This cost-benefit analysis examines the monetary value of programs or policies to determine whether the benefits exceed the costs from the intensive supervision model of case management for court-involved youth, as compared with traditional probation.
This document provides a meta-analysis, by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP), of research aimed at determining what works to improve outcomes; it calculates whether the benefits of a program exceed its costs; and it estimates the risk of investing in a program by testing the sensitivity of research results. The analysis compares adjudicated youth on intensive supervision to adjudicated youth on traditional probation supervision. In the included studies, the document reports that participants were at high risk of recidivism per a validated risk assessment tool; the length of intensive supervision ranged from three to 14 months, with most youth receiving supervision for nine months. The studies in the analysis reported that 60 percent of the participants were youth of color and 12 percent were female. The document provides charts such as: benefit-cost summary statistics per participant; meta-analysis of program effects; detailed monetary benefit estimates per participant; meta-analysis of program effects; detailed monetary benefit estimates per participant; detailed annual cost estimates per participant; benefits minus costs over time (cumulative discounted dollars); benefits by perspective over time (cumulative discounted dollars); and taxpayer benefits by source of value over time (cumulative discounted dollars). Each graph and chart includes an accompanying discussion of findings, and the document also provides a list of sources cited and links to relevant technical documentation.