Adolescents Charged With Assault of a Parent: Assessment and Treatment Approaches (2018)

There has been an increase in the number of youths referred to the juvenile justice system for charges related to stressful or chaotic home environments that result in adolescents being charged with domestic violence of a parent. These incidents rarely result in significant injury, yet the justice system’s response in some jurisdictions results in detention twice as often as other cases. However, the majority of these youths are not at risk for continued adolescent domestic battery (ADB) or other forms of re-offending, which implies that the preferred response for many would be treatment designed to meet the needs of the youth and the family. To this end, with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, researchers designed and validated the Adolescent Domestic Battery Typologies Tool (ADBTT) using the largest sample of adolescents charged with domestic battery on a parent to date. The goal was to determine if there are subtypes of classes of youths who would be best helped by different system responses, some of which may pose a risk for further ADB, whereas others may need only minimal intervention to assist the family. This brief will discuss the different categories of youths charged with ADB, how to assess them to make more informed decisions, and treatment approaches with the potential for success. Ideally, implementation of the ADBTT tool early in the juvenile justice process would lead to diverting the “right” youths away from formal justice processing with minimal intervention and would help derive the best treatment protocol within the system of care.