Juvenile Second Chance Act Participation in Virginia: Impact on Rearrest, Reconviction, and Reincarceration

Abstract This study evaluates the recidivism impact of the Tidewater Reentry Initiative (TRI) for medium and high-risk juveniles released from secure statewide facilities. TRI used an intensive case management model combined with in-reach prerelease reentry planning. Impact was assessed using propensity score (PS) weighting in a geographic comparison design. Treatment youth were released from statewide facilities to the Tidewater area of Virginia; comparison youth were released to a comparison area. PSs were used to balance the samples on demographics, current case characteristics, and criminal history. Descriptively, treatment youth showed lower rearrest and reconviction rates at 6, 12, and 24 months following release than comparison youth. Survival analyses examined time to first rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration, using 6 months to 6 years of follow-up data. Treatment youth were slower to be rearrested and reconvicted, which was significant at the p < .10 level in Cox proportional hazard models. These beneficial effects appear concentrated among the youth released as adults, but formal tests of the interaction were not significant. The intensive case management model seems to have promise to delay recidivism, although high recidivism rates suggest that the model is not intensive enough for high risk youth involved in the juvenile justice system.