New Zealand's special treatment units: the development and implementation of intensive treatment for high-risk male prisoners

In the late 1980s, New Zealand developed two highly innovative residential treatment programmes for serious offenders that blended together the strengths of structured cognitive behavioural group programmes and therapeutic community approaches. Since the mid-1990s this hybrid model – recently advocated as a fruitful direction for future offender programme development – was adopted and further refined for use in New Zealand's four high-risk special treatment units (HRSTUs). We outline the HRSTU model, noting the challenges and potential benefits of providing an intervention that integrates therapy, resocialisation and reintegration experiences for high-risk, high need, low responsivity clients: many with significant psychopathic features. On average, the majority of those referred to HRSTUs complete the programme and make small but significant amounts of change on important treatment goals. But most changes remain tentative, suggesting the importance of more supportive aftercare. Although an earlier evaluation of the first unit to open found the programme to be modestly effective in reducing recidivism, an outcome evaluation currently underway will help establish whether improvements since that time are associated with reductions in disciplinary infractions and recidivism.     

Consequences of Teenage Childbearing on Child Outcomes in the United States

Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market, and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve child trajectories. Simple correlations using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults (NLSY79CY) confirm that outcomes for children of teenage mothers are worse relative to children of older mothers. These negative relationships persist after controlling for background variables or including family fixed effects, though the magnitudes are attenuated. However, these approaches fail to fully account for selection into teen motherhood. To overcome selection, I employ an empirical strategy that relies on miscarriages to put bounds on the causal effects of teen childbearing. These bounds show that teen childbearing among mothers who choose to give birth does not cause adverse outcomes for children.