Effects of Functional Family Parole on Re-Arrest and Employment for Youth in Washington State

The authors of this paper present the results of an outcome evaluation to determine a new model of parole’s effectiveness in reaching the program’s outcome goals. The model, called Functional Family Parole (FFP), is intended to make families the unit of intervention and uses family-based therapy approaches to enhance case management outcomes. Results show that FFP-group youth were less likely to be arrested and had fewer total arrests during the nine months following release than those released later without parole; they were also more likely to be employed, and earned more on average during the year following release than those released without parole. FFP-youth were also 48 percent less likely to be re-arrested than those released later without parole. In the technical appendix, the authors also discuss the methodology of the study, which used a natural experiment using propensity score matching with regression models.