Back to basic Relations between residential group climate and juvenile antisocial behavior

Residential youth care facilities should provide a safe environment, without violence, where juvenile antisocial behavior can be prevented, and children and adolescents receive the best available care, education and treatment, with the ultimate goal of rehabilitation. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation was to gain more insight in the association between the therapeutic quality of residential group climate and juvenile antisocial behavior.
This dissertation provides useful insights into the therapeutic prospects for residential youth care, showing that openness of residential facilities is positively associated with the therapeutic quality of residential youth care, providing increased opportunities to reduce juvenile antisocial behavior. Despite the strong stability in antisocial behavior, a small to moderate negative association was found between a therapeutic residential group climate and antisocial behavior in a meta-analysis of 23 studies, with the strongest effect for perceived safety. Also, a therapeutic group climate proved to be negatively associated with aggressiveness-related deficits in social information processing in detained adolescents, which is one of the factors that may explain the relation between residential group climate and juvenile antisocial behavior.
For now, residential facilities should consider safety at the living groups as a priority by involving clients in a positive process of change through establishing a therapeutic environment, in combination with delivery of evidence-based treatment that targets the needs of clients from a rehabilitative perspective.