Multi-Systemic Therapy Improves Outcomes For Minority Juvenile Offenders

Hispanic youth involved with the Los Angeles County juvenile probation system who received multi-systemic therapy (MST) had better outcomes than youth who received other juvenile justice services. MST is an intensive family- and community-based treatment program for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders between age 12 and 17. Overall, youth who received MST had significantly lower incarceration rates than the comparison-group youth and the MST group had significantly higher rates of completion of community service. Hispanic MST participants performed significantly better than Hispanic comparison-group youth in rates of arrest, incarceration, and successful completion of probation. However . . .