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Home Visiting and Early Childhood Education for Reducing Justice System Involvement

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Abstract

Early childhood intervention is particularly cost-beneficial when it reduces justice involvement, but ingredients that contribute to this outcome are unknown. The goal of this study was to estimate the effects of two common early childhood intervention ingredients—home visits and center-based education—on juvenile justice involvement. The Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) randomized 1090 premature and low-birth-weight babies to intervention or control groups. Intervention group families were offered home visits from birth to age 3 years and high-quality center-based early childhood education from ages 1 to 3 years, but varied in their take-up of each intervention component. We estimated (1) intent-to-treat effects and (2) the effects of families’ level of participation in each intervention component, using a novel stratification approach to minimize the impact of self-selection bias on dosage. Outcomes were children’s risk of being stopped by police, arrested, or incarcerated, by age 18 years. Intent-to-treat analyses showed no effects of the IHDP for both sexes combined, nor for girls only, on any of the three outcomes, but there was an intent-to-treat effect on boys’ risk of being arrested, OR = 0.43 (95% CI 0.24, 0.76). Analyses of dosage effects showed that, for both sexes combined, participation in the center-based educational component decreased the odds of being stopped by the police by 3% for each month of services. For boys only, the odds of being arrested decreased by 4% with each month of home visits and by 4% with each month of center-based educational services. We conclude that high-quality center-based early childhood education and, to some extent, home visits, reduce justice involvement among biologically vulnerable children, especially boys.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Anne Martin, PhD, for data acquisition and management; Orla Doyle, PhD, for suggestions on earlier drafts; Yohann Courtemanche, MSc, for assistance with editing and some analyses on the latest version; and all the families who participated in the Infant Health and Development Program study.

Funding

The 18-year follow-up of the Infant Health and Development Program participants, used in this study, was funded by grant 039543 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had no role in the design or conduct of this study. For previous funders of the Infant Health and Development Program, please see IHDP (1990), Brooks-Gunn et al. (1994) and McCarton et al. (1997). AP initiated this project while at Teachers College, Columbia University, with the support of a postdoctoral fellowship (Bisby prize) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and completed it while at Northwestern University, with the support of institutional NMCAT funds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. École de Psychologie, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada

    Amélie Petitclerc

  2. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

  3. College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

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  1. Amélie Petitclerc
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  2. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
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Contributions

Dr. Petitclerc conceptualized the study, analyzed the data, drafted the initial manuscript, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. Dr. Brooks-Gunn was part of the group who designed, coordinated, and supervised data collection on the Infant Health and Development Program, and critically reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. Both authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

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Correspondence to Amélie Petitclerc.

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Ethics Approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the institutional review boards of all participating institutions: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (Little Rock, AR), Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY), Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA), University of Miami School of Medicine (Miami, FL), University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA), University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Dallas (Dallas, TX), University of Washington School of Medicine (Seattle, WA), Yale University School of Medicine (New Haven, CT).

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Informed consent was obtained from participants and their parents (legal guardians).

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Petitclerc, A., Brooks-Gunn, J. Home Visiting and Early Childhood Education for Reducing Justice System Involvement. Prev Sci 23, 982–995 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-022-01363-7

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