“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:40 (NIV)
Over 2 million juveniles are arrested every year in America.[i] If their crimes are serious or frequent enough, they will face placement in a group home or other juvenile facility. For many, this is only another step along the path to further involvement in juvenile and then adult crimes, destroying families and communities, as well as their own futures.
As Christians, we seek to reach out to offenders and help them get back on the right track. According to rigorous research, three well-established family coaching programs provide valuable parenting guidance and help parents better direct their children’s behaviors away from lives of delinquency. New arrests of youths in these family-coaching programs were cut by as much as half compared to similar troubled youths in families not receiving this help.[ii]
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[i] Bureau of Justice Statistics (2009) Criminal Offender Statistics. Washington, D.C. Unites States Department of Justice. Retrieved from the internet on September 9, 2009, from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#lifetime [ii] Alexander, J., Pugh, C., Parsons, B., & Sexton, T. (2000). Family Functional Therapy. In D.S. Elliot (Series Ed.), Blueprints for violence prevention: Book three. Boulder, CO: Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence; Schaeffer, C.M. & Borduin, C.M. (2005). “Long-term follow-up to a randomized clinical trial of Multisystemic Therapy with serious and violent juvenile offenders.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(3), 445-453; Chamberlain, P., & Mihalic, S. F. (1998). Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care. In D.S. Elliot (Series Ed.), Blueprints for violence prevention: Book eight. Boulder, CO: Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence.