The Prime Time Project: Preliminary Review of the First Year of a Community-Based Intervention for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System.

This paper describes first-year activities of the Prime Time Project, a community-based intervention with adolescents who have a history of both severe emotional disturbance and involvement in the juvenile justice system because of repeated or violent offenses. The intervention aims to decrease criminal behavior, increase prosocial behavior, and stabilize psychiatric symptoms. The project's causal model focuses on three areas of risk: attachment and the nature of the parent-child relationship during early childhood; the nature of parenting skills and strategies to which the child is exposed; and the child's ecological and community context. The model links background risk factors, more proximal antecedent risk factors, the intervention itself, and target outcomes. Emphasis is on skill building and behavior change in the youth's natural environment. Demographic and functional assessment data were gathered on 24 youth in the project and comparison youth. Analysis focused on diagnoses and history of treatment, intellectual functioning and academic achievement, overall functioning, school attendance, family involvement, admissions to juvenile detention, and new charges. This preliminary analysis suggests that the Prime Time model may be effective in facilitating more consistent monitoring and supervision of youth in this population, and in decreasing delinquent behavior. (Contains 10 references.) (DB)