Providing High-Quality Education in Juvenile Corrections: Next Steps

In 2014, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice (U.S. DOE/DOJ) jointly released the Guiding Principles for Providing High-Quality Education in Juvenile Justice Secure Care Settings to provide recommendations within five principles that affect education, including safety (i.e., behavioral and mental health interventions), funding, staffing, curriculum and instruction, and reentry. However, no systematic review has evaluated the research within and across the Guiding Principles since their publication. The purpose of the current article is to (a) describe the literature review process that resulted in 36 studies across all of the principles, (b) briefly summarize information from the separate literature reviews focusing on behavior, mental health, and curriculum and instruction for which no separate literature reviews have been conducted, (c) provide detail concerning studies focusing on staffing and reentry, and (d) identify patterns across studies in all of the reviews, particularly related to study quality. In addition, we provide implications for research, policy, and practice. Public Policy Relevance Statement The present systematic literature review resulted in finding relatively more studies related to facility safety and curriculum and instruction, while few or no studies in the areas of funding, staffing, and reentry. Broadly, limited evidence of intervention effectiveness was noted for: (a) cognitive-behavioral approaches with or without praise to address inappropriate behavior and mental health symptom reduction; (b) antecedent instructions, verbal and written reminders, and restating rules, with or without praise/reinforcement; and (c) personalized reentry supports for youth that include cross-agency collaboration. However, intervention studies often neglected key quality indicators, including treatment integrity.