Bringing Evidence to Practice in Juvenile Justice: Mark Lipsey

Do you have to have a brand-name evidence-based program like FFT or MST to effectively reduce recidivism in your juvenile justice system? Or can a home-grown version be just as effective, if it's based on general principles about what works? 
Researcher Mark Lipsey, of Vanderbilt University, tackled those questions as part of a recent congressional briefing hosted by The Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. You can see parts 1 and 2 of his presentation here:

You can also download his slides for his presentation, "Bringing Evidence to Practice in Juvenile Justice," (you'll need them to follow the video).
One of his findings is that "home-grown" evidence-based programs do just as well as brand-name evidence-based programs -- but only if they're implemented well, paying close attention to what the research said was necessary to make them work. 
If you just scan the slides without watching Lipsey's presentation, you'll likely miss the importance of slide 16: it shows that the recidivism rate of youth in well-designed evidence-based programs was about 12%-13% lower at six and 12 months out than what you expect given their risk level, when compared to youth who did not receive evidence-based programming.
Related Posts:

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• Juvenile Drug Courts: Evidence-Based Practices
• Implementing an Evidence-Based Practice? Here's What Works

The congressional briefing, given October 26, 2010, was called "Juvenile Justice in the Age of the Second Chance Act, the Youth Promise Act, and the JJDP Reauthorization Bill: Research Guided Policy Implications for Maximizing Reentry Initiatives for Adolescents."