, participants did not perceive differences in responsibility between juvenile and adult defendants. In addition, participants were more comfortable sentencing defendants to death compared with life in prison.

Juvenile offenders' Miranda rights comprehension and self-reported likelihood of offering false confessions.

This study examined whether age, IQ, and history of special education predicted Miranda rights comprehension and the self-reported tendency to falsely confess to a crime among 55 delinquent boys. The Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments-II, a revised version of Grisso's Instruments for Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of Miranda Rights, were developed for this study and are described in detail in this article. Results revealed that age, IQ, and special education were related to comprehension of Miranda rights. When Miranda comprehension, age, and IQ were simultaneously tested as predictor variables of the self-reported likelihood of false confessions, only age served as an independent predictor. Research and policy implications of this study are presented, and recommendations for use of the original and revised instruments are reviewed.